Two Kansas University social welfare experts say Lawrence residents may be “mean” to the homeless, but not in the ways identified by a recent national ranking.

“Homeless people are saying that they are not being arrested; the police are helpful,” said Helen Hartnett, who is also an advocate for the homeless. “They are equally saying that businesses are helpful but that community attitudes are a barrier.”

To attempt to verify a January ranking from the National Homeless Coalition that named Lawrence the nation’s second meanest city to the homeless because of recent ordinances passed, KU professors Hartnett and Toni Johnson and about a dozen students interviewed 56 of the city’s homeless in April.

For the national study, researchers looked at city ordinances to find out whether homeless behavior was criminalized and other factors such as the general political climate, said Michael Stoops of the coalition.

“Civility ordinances” including an aggressive panhandling law put Lawrence on the list, he said.

But in the survey by KU researchers, the homeless people who responded had a more middle-of-the-road attitude regarding treatment from local businesses and Lawrence Police officers.

KU researchers also asked the homeless people to use three words to describe how the public perceives them. Of the responses, 43 were in a negative context, with those surveyed saying the public perceived them as inferior or frightening; 15 said the public was indifferent or ignored them; and 36 said the public was willing to help or compassionate.

Hartnett and Johnson concluded that the general attitudes of the community “contribute to our overall inability to creatively and as a collective group of people provide meaningful alternatives.”

Loring Henderson, executive director of the Lawrence Community Shelter, 214 W. 10th St., said the new study more accurately reflects how homeless people perceive Lawrence. Many who use the shelter disagreed with the “meanness” ranking and its assessment of law enforcement in January, he said.

“There are other ways that this survey is saying, there is a kind of meanness – there are some walls, ceilings, attitude barriers that we are finding very difficult to break through about public attitudes toward homeless people, demonization of homeless people in just general conversation,” he said.

Henderson said the KU survey provides an opportunity for more public education and will give him some statistics to cite during conversations.

City statistics from 2005 reported the homeless population at 112. In the recent KU study, about 46 percent of those who responded said they had been in Lawrence one year or longer.

“It saddened me when we were analyzing the data to think of the words that people wrote down about what people in this community think about them – because they are human beings. They are people,” Hartnett said.