Published Feb. 13, 2007 in the Toronto (Canada) Star

By Joey Slinger

A story in this paper a week ago caused a bad case of heartburn.

It was from Orlando, Fla., the American capital of happiness, where Mickey and Minnie are always on their squeakiest best behaviour.

How, it asked, can Orlando keep its sunny side up when the city ­ right outside the gates of Walt Disney World ­ is plagued by (gasp!) homeless people, and tourists are tormented (shudder!) by panhandlers?

It started, appropriately enough, with a darn good laugh. Signs in parks that warn, "Do not lie or otherwise be in a horizontal position on a park bench." Who isn't entertained by bureaucratic prose as screwball-precise as that?

Other then maybe Orlando's homeless, one of whom called it "a way of saying, `Your kind isn't wanted in our city.'"

After which ­ moving right along ­ it examined related municipal initiatives. "Large Group Feeding Permits" that must be obtained by anyone feeding more than 25 people at a time in a city park, the number of permits to be carefully limited. And a bylaw establishing "panhandling zones," outlined in blue paint on the sidewalks.

I had a feeling that a lot of people around Toronto who read the story did some ironic tsk-tsking, a very pleasant reaction indeed. Life in America, "land of the free." Phony-baloney Orlando discovering real dirt under its fingernails. Don't sleep on the park benches. Keep the poor and destitute from being fed under the public gaze as much as possible. Regulate panhandling as obsessively as parking. It tickled me, too.

Until I thought about it a bit.

More often than not, the benches we install in Toronto these days have armrests in the middle. For the sitter's comfort? Or as a deterrent to lying or otherwise being "in a horizontal position" on them? Who needs signs when we've invested so conscientiously in making sure nobody can stretch out?

We don't feed the needy under the open sky for a very good reason: our climate. Two-thirds (three-quarters?) of the year they would freeze to death before finishing their peach Melba. We do it in shelters and church basements so our decent, tax-paying citizens are never offended by the sight of the homeless getting something for nothing.

But even that doesn't make us entirely comfortable, as the recent Battle of the Beach illustrated. It's getting to seem as if Out of the Cold has been with us almost as long as the poor have been, but another one opening, especially in a neighbourhood that delights itself so much in being "nice," can still ignite fears of declining property values.

And when it comes to regulating panhandlers, watch closely. A week before the Orlando story, we got news that an east-end Toronto councillor, the business-sensitive Case Ootes, received a sympathetic hearing from the police chief about a business-positive proposal to ban panhandling in major tourist areas, such as Yonge and Dundas.

As a result of which, the police department will be contributing a report to a study Ootes has asked city hall staff to prepare showing how a bylaw eliminating panhandling in these tourist areas can be implemented and enforced.

Needless to say, the idea of specified no-panhandling zones went off like a bomb in Cathy Crowe's wheelhouse. A nurse who has fought for many years to shine a light on, and deliver assistance to, the dismal world the homeless and helpless inhabit, Crowe called it "folly" to attempt to hide the "true picture" of the city's poverty, and fired back resoundingly.

"Is Councillor Ootes trying to make Toronto one of the most shameful cities in the industrialized world?"

No, as a matter of fact, he's not. What he's trying to do, when you take into account what's happening in Orlando, and in Atlanta, and Dallas, and even in Vancouver, where similar rules apply, is make it about average. No more no less. Right down the middle. Which might, or might not be, encouraging. When Toronto can't look at a place like Orlando and feel smug, it's hard not to think that things are pretty tough.

A closing notion in a similar vein: Wine and liquor bottles can now be taken to the Beer Store and turned in for the deposit.

It would be wonderfully generous if you simply left them in front of your house for the pickers instead. I kind of suspect that anybody who's prepared to go around collecting them needs the handful of change they'll bring more than you and I do.