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HIGH POINT - Residents and business owners said Tuesday night they needed new ordinances to ban panhandling, public drinking and public urination.

But the City Council said it is worried about targeting the homeless and poor.

City Councilman Mike Pugh said High Point police asked him to introduce the ordinances.

"They would like to have these things in their toolbox to help them battle some of the problems that residents and business owners are seeing," Pugh said.

Kyle Farson is one business owner who said he's had enough. He told the council he's owned the 1st National Pawn & Pawnway shops in High Point for 13 years and has seen panhandlers get dangerously aggressive.

"We have a long-standing, deliberate and agonizing problem with the homeless population," Farson said. "My customers, my employees and my children have had confrontations with them - verbal and physical."

Farson said panhandlers loiter in the shopping center parking lot outside one of his shops, harassing customers for money and cigarettes. When asked to leave they can get abusive. Farson said he's called the police repeatedly, but they don't seem to be able to do anything

"If you're a woman with children and bags, just trying to get to your car, it can

be very intimidating," Farson said.

Some on the council said they were worried the proposed ordinances would unfairly lump in the genuinely homeless with panhandlers and con artists.

"We have to be careful," said Mayor Becky Smothers. "We may be calling some people homeless who aren't really homeless and putting everyone together."

Council member Bernita Sims said she was worried that homeless people might be arrested if they couldn't find a business to let them use the bathroom. She said she and Councilman Latimer Alexander had recently been to a community discussion about creating a homeless day center. Sims said it's something the city should look into before making criminals of people who just need a bathroom.

"We need to work with the homeless coalition and develop some alternative before we begin passing ordinances," Sims said. "These people are on the streets all day long with no place to go (to the bathroom) and that's serious business."

Pugh argued the ordinances wouldn't be aimed at the homeless - they would be aimed at behaviors that didn't belong in public. Most of the trouble doesn't come from the sort of homeless people who are trying to help themselves, he said.

"The majority of these people are people who have chosen to live this lifestyle," Pugh said. "They don't want to go to the shelter because they'd have to give up their habit. They would rather live in the woods and drink and drug."

Councilman Ron Wilkins told Pugh he needed to be careful how he characterizes homeless people. The Ward 2 councilman represents some of High Point's poorest neighborhoods and lives in public housing himself.

"Not every homeless person looks the same," Wilkins said. "With the number of foreclosures we're seeing, it could happen to anyone. You can't make assumptions about peoples' lives."

The council sent the suggested ordinances to its public safety committee for further fleshing out.

Pugh did not hide his anger at the council's failure to pass something, joking that the public safety committee never meets and would drag its feet.

Councilman John Faircloth assured Pugh the council takes the issues seriously but wants more time to consider the ordinances and how to enforce them.

"I commend you for bringing this up," Faircloth said. "I don't think that we don't need this, I just don't want us to do something we don't understand."

Contact Joe Killian at 883-4422, Ext. 228, or joe.killian@news-record.com