Some budget cuts can only make tough times worse

Wednesday morning, sunny and cold, a couple of degrees above zero, and here is Mike Genty, holding a cardboard sign as he stands below a yellow NO TRESPASSING sign near the Basilica of St. Mary.

The yellow sign, on a pillar holding up the Interstate-94 overpass at Dunwoody Boulevard and Lyndale Avenue S., does not seem to be working.

"As far as I'm concerned, if I'm standing in front of a no trespassing sign, I'm not trespassing," says Genty, 41, a former sheet metal worker. "But let's face it, it's ridiculous: Everyone who walks beneath this bridge could get a no trespassing ticket. They're just trying to get us off this corner. They have been trying for years."

A recent wrinkle in the city's never-ending battle to keep panhandlers at bay, NO TRESPASSING signs have been posted on street corners frequented by homeless people. Since a court ruling declared it legal to panhandle, the cops have had to look for other ways to crack down on the nuisance factor. Trespassing citations, apparently, are one way to do it.

Genty has never received one, but he knows other homeless people who have. He says he tries to stay on the good side of the law since a disorderly conduct arrest a few years ago that led to his becoming homeless.

"I got hooked up with the wrong girl and lost my job, my truck and ended up in jail for 50 days after a disorderly with the girlfriend. That's basically my story. But I've never gotten a ticket for this. A black-and-white (a retro-painted police car) came by the other day and the woman officer yelled, 'Get off the corner' at me, so I left. Yeah, you bet. I don't want trouble. I don't break laws."

About 7,000 Minnesotans are homeless this winter, and two or three times that number are on the brink.

People sleeping on Metro Transit buses, riding in the middle of the night. People walking at night, with no place to go, trying to stay warm. A group of homeless people sleeping in an abandoned house -- four on the floor, one flopped on a couch that had been left behind. People sleeping in a portable toilet in a park, in a shed, in a car, in a van, in a box, in a garage. With the economy shrinking, of course, homelessness will go up, while programs to serve the homeless are slashed.

Advocates for the homeless are worried that the state deficit may mean deep cuts for some of the programs that are far more affordable than locking up the homeless or letting them freeze on the street.

One unique program, a two-year-old effort to provide safe shelter for mentally ill persons (a large percentage of the homeless suffer from mental illness), is run by People Incorporated. Called Safe Haven Services, and run in cooperation with the University of Minnesota Department of Psychiatry, the program brings scores of the most vulnerable homeless people in from the cold, arranges treatment, and gets them into real homes.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty wants to eliminate the $460,000 state program. That move is penny wise and pound foolish, and about as useful as No Trespassing signs.

It won't save our money. It will end up costing more money. Because Safe Haven Services saves taxpayers millions.

Today's message: Balancing budgets on the backs of the poor is not just immoral.

It doesn't work.

Back under that No Trespassing sign by the Basilica, a woman whose small white car was stopped at the light handed three dollars to Genty.

"Bless you," he said.

Genty doesn't drink. He usually "signs" until he has about $10, which he spends on smokes or a hot meal or, this time of year, hand warmers he can use to keep his feet and hands warm at night. On Wednesday, he was aiming for a hot chocolate and cigarettes.