September 14, 2016 - As he stands outside The Hospitality Hub, Mayor Jim Strickland speaks during a press conference about a new program, Work Local, that is being launched in Memphis to help temporarily employ homeless people and panhandlers. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal)

SHARE September 14, 2016 - Dan Butler, a 39-year-old veteran who served in the Middle East, rests outside the Hospitality HUB during a press conference with Mayor Jim Strickland on Wednesday. Strickland and the Hospitality HUB made an announcement about a new program, Work Local, that is being launched in Memphis to help temporarily employ homeless people and panhandlers. The Hospitality HUB is a nonprofit hospitality, counseling and resource center for homeless persons. "If it wouldn't be for HUB, I would have nothing at all," Butler said. "I'm a vet and when we come home this is where we hit the streets and we're homeless until we get help." Under the partnership, the Hospitality HUB will transport job-seeking panhandlers to cleanup sites twice a week, where they will work to reduce urban blight throughout the city. Workers are provided with food, a day's wages, with $9 an hour, and additional services and counseling as needed. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal) September 14, 2016 - Debra Streeter, manager of public safety, Downtown Memphis Commission, watches Mayor Jim Strickland during a press conference at the Hospitality HUB on Wednesday. Strickland and the Hospitality HUB made an announcement about a new program, Work Local, that is being launched in Memphis to help temporarily employ homeless people and panhandlers. The Hospitality HUB is a nonprofit hospitality, counseling and resource center for homeless persons. Under the partnership, the Hospitality HUB will transport job-seeking panhandlers to cleanup sites twice a week, where they will work to reduce urban blight throughout the city. Workers are provided with food, a day's wages, with $9 an hour, and additional services and counseling as needed. (Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal)

By Ryan Poe of The Commercial Appeal

Instead of begging on Memphis streets, some panhandlers could soon clean them for cash thanks to a new city-funded day work program launching this fall, officials announced Wednesday.

As part of the new Work Local program, Downtown-based homeless resource center Hospitality Hub will send a van to pick up about 10 panhandlers in Downtown and Midtown to work for the city on Tuesdays and Thursdays cleaning up blight. Workers will be paid $9 an hour, usually for five hours a day; receive free lunch and optional counseling services; and have any homeless shelter fees paid at the end of the day.

"We must do everything in this community that we possibly can to make sure every member of this community has the opportunity to lift themselves up from their circumstances in search of a better life," Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said at a press conference Wednesday. "This is a major step toward that."

The city set aside $125,000 in this year's operating budget to fund the program. Also, community partners, including the Downtown Memphis Commission and the Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau, are together contributing $15,000 to the program. The Hub will also look to raise $46,800 for workers' pay through a crowdfunding campaign.

Strickland said his administration has worked on the program since he took office in January, but the program unveiling coincides with discussion of a proposed City Council ordinance extending the city's 7 p.m. to 8 a.m. panhandling ban to between 5 p.m. and 10 a.m., and require panhandlers to stay 25 feet away from intersections with streetlights, construction zones, bridges and interstate entrance and exit ramps.

The council could vote on the ordinance as early as Oct. 18.

But Peter Gathje, co-director of homeless shelter Manna House and professor of Christian Ethics at Memphis Theological Seminary, fears the city's initiatives deal with symptoms — not the root causes — of panhandling and homelessness, and distract from how little the city and others are doing to address the issue.

"These kinds of programs sound good because everyone thinks you can solve homelessness by giving people work. But that doesn't work," he said. "You solve homelessness by giving people homes."

Also, he added, it's a "huge presumption" to think all panhandlers are capable of work. Many struggle with mental health and family issues, among other problems.

Kelcey Johnson, director of operations at Hospitality Hub, said one benefit of Work Local is the hub will find people who can't work and connect them to services they need.

"These people, we need to get introduced to them," he said.

He also said the program — which is patterned after the There's a Better Way program in Albuquerque, New Mexico — will address those root problems by helping connect panhandlers and homeless people to permanent jobs.

Council member Janis Fullilove, who helped create the program, said "nothing has really been done" by the city to help the city's population of homeless people and panhandlers, but that Work Local was the first step toward changing that.

"This is really just the beginning," she said at the press conference.

Johnson said the city's financial commitment should lessen — but probably won't evaporate — in the next three years. Strickland wasn't sure how much the city will pay in upcoming years, but his goal is to eventually cease public funding once the program is able to raise funds privately.

Hospitality Hub could eventually expand the program to other parts of the city, include more days of the week, and more panhandlers and homeless people, Johnson said.