“I am a person. And this person on the street corner is also a person. They have a past, present, and future, a life I will never know, a story that can’t be summed up on a sign.”

Words by Rachel LaChapelle, Illustrations by Miró Merrill
By the side of the rainy road, a discarded sign lies wilting in a puddle. The ink has bled from the cardboard like the meaning has bled from words I have seen too many times: Spare Change Please, Anything Helps, God Bless. I never stopped when I saw the signs. I didn’t even see who was holding them. On street corners, I avoid eye contact or cross the road. At red lights, I roll up the window or fiddle with the radio. This is what I tell myself: I am young and female and vulnerable, and when I am out alone, I must protect myself. Because these people are hungry — and not just in the empty stomach sense of the word.
I am well-practiced in the art of evasion now, but that wasn’t always the case. Three years ago at age 18, I left for college a little red riding hood from the suburbs; Berkeley, California, was to be my deep, dark woods. Along the path to school, an inescapable acridity spilled from the gutters and filled the fog. They called me baby girl, then heartless bitch, reached out to stroke my shins, and recited monologues inches from my face when I rode the bus. There was the bitterest pity, and probably much worse, in the pit of my stomach. I learned to hide my wide-eyed gaze behind glasses and harden my replies.
Panhandling is prevalent here too, in my second college town. Signs are flown on sidewalks and common curbs are contested across town. The city of Eugene has a homeless population of around 3,000 people — though that is not to say that all homeless people panhandle, or that all panhandlers are homeless.
While panhandling here in Eugene is permissible by law and tolerated by the public, the legality of such activities elsewhere in Oregon has been challenged. In 2014, Portland’s six-month-long ban on loitering and panhandling was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge, who found the law to be a restriction on free speech. Coos Bay and Roseburg have ordinances prohibiting the transfer of money to a pedestrian from a vehicle on the street. In the case of a violation, both drivers and panhandlers can be penalized with a fine. The intent is to prevent traffic problems rather than panhandling itself, which is why the ordinance has been successful while others like Portland’s have not. People are free to ask for money and people are free to give, as long as they legally park their car before doing so.  
I wanted to research my questions about panhandling, but I couldn’t find the answers I was looking for. Some studies have tried to determine who panhandles, how much money they get, and what they buy with the money. But since the data is often collected from self-reported surveys, it is difficult to obtain reliable statistics. The Center for Problem-Oriented Policing estimates incomes range from $2 to $300 per day, depending upon the location as well as the skill and demographics of the panhandler; for example, women with children, veterans, and the disabled tend to receive more money. Most panhandlers respond that they usually spend their money on food, others save spare change to book a hotel bed or a bus ticket, and some admit to using donations to buy drugs or alcohol.
Panhandling can be passive or aggressive, ignorable or intimidating. No matter the manner in which the request is made, being asked for money is uncomfortable for me. It reminds me that I have when others do not, and it instills in me a feeling of guilt that I don’t always think is fair. So I doubt. I shake my head. I say “I’m sorry” — to those who ask me for money, to myself, to some higher power or karmic enforcer — but I’m not.
During the few months I’ve volunteered at a local meal site, I’ve interacted with a cross-section of the hungry, unemployed, and unhoused. I’ve met good people, rude people, sick people, and unlucky people. I have seen a diversity of stories and experiences, yet here I am, still stuck in my stereotypes and biases.
How many times have I thought: Why do you deserve a handout? Why don’t you just get a job? How many times have I judged, dividing the hungry into those who don’t deserve their situation and those who, just a little bit, do? I decided to find out why — and see if I could change my ways.
The first time I find a panhandler to talk to is the result of a deliberate attempt. I walk the grid of downtown methodically, scouting my options. When I see the young man sitting with his sign, I turn around suddenly, and I have to walk around the block again before I’ve summoned the courage to go up to him. I crouch down awkwardly to his eye level. I’m nervous, and too many words escape me, too many details slide past. I know he does not yell or send me away, and he speaks much softer than I expect him to.
His warmest coat is wrapped around the sleepy four-month-old cradled in his lap. The puppy, Preigo — “How do you spell your dog’s name?” “You’d know if you were a Star Wars fan” — can barely lift his eyelids, and Andy, the man, looks as tired as his dog. Andy recites the litany of the pup’s precise lineage: Border Collie, Chocolate Lab, Blue Heeler, Rhodesian Ridgeback. I sit with the two of them on top of a cold sidewalk grate, suspended above the cigarette-strewn city underbelly.
“We’re hoping for leftovers,” Andy says, gesturing at the nearby burger joint. They don’t get any while I’m there, just a few spare coins. Preigo’s fur, caramel to the eye and corduroy to the touch, looks healthy. I wonder which of them eats first.
