Come May, Indianapolis will start paying panhandlers to pick up litter and perform other beautification services on the very sidewalks where they panhandle.

It's an idea that draws inspiration from a 4-year-old program called There's a Better Way in Albuquerque, New Mexico, that pays 80 to 90 people $9 an hour to clean up the city, in an effort to connect panhandlers with services, get them off streets and clean the city.

The city of Indianapolis, working alongside Downtown Indy, Inc., and homelessness services center Horizon House will spend the next six weeks figuring out what Indy's version of that program will look like.

Those considerations include the number of workers and where they would be stationed during shifts, Indianapolis Deputy Mayor Jeff Bennett said.

"If we can reduce barriers, eliminate barriers, provide opportunities for residents to re-enter the work force and pay them a real wage — I'm not talking about $20 cash under the table, we're talking about an hourly rate for definable work — I think we would hope to achieve a reconnection to the broader workforce," Bennett said. "The reconnection to housing and the stabilizing impact of both of those things can provide to vulnerable populations."

The City-County Council late last month approved $300,000 for the initiative. Half would go toward employing panhandlers, as much as $150,000 would go toward rental assistance and the rest, if there's any money left over, would help boost the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention & Prevention's Street Reach program, Bennett said.

"The ability to offer the opportunity on the spot is really appealing," Bennett said. "Horizon House, specifically, and other partner organizations are in the relationship business with these vulnerable populations, so they're building these connections every single day and able to build into the existing relationship between the street outreach team and our most vulnerable residents."

The push for funding began last year, Bennett said, when concern over panhandling continued to grow.

Reporting this story took time. Support reporters who bring you news that matters.

"We were hearing from stakeholders who are working in the service provider community, as well as downtown stakeholders, businesses, workers, about how these different issues were affecting each one of them," he said. "We were like, OK, we need to really think about what are the short-term interventions that we can bring to these issues, at the same time we're implementing the long-term plan that is homelessness-specific."

But it's unknown how much of Albuquerque's model Indy would pull from, and that would require more research before the pilot program begins.

"We've been talking about the definition of success," Bennett said. "If we had a crew of 10 or a dozen people in a full-time or quasi-full-time model, that's probably successful. Likewise, if we were able to impact 75 people but at a very part-time program, that's probably also successful."

Albuquerque's programcame out of exasperation over the number of calls the mayor's office was receiving at the time, that city's director of Public Works, Alan Armijo, said, and then, one day, then-Mayor Richard Berry saw a panhandler on the side of the road and the idea came to him.

"The mayor rolled down his window and said, 'Hey, my man, if I paid you for the day, would you work for the city?'" Amijo recalled. "The man responds, 'Yes, I don't want to do this. I want to work for my money.' "

That first year, 2015, the city allotted $51,000 for the program. The number more than doubled the next year, and is now at $365,000. Armijo said since it launched, more than 600 people have gotten help through employee services, 400 have connected to behavioral and mental health services, nearly 100 have found a permanent job and 26 have found housing.

"It's a hook to get them and let them know about services," he said. "It really is about connecting people to services, not just giving them a job for the day and paying them."

Here's how Albuquerque's program works: A van will stop at a designated spot that many panhandlers now know or a random one where there's a known panhandler population, Armijo said. The driver would then gauge interest, hand out tax forms and take the group of about a dozen people to the job site, where they'd work for a five-hour day, with lunch provided.

At the end of the shift, they're handed an envelop with the cash they earned.

"I think all of us see that we're taking care of the city quicker and it's become much cleaner," Armijo said. "There are very few negatives."

He said the city can't quantify whether there are fewer panhandlers on the street, however, because it didn't have an accurate count before the program began.

Albuquerque might have been the first, but other cities more comparable in size to Indianapolis have since launched their own versions for the city to reference, including San Diego; Chicago; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Tulsa, Oklahoma.

"The Albuquerque model was the sort of the less-is-more model," Bennett said. "They were impacting hundreds of residents at $9 an hour, five hours a day. I think it's still to be determined, are we looking at this solely as this sort of very part-time daily model or are we looking at more hours per week but less people served? Let's figure out the whole spectrum of the realm of opportunities."

Funding for Indianapolis' program came from the city's expanded parking meter times, which is to be used "within areas that are served by parking meters," Bennett said. This program fits that need.

"Philosophically, we have a vulnerable group of residents who are maybe panhandling in the public right of way, who may be sleeping in the public right of way," he said. "So we look at this as an effort within the public right of way."

Horizon House Executive Director Teresa Wessel praised the creativity of the idea and said it could make a difference in the city's panhandling population.

"If this may be the first job that someone has had in a long time, it can help them with those soft skills," she said. "If they learn some skills and then they can go and get a more long-term job, a better job, a career job, one that is life-sustaining for them, then I think this can be a real boost to that self-confidence to get back there and making a difference and just being part of the community again."

Call IndyStar reporter Amy Bartner at (317) 444-6752. Follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.