Behavior: Harassing the Homeless

In New York City's Greenwich Village this winter, odd-shaped metal boxes and barbed wire were placed across hot-air exhaust grates to keep homeless people from sleeping in the neighborhood. A center helping the homeless in downtown San Diego burned in a fire classified as arson. And in Santa Cruz, Calif., where vagrants are called trolls, the police brass felt it necessary to warn their officers not to wear TROLL BUSTER T shirts while off duty.

As the number of street people grows, so does the backlash, raising disturbing questions about hostility to the poor and the use of the homeless as scapegoats. A Fort Lauderdale city commissioner suggested rat poison as a topping for local garbage, then retracted the statement and recommended the use of chlorine bleach instead. In Santa Barbara, Calif., a 35-year-old drifter was found shot to death in December, and a flyer was circulated threatening more violence to the homeless who camp there. Jerry Hill, an Episcopal priest in Dallas, says that people who camp at the outskirts of the city endure "tremendous abuse by young punks who prey on them and beat them, sometimes very sadistically."

Some of the worst behavior toward the homeless seems to have subsided since last fall, partly because of publicity and legal actions filed on behalf of victims. A flurry of civil suits in Winnemucca, Nev., charge that the 20- member police force has been tossing "undesirables" into garbage pits or driving them deep into the desert and leaving them. Troll-busting attacks on the homeless in Santa Barbara and Santa Cruz are sharply down from 1984. But the intimidation appears to have taken its toll nonetheless. "After the attacks and the shooting into the bushes and cars where they sleep, a lot of the street people have left town and haven't come back," says Peter Carota, who runs the St. Francis Catholic Kitchen in Santa Cruz. "This hateful talk and terrorism have been very effective."

Some offer a Darwinian explanation for the backlash. Katy Sears-Williams, 42, a stockbroker and city council member in Santa Cruz, says, rather clinically, "It's an understandable and common reaction for any animal society to rid itself of those who aren't productive." Part of the reaction seems to stem from a common perception that the homeless of today are basically the crazies of the 1960s refurbished with a new name. "We called them the hippies, and the beatniks before that, and hoboes before that," says Sergeant Bill Aluffi of the Santa Cruz police. "Most of them, I think, are burned-out druggies who walk around in a daze, begging on the mall, eating out of garbage cans, urinating on storefronts."