No short-term fix to rid Phila. park of homeless

A predawn amorous romp. A bath. A morning shave.

Acceptable behavior for your home. But for a public space like Rittenhouse Square?

The above scenes played out early yesterday among homeless people there, and while residents interviewed expressed dismay, city officials suggested there were no short-term fixes.

Neither the police nor the mayor's office offered any solutions yesterday to end what appears to be a growing problem with homeless people at the square, a jewel of Center City.

"We're not going to selectively enforce throwing out the homeless," said Sgt. Joseph Harper, who heads the Police Department's special homeless detail.

Police sweep through the park only once a day, Harper said. And when they do, they only act on overtly criminal behavior among the homeless, he said.

Dainette Mintz, head of the city's Office of Supportive Housing, said the city is focused more on creating permanent housing for homeless people than on criminalizing sleeping in parks.

"We're really trying to concentrate on rolling out the housing and placing people," Mintz said. "We believe it will have a visible impact."

That was not the answer that Barbara Craig, a graphic designer who lives near the square, was hoping for when she asked rhetorically: "What are you supposed to do? As a resident, you don't like to see it. It's kind of gross. What is the city doing about this?"

She was responding to the sight of a shirtless, barefoot man bathing in a fountain in Rittenhouse Square, using a bar of soap to give himself a thorough lathering - except for his short pants. At 7:30 a.m.

Harper said such behavior - washing or shaving in public - is generally tolerated by his officers. Fornicating in public is against the law, and officers would have arrested the couple, he said.

Harper said the reality is that not only is there not enough housing for the homeless, there is also a scarcity of basic services such as public showers or toilets.

"While you don't want to see this in public, you almost have to turn a blind eye at some point," Harper said.

Harper said officers attempt to wake the homeless and move them along before dawn, but he acknowledged that as soon as police leave, many people go right back to sleeping on park benches.

In May, Mayor Nutter spelled out a homeless plan that called for providing 700 units of permanent housing for homeless individuals and families. And the city's Office of Supportive Housing has reported that the on-street homeless population is down to 291 from more than 600 last year.

Nick Berardi, president of Rittenhouse Row, a merchants association, said he believed the city was moving in the right direction.

But he said, "People are doing things in the park that shouldn't be done."

Berardi, who owns the Richard Nicholas Hair Salon at 1716 Sansom St., said the situation in Rittenhouse Square was a quality-of-life issue. It's one thing to doze on a bench, he said, but if you're bathing in a fountain, "that's crossing the line. With the homeless, no one has set the line down. It's become blurred."

Philadelphia has one of the toughest laws on the books regulating public behavior. In 1998, City Council passed a controversial "sidewalk" ordinance that effectively made it illegal for homeless people to encamp in public spaces or aggressively panhandle.

At the start of the year, the Police Department was much more assertive in slapping homeless people with "quality-of-life" citations that landed them in Philadelphia Community Court.

But, facing pressure, police eased off.

"The homeless advocates were up in arms that we were treating the homeless unfairly," Harper said. "They kept saying, 'We don't have options or anywhere to put them.' "

In the waning days of the John F. Street administration, city officials also had debated whether the city needed to enforce a Fairmount Park rule that banned "camping" in parks, including Rittenhouse Square, JFK Plaza, and the greenway along the Benjamin Franklin Parkway.

Under the Nutter administration, that option has become "moot," said Mintz.

But the process of creating permanent housing is slow. And in the meantime, some of the city's highest-profile parks are filling up with homeless people.

Harper said he feared that the census of people living on the streets this summer would be right back to last year's level. "It scares me," he said. "Where are they coming from?"

Harper said many of the summer homeless seemed to be transients. "They are choosing this as a lifestyle," he said. "They're younger and going across the country like an extended camping trip living from one park to another."

Last night, the homeless returned to Rittenhouse Square.

By shortly after 10 p.m., nearly a dozen people throughout the park had settled in for the night.

Two men and a woman lay atop a blanket near the paths on the Walnut Street side. Despite the warm weather, each of them was individually wrapped in a blanket. The three looked weather-beaten and had plastic bags and a backpack with their possessions nearby.

Nearby, a man snored loudly on a bench. By the low hedges on the perimeter, others were preparing to turn in.

Unlike the previous night, only a few residents were in the park last night after 10. They did not seem to pay attention to the homeless.