A friend of Andy’s approaches, and for the first time, I’m looking up instead of down at a panhandler on the street. I try not to hesitate when he offers me a handshake. His name is Isaiah, he’s 19 years old, and he’s been here in Eugene two days by way of Bend. Before that was Georgetown, Texas, where he grew up one of seven siblings and graduated early from high school.
His hood remains suspiciously up until we’ve been talking over the water fountain for a while. I confess I don’t often stop to talk to strangers on the street. “So, you’ve come to see how the other half lives,” he says, more of a statement than a question. Perhaps it’s the Oregon Ducks logo on my sweatshirt that signals privilege. “It’s good that you’re taking time to redeem yourself, to be human,” Isaiah says. His words, if not his intentions, are harsh. He adds that he needs to redeem himself, too. From what, I do not know. I soften regardless.
Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” plays in the bar across the street. Recognizing the song earns me stroke-of-luck street cred. Isaiah peels back grungy layers of clothing to reveal a faded Floyd T-shirt. He’s in a band, playing piano and a little drums. Their band is called Ceiling, their future following will be known as “Ceiling” fans. He laughs at his joke, and I do too.
I tell him about the story I’m working on. “Can I write about you?” “Sure,” he shrugs, but he doesn’t know why I’d want to. Isaiah tells me that he is going to apply to the university while he’s in town. He wants to study art. Isaiah paints — or he has, and he would, if he had any supplies and the time to travel into the Pacific Northwest wilderness or Egypt’s deserts. He asks me if I’m that type of student who never has any fun because I’m too busy with school. I hesitate to admit it, but when I do, Isaiah nods in understanding. He’d be the same way, he says, if he were in college. “I wouldn’t even have time to smoke a cigarette.”
“How did you get accepted into the University of Oregon?” he asks. I sidestep the question and tell him I filled out the application online. “You could use the computers at the public library,” I offer. Then I remember the 15 minute time limit on Internet access without a library card, which requires a Lane County address. It’s a simple but significant obstacle, the first of many Isaiah would encounter if he was serious about getting into college. Tuition for out-of-state students is upwards of $30,000 a year. Though it’s afternoon, Isaiah hasn’t eaten anything today — he hasn’t collected enough change yet. When I give him five dollars to get something to eat, he’s awkwardly grateful, trying not to grin too big. I make him promise to spend the money on food or brushes and paints.                         
A third guy joins our little cohort, saying something about finding nuggets on the street for everyone to share. Isaiah doesn’t know his name but he seems to be a good friend of Andy’s. I can’t think of anything more tragic than eating old, cold chicken nuggets off a sidewalk. It is a tragic metaphor for the American panhandling life, I think, it is fast food poetry. I won’t find out until later, but it is actually slang for marijuana.
Isaiah’s friends are getting ready to leave and hurrying him along. “Wait a minute, I’m talking to this gal,” he tells them. He asks me for my phone number. I hesitate at first, before realizing I’m not being hit on, but hit up, maybe for money or food or just a sympathetic ear. His cell phone is cracked and dead, so I scribble my number on a piece of paper. “I hope I’m not bothering you,” I say.
“You’re keeping me from doing things I shouldn’t,” is his reply.
As they’re walking away, Isaiah turns back to wave goodbye. I don’t see or hear from him again.
I think I see him the next few times I’m out, but on second glance, it’s someone else with the same overcast eyes and scarecrow clothes, someone else with dirt settled deep under his nails and into the loops and whorls of his fingerprints, someone else looking 16 and 60 all at once.
Did he buy chicken or nuggets, paints, or a pipe? Did he walk down the university’s tree-lined streets and linger on the lawn outside the library? Perhaps I’ll never know.
Isaiah is living his life on the road and on the edge. He is traveling wherever he likes — or rather, wherever he can hitchhike, wherever February thaws the streets — without a care in his pocket or a penny in the world.  The lie he tells himself is that he holds onto every possibility instead of none. He spends more time begging than being bohemian. He doesn’t own a toothbrush, let alone a paint brush. He is learning a lesson that is 12,000-years-old: people didn’t start making art until they had time when they weren’t looking for food.
I don’t feel sorry for Isaiah, and I wish I could tell him that, because I think he would smile.
I’m on my way to the post office on a Tuesday when an older woman asks me for $1.50. Surprised at the specificity of the appeal and annoyed that she chose me to ask from among all the other people walking by, I hurry past her, throwing an apology over my shoulder. I’m on the next block before I realize the irony.
I need to finish my errands, I didn’t prepare for this, I probably forgot my notebook and pen: the excuses run through my head, soothing me.
