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Though panhandlers are prevalent on the sidewalks and roadsides of Austin, little is known about the people who beg for money on the streets.
The city council will give researchers in the UT School of Social Work $48,000 to study solicitation on the streets.
Councilman Brewster McCracken said the money will be used to study those who engage in roadside panhandling. If the panhandlers are homeless, the study will also seek to determine their medical and human-service needs.
"When we embarked on the whole discussion on roadside panhandling, one thing we all learned, to our surprise, was that no one knew who was engaged in roadside panhandling," McCracken said. "It makes sense to understand what the needs of these folks are before we spend money."
Laura Lein, a social work professor, will lead the panhandling study. The research team will work with the Austin Police Department to identify panhandling locations.
The researchers will interview panhandlers to learn more about those who engage in the activity. The team's interviews with panhandlers will help the researchers examine the efficacy of available services and those that panhandlers may find lacking, Lein said.
"We will also look at life trajectories and the ways people found themselves panhandling," she said.
Lein said the $48,000 will pay for small gifts for the panhandlers who are interviewed, stipends for graduate students conducting the interviews and for resources to record and manage the acquired data.
Lein said the team will start its study in June and report its findings to the city in August.
When researchers study panhandling, they tend to focus on the status of the problem rather than its origin, she said.
"Our intention is to look at what brought people to Austin and to their situation." Lein said.
Patrick Wong, a public affairs professor and former executive committee member of the Ending Community Homelessness Coalition, will advise Lein in her research. Wong said the link between solicitation and panhandling is the "$6 million question."
"There is a common perception that the two issues are identical, but the little empirical research I know of indicates that is very far from truth," Wong said.
Small-scale studies of individual cities have shown that about one-third of the those who panhandle are homeless, Wong said.
Carole Barasch, spokeswoman for the Travis County Health and Human Services Department, said that while no services target panhandlers, some services benefit people who are typically uninsured, underinsured or homeless.
She said these services include homeless shelters, a health clinic that provides for adults and various organizations involved with the city, such as the Salvation Army.
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