In an article in City Journal, an exasperated Heather Mac Donald describes a conference of homeless advocates organized by New York's Times Square Business Improvement District. The issue under consideration was how to get the relatively small but conspicuous cluster of Times Square's homeless to respond to the BID's generous outreach program, an innovative $2.5 million beacon program that offered quality shelter, showers, healthy meals, clothing, medical attention, and nearly constant one-on-one attention from dedicated outreach staff working double shifts—all with no strings attached. In other words, given the program's pathetic performance thus far at getting the homeless off the street, "What Do We Do When Homeless People Say 'No'?"

Jack Coleman, former president of Haverford College and of the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation, spoke first. In 1983, Coleman wrote an acclaimed article for New York magazine in which he described living among the homeless for ten days, sparking a minor fad among journalists. Coleman recounted his first moment back home after that harrowing experience, in which he drew a hot bath, lay down in it, and started to cry. Indeed, in telling the story again, Coleman started to cry. He concluded by confessing that he couldn't really claim to have been truly homeless, since he always had change in his pocket with which to call his editor to bail him out.

Next to speak was Mary Ann Gleason, an ex-nun who heads the Washington-based National Coalition for the Homeless, who blamed society's "intolerance of weakness and of the inability to compete in a free market" for causing homelessness. The reason the homeless don't come in off the streets, Gleason said, is that "they don't have meaning in their lives," and they consider the street "the only community they can find." Gleason voiced admiration for Europeans for labeling the homeless the "socially excluded."

Next up was Dr. William Vicic, a "community medicine" specialist at St. Vincent's Hospital and author of Memory of a Homeless Man. Dr. Vicic turned the committee's question around: "Is 'No' from the homeless an answer," he asked dramatically, "or an echo of us and the society we maintain?" the implication being that it is society that says 'No' to the homeless rather than the other way around. "Separatism causes a lot of our problems," he said.

Reverend James A. Forbes Jr., pastor at Manhattan's Riverside Church, also offered his thoughts: "We should value the one gift the homeless bring—the ability to say 'No.' " The "ability to say 'No' is a strength," said Forbes, adding that it was our task to figure out what the homeless are saying "No" to. Forbes concluded by accusing society of a lack of compassion.

Tena Frank, director of homeless services at Lenox Hill Neighborhood House, complained that mainstream value systems regarding work and discipline were simply the way "we get our needs met," just as the homeless get their needs met by using drugs, and our failure to see the similarity "allows us to blame the homeless."

Maria Foscarinis, director of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, also spoke. Foscarinis was instrumental in getting the Homeless Assistance Act passed in 1987, which provided federal funds under the premise that homelessness was primarily a housing problem. Speaking before the conference, Foscarinis said that cities have no right to enforce laws outlawing camping or urinating in public because the homeless are "people who literally have no place left to go." "The resources are not there," she said, "to provide an alternative place to sleep or eat."

As was the case with every other speaker, Ms. Foscarinis chose to ignore the very premise of the conference.

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