Homeless People

Inside the Barnes, guests were served lamb chops and smoked salmon cannolis with a lemon aioli sauce along with champagne and red and white wine at the $1,500-a-plate opening-reception dinner. Outside, at 20th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the menu was drastically different. A coalition of homeless-advocacy groups and others protesting the Barnes' move from Merion dined on doughnut holes, salmon dip, bread, apples, bagels, rice, and string beans served on paper plates with plastic utensils.

Mayor Nutter on Wednesday announced plans to end the feeding of large numbers of hungry and homeless people in city parks, saying he wanted to provide indoor meals instead. The proposal is the latest volley in a long-running battle over how best to meet the needs of the city's many poor people that is played out on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Free meals are served at several outdoor locations throughout the city, but one of the largest occurs on the Parkway near the Free Library and Family Court buildings.

Karen Riggins, 41, had every intention of making the Army a career when she enlisted after graduating from Olney High School. She planned to stay at least 20 years. She made it to 15 years and one month. Riggins was stationed in Heidelberg, Germany, as a staff sergeant, making maps for troops in the field. On Feb. 17, 2001, she was discharged for medical reasons. Asthma that began to develop 10 years earlier, after a stint in the Saudi Arabian desert, became more severe.

They're young fashion design students, and some dream of one day having their own line of clothing that's distinctive, stylish, and synonymous with their name. As for their class project, well, haute it was not. A first it may be, and a challenging one at that: a design that's distinctive, versatile and practical, but not so flashy it invites theft or broadcasts its wearer's situation. Vests for the homeless. "I really liked this. I didn't want to see the same old thing," said Megan Dennis, 29, instructor of the "special topics in fashion design" class at the Art Institute of Philadelphia in Center City.

The Delaware County Council has approved a $100,000 contract to provide housing for four mentally ill homeless people. The contract, with a Philadelphia firm called Horizon House Inc., will pay for apartment rentals and counseling for the renters. "The people have to be able to live unsupervised," said Susan Pesotki, who is in charge of the county's adult services department. A caseworker will visit each person every day and arrange for mental health treatment. The money comes from a federal program.

Passers-by have to strain to see them at night. They huddle against cement walls, clutching tattered backpacks filled with junk: a baseball hat, tin cans, an old notebook, some spare change to buy their next Happy Meal at McDonald's. Thurman Murphy is one of them, homeless for 32 years and counting. Refuge for him is Love Park, underground SEPTA benches and wherever else he can get a night's sleep. Some nights, he is jolted awake by a nightstick on the bottom of his feet.

A theatrical performance devoted to the experiences of the homeless - acted out by homeless people themselves - sounds like it could be a very grim portrayal. But within the daily lives of the homeless are moments of fierce anger and biting humor - emotions brought out by the Los Angeles Poverty Department, a troupe of homeless people who create theater out of their own lives. The LAPD is appearing at the Painted Bride Arts Center tomorrow at 8 p.m. as part of a weekend conference on "The Arts of Social Change.

When the activist group Delaware County Housing Now! was looking for someone to hold a banner during a news conference at the 69th Street Terminal in Upper Darby, two bystanders volunteered. Joe Mullen and Tony Smith, homeless men who stay in and around the terminal and sleep there when they can, got off the bench they habitually occupy and proudly held the ends of the banner, which called for people to come to an Oct. 7 Housing Now! march in Washington, D.C. "Homelessness is a vicious web. I'm stuck in it, and I can't get out of it," said Mullen, who added that he had stayed in the area of the terminal for the last four months.

A $2 million program to house 80 homeless men, women and children in three vacant buildings on the former Valley Forge General Hospital site in Schuylkill Township, Chester County, was announced by county officials yesterday. A $1.3 million grant awarded to the Chester County Housing Authority last week by the Department of Housing and Urban Development was the last major grant needed to finance the project, which could begin as early as October 1993, said Barbara Wilson, director of housing and community services for the county.

A weeklong survey of the city's homeless found 528 people living on the streets, slightly more than half of them described as "physically vulnerable and at increased risk of death. " The count was conducted by 250 volunteers, who combed city streets and parks this week from 4 to 6 a.m. compiling a name-and-photo database. Mayor Nutter hosted the volunteers Friday at City Hall and helped release the results of the survey. "The big-picture goal remains the same," he said.

Inside the Barnes, guests were served lamb chops and smoked salmon cannolis with a lemon aioli sauce along with champagne and red and white wine at the $1,500-a-plate opening-reception dinner. Outside, at 20th Street and Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the menu was drastically different. A coalition of homeless-advocacy groups and others protesting the Barnes' move from Merion dined on doughnut holes, salmon dip, bread, apples, bagels, rice, and string beans served on paper plates with plastic utensils.

