Homeless advocates responded to recent negative media attention about Madison's transient population at a news conference Thursday, encouraging the community to create solutions to homelessness and poverty and not profile transients as criminals.
Members of the Community Action Coalition, Tenant Advocacy Group and Homeless Services Consortium reminded Madison residents the homeless are not the root of problems in the community, but evidence of greater issues in society.
[The conference] showed comprehensive work that's going on in the community to address these issues on all levels, from economic levels as far as increasing incomes, to providing clothing and food and also shelter,"" Dean Loomis, director of the Housing Initiative said.
Madison Area Urban Ministry Executive Director Linda Ketchum said local media coverage is contributing to the negative profiling of transients following recent high-profile homicide cases. A Wisconsin State Journal headline earlier this year called the homeless ""beggars,"" and a popular Daily Page blog suggested ""vagrants"" work on public projects if they want a ""free lunch.""
Advocates scheduled the conference partly in response to the Brittany Zimmermann homicide investigation, which they said led the community to target Madison's transient population without cause. Ketchum said the police are rounding up homeless people to be questioned, adding stress particularly to those who suffer from mental illness.
""If the police are asking people who are homeless for DNA samples, are they also asking the people who are neighbors, or is the underlying assumption that it must have been a homeless person who committed the acts?"" Ketchum said.
Madison Police Department public information officer Joel DeSpain said police have questioned transients from the neighborhood who go door-to-door asking for money, but added other people are being questioned. Police are also speaking with residents, business owners and commuters in the area, DeSpain said.
""In the context of the investigation, we're talking with anyone who was in and around that Bassett neighborhood on the day of the homicide,"" he said.
Police said they have made about two dozen arrests during the Zimmermann investigation for probation holds and other unrelated crimes, but do not have any suspects in the case.
DeSpain said there is concern some members of the transient population have become more aggressive. Ketchum said the police have identified a group of ""chronic"" homeless people but said they aren't representative of everyone. She said she hopes people will ""stop painting an entire group with a broad brush.""
A follow-up to the news conference is scheduled for April 15 at 4 p.m. in the Tenant Resource Center offices at the Social Justice Center on Williamson Street.
