Idle handouts
Longtime panhandler is accepted presence at crossroads
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Panhandlers come and go, moving on to the next street corner or the next fix, but Robbie Felder has claimed his own block on Morton Street in Mattapan, by his account and others, for more than a decade.
With a calculated precision gleaned from years of experience, Felder weaves in between traffic at the Morton Street and Blue Hill Avenue intersection, timing his moves with red lights, traffic crunches, and U-turns.
Some believe he's an MIT professor who lost his mind, to others he lost his family in a car crash. In truth, Felder's story is not that outlandish. But still it seems everyone knows him, making him one of the most colorful panhandlers of the city.
"He's got love from everyone around here," said Nikitas Tsoukales, who runs the Virgin Credit office on Morton Street and who recalls seeing Felder while growing up in his father's doughnut shop next door. The aging panhandler looks the same, and moves the same even today, Tsoukales said.
"He's here every day, seven days a week," he said.
Afternoons, evenings, and nights, clad in soiled clothes and New Balance sneakers that are too big for him, Felder trudges up and down the intersection with a work ethic that rivals any daytime, more conventional laborer as he collects handouts from the thousands of motorists who pass by him, recognizing him as that guy always in the middle of traffic.
This is how Felder makes a living. He's survived blistering storms and economic plunges, and the looming recession will not deter him. All he needs is his winter jacket and a charitable donation.
"I can't complain," he says, "I've seen worse and I've been through worse."
It takes a certain discipline to panhandle. City officials estimate more than 6,000 people are homeless in Boston, and many are likely to hustle for a dollar. Some take odd jobs. A few will let handmade signs do their begging for them. Others claim street corners from East Boston to Roxbury and ask for handouts, car by car.
Few do it like Felder. At 50 years old, he is ragged but well spoken, polite but introverted. His fingernails are grungy, but his graying beard is well-groomed. He is slightly bent over as he shuffles his feet from car to car, his arms limp by his side.
"No one ever complains about Robbie; he's just a fixture," said Captain James M. Claiborne, who runs the Mattapan police station on Felder's block.
Panhandling is a protected form of speech, the Supreme Judicial Court has ruled, and police can only intervene if someone is acting aggressively. Officers have cracked down on panhandling and other forms of begging in more business-like areas.
In 2007, Mayor Thomas M. Menino had declared that some homeless had become "problems on the street," and police take seriously any complaints of panhandlers intimidating drivers.
At the Blue Hill Avenue intersection, where signs offer work-at-home jobs or help with a cable bill, Felder is just as much a mainstay to the drivers who go by as the check-cashing store at the corner or the Mobil gas station. On Sundays, he can be found at Morning Star Baptist Church on Blue Hill Avenue.
"Robbie's kind of part of the fabric around here," Claiborne said. "The people just passing through, going to the suburbs, they're accustomed to Robbie, he's been there that long, and I don't think he's frightening anybody."
Felder, a 1978 graduate of Hyde Park High School, has deep ties to the neighborhood. His mother lives there and he has three brothers in the city. His father is somewhere in South Carolina. "My father," Felder said matter-of-factly, "was a much better person than I. He was an electrician."
Decades ago, Felder worked for a Polaroid Corp. factory before it closed, and in 1990 he joined the Army, only to be discharged. For a while, he worked at
Felder is addicted to crack cocaine, but he doesn't like to talk about it. It would be like wearing a sign, "I'm an addict," he says, and that's not good for business.
But, he said, "it's what took me down."
His mother, Ruth, said crack changed her son. He would come home, in fits, and talk to himself. He started stealing from her, and she kicked him out of her home.
By his own estimates, he's been homeless since 1989. In years past, the owner of a home on Morton Street on occasion let him stay in his garage, if Felder helped with yard work, but mostly he stays in an abandoned building. On colder nights, he'll turn to a shelter.
Robyn Frost, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, sees fewer beggars on the streets, a decline she attributes to the work of agencies like hers and shelters. But, "At any given time, good time or bad time, people have to do what they can to make some money," she said.
It's the way that Felder weaves in between traffic that catches attention from the more than 33,000 motorists and pedestrians who see him every day. He races from light to light with uncanny timing, stopping only when a car does.
Some days are better than others, and it shows, as Felder tends to display the schizophrenic tendencies his mother spoke of, swearing at cars and drivers. Then he catches himself.
"I'm tensing up right now. . . . I'll be all right," he says. Felder has tried to get help before, but it never worked. He has to be ready, otherwise it's a waste of time.
For now, he does what he can.
"I'm just surviving," he said.
Milton Valencia can be reached at mvalencia@globe.com.
