Milford City Council is considering whether to pursue an ordinance that would indirectly prohibit people from panhandling on road medians near intersections.
When searching for a way to respond to the increasing number of people asking for money at Milford intersections, the city looked elsewhere in Delaware for a viable model.
Both the US Supreme Court and lower courts have ruled that asking for help or money is protected speech, ruling out an ordinance like Dewey Beach's outright ban and Millsboro's prohibition of "vagrancy." Instead, Milford looked to an ordinance passed by Seaford's city council earlier this year prohibiting people from loitering next to intersections, including the median.
Seaford Police Chief Marshall Craft — who played a large role in drafting the ordinance — says that ordinance wasn’t intended to directly target people asking for money. He says it was a response to rising pedestrian deaths and injuries: the number of pedestrians hit by drivers in Seaford doubled from 2020 to 2021.
“We implemented this pedestrian safety ordinance to address people who were standing in intersections and crossings, but we also looked at other traffic safety measures," he said. Craft linked the ordinance to other efforts by his department to reduce speed limits and install speed bumps on some of Seaford's most dangerous roads.
However, the ordinance also effectively requires people to move 200 feet from an intersection to panhandle — a detail Craft noted when describing the ordinance's impacts to the city council in January 2022.
"Other ordinances that had issues - ACLU issues – were simply trying to restrict [panhandling] altogether, because they didn’t want to see it," he said. "This is simply pushing them back out of that danger zone.
Milford councilman Todd Culotta supports that approach.
“I like Seaford’s method because it’s an anti-loitering ordinance, not an anti-panhandling ordinance," he said at a council workshop last week. "[Panhandling] creates a danger to both the pedestrian and drivers," he said, "and that is what we want to prevent, and because it just doesn't look good — simply allowing them to tie up traffic."
According to the Milford Police Department, no pedestrians have been hit while panhandling within memory.
But National Homelessness Law Center Legal Director Eric Tars says federal courts have also recently overturned local ordinances elsewhere in the country that indirectly limit where people can panhandle — especially on public property like sidewalks near intersections.
“What we see in the council discussion in Milford is that they claim that this is all in the name of pedestrian safety, but it’s clearly all in the context of not wanting panhandlers around," he said. "If the city’s going to put a burden on speech, then it’s going to need to offer a better justification than ‘there could be accidents.’"
ACLU of Delaware Policy and Advocacy Director Javonne Rich also expressed skepticism about the motives of these anti-loitering ordinances.
“It’s as if they’re trying to disguise it as safety, but it will really have the effect of marginalizing people who are homeless and asking for help," she said.
Tars also argued that passing ordinances that penalize people for standing at intersections also raises the possibility that a person panhandling to raise money for a hotel room or apartment could be issued a fine — something that most people who ask for money at intersections can't afford to pay. Instead, the person could amass a fine debt that damages their credit or otherwise undermines their ability to find housing or other sources of stability.
“It’s not just the immediate threat, but a long-term threat that these fines and fees can pose, both when it comes to someone trying to find housing and stability and then when they are trying to remain stably housed," he said.
Though Seaford's ordinance sets a $50 fine for violations, Craft says that penalty is not generally enforced.
“A goal when implementing this was to not cite people – we want voluntary compliance through contact and education," he said. "They don’t get arrested the first time we contact them, and quite frankly on the second time, too.”
He only recalls issuing a citation for loitering once since the ordinance took effect in May; instead, Craft says, his officers hand out pedestrian information flyers.
But because Seaford’s ordinance remains unchallenged, Milford city council discussed it as the most legally viable model to achieve their goals. The ACLU of Delaware and the National Homelessness Law Center successfully challenged a Wilmington panhandling ban in 2020.