Though I plan to take an alternate route home, 20 minutes later, I’m handing over the requested amount of change and asking to share the wireframe table she is sitting at outside a downtown café. Her wheeled walker is piled four feet high with grocery and garbage bags full of belongings. One bag holds at least a dozen disposable cups like the one she has in her hand now, lipstick prints left along their paper rims. Her coffee is the greyish-brown of too little room or skim milk substituted for cream. Since the last time I saw her, someone has stopped to buy her a bagel topped with tuna salad from the shop next door.
Her name is Karen. She talks fast and chews slowly, compressing years of her life story between bites. Between a burgundy knit beret and oversized sunglasses, her eyebrows are shapely and arched and her face has the Technicolor elegance of a 1950s magazine cover, illustrated rather than airbrushed. With the change she collects on the streets, she sometimes goes to the Dollar Tree and buys tweezers, nail clippers, or a new lipstick. Karen owns many little lipsticks, but they run out quickly, as I must know. She admits to me, woman to woman, that she can’t resist trying a new color now and then. It is little things like attending to her appearance that can still cheer Karen up since she divorced her ex-husband years ago.
That ex-husband has made her life a living hell, she tells me, and as a member of the Hells Angels, the notorious motorcycle club that some would call a gang, he’s quite good at it. All of her ex-in-laws have ties with the Sicilian Mafia, she says, which is how Karen came to be a victim of identity theft, ruined credit, and food stamp fraud. She suspects her ex-husband was also involved in the unexpected loss of her long term job at a Hot Pocket factory. A few years ago, Karen says, her apartment was burned down by the managers so they could collect the insurance money, and she has since been living on the streets of Oregon, California, Utah, Texas, and Florida. Recently, she has been struggling with a bad back and physical disabilities because someone has been performing voodoo and witchcraft on her from afar.
On her wrist is a paper bracelet, though not the kind issued from a hospital. Karen says she keeps getting kicked out of the homeless shelters in town because they claim that she has a communicable disease, which she tells me emphatically she does not. She has been kicked out of a lot of places, coffee shops and clinics and social service offices. This state, just like the last, has been unwelcoming. She is always left tired, hungry, alone.
I tell her about a free meal site she can go to only a couple of blocks away. She doesn’t want to go until I offer to show her the way. We walk slowly, stopping after every few steps to readjust the belongings balanced on her walker. Even at this pace, we’re less than five minutes away.
Karen stops suddenly and her physical frustration turns to emotional upset. She says she’s not going to make it and shoves her walker away.
“You’re just like the rest of them!” she screams at me.
Like her ex-husband, her landlord, her boss, her doctor, her social worker. Like the people who kick her when she lies on the street and tries to sleep. I don’t know what to do. “I’m upsetting you, so I’m going to go now,” I say, slipping away quickly down an alleyway.
Back at my apartment, I call CAHOOTS (Crisis Assistance Helping Out On The Streets), the local mobile crisis intervention service. They tell me they will dispatch a van to Karen’s location as soon as possible.
Many people have failed Karen, though perhaps not in the way that she thinks. It seems wrong to me that a sick and defenseless woman should be left alone, but what could anyone do? Lock her up against her will? Commit her to a system she fears? Medicate her for a condition she does not seem to realize she has? I keep wondering how she got into this situation. While researching mental illness and homelessness, I read that at the end of 2013, Lane County Health and Human Services made significant cuts to its mental health department’s budget and staff, which typically provides care to low-income and uninsured individuals in the community. The remaining staff members were left with 100 or more individual caseloads each, and it’s not implausible that someone like Karen could slip through the cracks.
One month later, I’m inside a restaurant, looking out on the now empty square of sidewalk where I met Isaiah, when I see Karen across the street. She has since acquired another piece of luggage to lug and an extra 15 degrees to the bend of her back. In a slick, black poncho, she blends into the backdrop of asphalt and rain.
I feel some combination of sadness and guilt; I am either helpless or hopeless. I wish I could feel my stereotypes shatter, or even crack. I wish I could present my softened heart in my hands, beating with proof of some great transformation. I wish I could say that society’s most spat upon have an inextinguishable innocence. I wish I could have opened my eyes to some hidden beauty of humankind.
Instead, I saw truth. Blame it on my idealism and naiveté, but I find it to be an ugly truth. You can’t help people who don’t want to be helped. You can’t save the world with spare change or time. You might drop quarters into cups or press dollars into open palms, and the only thing you’ll buy is coffees and lipsticks, pot and paints.
Perhaps that’s too harsh. I don’t resent Karen or Isaiah or Andy, not at all. I heard their stories, and for an hour, I connected with them. Maybe I didn’t like everything I heard. Maybe I wanted that hour to matter more than it did.
This is what I tell myself now: I am a person. And this person on the street corner is also a person. They have a past, present, and future, a life I will never know, a story that can’t be summed up on a sign. So I make eye contact and I give a spare smile. I may not stop, but I do slow down.

Gallery • 2 Photos

(Miró Merrill/Ethos)