When Albert C. Barnes was calling the shots, the door to his incomparable hoard of modern masterpieces was relatively open to the poor, and closed to the privileged. James Michener, the author, figured this out only after he was denied entry on three occasions. The fourth time he posed as a barely literate Pittsburgh steelworker. Access granted. Well, Barnes is long since dead, and now that the elites have his collection, the time apparently has come for the poor to get out. Instead of slumming it to get in, the city's powerful are clearing the slums, lest the presence of homeless men and women offend patrons of the new and supposedly improved Barnes Foundation, set to open on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway in May. The official story is that the new ban Mayor Nutter announced last week on the outdoor feeding of homeless people has nothing to do with the Barnes.

MAYOR NUTTER last week announced a proposal to outlaw outdoor public feedings on city parkland, especially the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, where highly visible feedings take place. According to Nutter, the ban will allow for more sanitary and dignified food distribution to the homeless. As expected, the news sparked a string of protests from antipoverty and anti-Nutter activists, who saw it as a swipe at the poor and a cynical attempt to polish the city's image for tourists and investors.

OPPONENTS OF Mayor Nutter's new policy on mass outdoor food handouts rallied yesterday to discourage city health officials from enacting restrictions on their particular form of charity. Hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the Municipal Services Building across from City Hall in the afternoon, with volunteers serving food to the homeless and participants filming the police filming them. One minor scuffle led to an arrest. The spectacle preceded a Philadelphia Board of Health hearing regarding a new proposal, backed by city Health Commissioner Donald Schwarz, to require training and permits for organizations distributing food to people outdoors.

Opponents of Mayor Nutter's hard line on mass outdoor food handouts rallied Thursday to discourage city health officials from enacting restrictions on their particular form of charity. Hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the Municipal Services Building across from City Hall on Thursday afternoon, with volunteers serving food to the homeless and participants filming the police filming them. One minor scuffle led to an arrest. The spectacle preceded a Philadelphia Board of Health hearing regarding a new proposal, backed by city Health Commissioner Donald F. Schwarz, to require training and permitting for organizations distributing food to people outdoors.

Opponents of Mayor Nutter's new policy on mass outdoor food handouts rallied Thursday to discourage city health officials from enacting restrictions on their particular form of charity. Hundreds of protesters gathered in front of the Municipal Services Building across from City Hall Thursday afternoon, with volunteers serving food to the homeless and participants filming the police filming them. One minor scuffle led to an arrest. The spectacle preceded a Philadelphia Board of Health hearing regarding a new proposal, backed by city Health Commissioner Donald F. Schwarz, to require training and permitting for organizations distributing food to people outdoors.

Mayor Nutter on Wednesday announced plans to end the feeding of large numbers of hungry and homeless people in city parks, saying he wanted to provide indoor meals instead. The proposal is the latest volley in a long-running battle over how best to meet the needs of the city's many poor people that is played out on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Free meals are served at several outdoor locations throughout the city, but one of the largest occurs on the Parkway near the Free Library and Family Court buildings.

AT AGE 15, checking in at 6-6, TreVaughn Wilkerson is already the tallest member of his family by a good 2 inches. Luckily, his head is not in the clouds. "I know how lucky I am to have this height and to have talent as a basketball player," Wilkerson said. "I see a lot of tall people walking around, doing nothing with their lives - even, like, 6-9 homeless people - and it makes you wonder what went wrong, and why they didn't do their best with their opportunities. "It's a shame that stuff happens, but I know what I have and I plan to make the most of it. " Years from now, perhaps Wilkerson will think back to March 1, 2012, as the beginning of his emergence.

As outbound trains whisked commuters home at the end of a workday last week, dozens of others around the waiting area and hallways of Suburban Station had no plans to leave. An elderly Ukrainian man who spoke only broken English fished through a trash can, found a half-filled McDonald's cup, and took a sip. Another man who said he was from Cuba shuffled from one end of the station to the other, clutching a dirty blanket. A young man shouting with slurred speech sat at the top of the steps leading to a platform.

Dozens of volunteers carrying yellow federal forms fanned out Wednesday across Camden County - as many did all over New Jersey - to take a census of homeless people and refer them to such services as housing, medical care, and counseling. The state's annual, federally mandated Point-in-Time count of the homeless began at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday and was to end at midnight Thursday - when Pennsylvania was set to begin its count. Maryanne Joyner, 48, was one of about two dozen individuals whom volunteers found at a "tent city" off Route 30 in the shadow of the Ben Franklin Bridge.