New Orleans council passes resolution to avoid criminalizing homelessness

Compassion and humanity: those are two values the New Orleans City Council says it wants city leaders to have as they continue clearing out homeless encampments. That announcement comes as the council approves a resolution to avoid criminalizing homelessness despite a United States Supreme Court ruling allowing them to do so.

Although the New Orleans City Council wants those encampments removed, they want to make sure the people in those encampments have somewhere to go.

"Thank you for being humane and reaching out to people," council member Leslie Harris said to members of the New Orleans Office of Homeless Services and Strategies, the Department of Sanitation, and the New Orleans Police Department during Thursday city council meeting. Council members recognized those departments for playing a major role to clear homeless encampments around the city.

Councilman Eugene Green lauded the work those city employees are doing, some of which he says goes unnoticed by the average New Orleanean.

"The members of these teams . . . (are) quietly working to do not only the cleanup but many times to provide some sort of a source of assistance to those who are in the camps," Green said.

As for ending homelessness, Harris and council vice president J. P. Morrell agree: criminalization of homelessness is not the answer.

"If you don't deal with the underlying problem, you just create brief reprieves until it comes back in force," Morrell said.

"As the Super Bowl gets closer, we will undoubtedly hear calls to adopt the criminalization approach to clean up New Orleans, but it does not work," Harris said.

Harris, who sponsored the resolution to move the city away from criminalizing homelessness, says she has a solution, but it will require voters' approval.

"A charter amendment on this November's ballot, which will dedicate two percent of our annual general fund to creating and preserving affordable housing because at its core, homelessness is a housing problem, and it's one that we can solve," Harris said.