Bellringers and Girl Scouts typically secure permission from private property owners for their outdoor marketing. Others -- whether they sell flowers or carwashes or newspapers -- may apply for permits, Gerhardt said.
"We were particularly targeting areas where it was reasonable to assume people felt intimidated," Gerhardt said. "My impression is that it has been effective. There's been a dramatic decline, especially in panhandling directed at traffic."
Curtailing panhandling serves the "greater good," said David Curry, Tacoma Rescue Mission director and City Council candidate. Panhandling provides money for drugs and should be discouraged, he said.
Street newspaper advocates, on the other hand, say that selling papers gives a second chance to those who might otherwise resort to begging.
In addition to Real Change, papers in New York; Oakland; Portland, Ore.; Sacramento; San Diego and Washington are among the 37 members of the North American Street Newspaper Assn.
Strict anti-panhandling laws are part of a broader tendency to criminalize homelessness, said Tulin Ozdeger, civil rights program director for the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty in Washington. "If cities are using laws to restrict homeless people from employing themselves, it really shows a discriminatory approach to people who are homeless," Ozdeger said.
Tacoma's ordinance has answered the complaints of downtown businesspeople who were tired of aggressive pleading from transients, police spokesman Mark Fulghum said. Since the ordinance went into effect, he said, police have logged fewer complaints about aggressive panhandling.
Fulghum said he was unaware of the street newspaper, but said its distributors, like any other vendor, would need permits to conduct business in the city.
Harris of Real Change describes the city's regulation as a slippery slope. "We definitely want to challenge it in Tacoma. No question," he said, but did not specify what steps his organization might take.
If the ordinance is left unchallenged, Harris expects other cities will enforce similar restrictions. "We've seen this all over," Harris said. "As downtown living gets more popular, cities become centers of affluence for people who can afford them. There's a condo boom that goes along with it, then there's a crackdown on visible poverty.
"Visible poverty makes people very nervous," he said.
