Even as Louisiana suffers among the least of the states in homelessness, the state has picked up another tool to combat its worst effects.
Last month, the federal government released its annual statistical report on homelessness. At 8 per 10,000 population, Louisiana ranked in the bottom three of states and bucked the national increase of 18 percent by going up only about half of that. The main driver of this record jump seemed to be uncontrolled borders that allowed illegal aliens to flood some of the nation’s largest cities.
However, of those homeless, Louisiana’s 44.8 percent unsheltered rate was among the top 15 states. It is among these people that are found the highest concentration of those with some kind of mental illness that leads a significant portion of them to substance abuse, joining a smaller portion not mentally ill but who abuse substances.
As such, not only does this lifestyle pose a threat to their own health, but also becomes a public health issue. Especially when congregated, disease and criminal activity are magnified that can spread to the larger public, and government has an obligation to prevent this.
Last year, the Republican Gov. Jeff Landry administration began sweeps to eliminate homeless encampments in New Orleans, in anticipation of a string of high-profile events through this year’s Carnival season. This brought a couple of judicial enjoinments and a suit.
The injunctions said the state, by having law enforcement go in and dismantle camps while directing people to a centralized outdoor location without warning or using due process to dispose of any personal property, violated city law. Law enforcement initially had given no notice but then began to give 24-hour notice, but the question remained about local ordinance restricting relocation and property disposal.
Then last week, the Louisiana Supreme Court overruled that, stating that state concerns over public health gave its inherent police power to protect health and safety precedence over ordinances that might conflict. The suit remains alive, alleging the sweeps violate federal and state constitutional strictures about seizure of property and right to assemble even as the due process question appears to have been resolved, although the Landry Administration appears to be addressing these issues by its pledge to open a homeless shelter, adding to both city and private efforts.
While New Orleans has seen some success in reducing its unsheltered population, these are by and large economic refugees who by bad luck or bad decisions became impoverished to the point they couldn’t afford housing (partly exacerbated by New Orleans’ instituting a rental registry that increases the cost of housing). But this doesn’t work well for the roughly two-thirds of homeless with substance abuse problems, as government-run and most privately-run ones forbid substance abuse and some homeless simply won’t give up that behavior. In other words, for a number of homeless making it easier to live under a roof isn’t attractive enough for them to leave a lifestyle they prefer.
Thus, they respond most effectively to disincentives to live on the streets, such as breaking up camps and laws that prohibit someone grabbing whatever public space there is on which to encamp. Make it very burdensome to live like that and it drives them to live in a fashion more amenable to transition to being housed or even to seek help and clean up if necessary. They won’t respond well to positive reinforcements to get off the streets, so they must have negative ones applied to accomplish that.
Last year’s Johnson v. Grants Pass U.S. Supreme Court decision gave local governments wide latitude in prohibiting the homeless in setting up shop wherever they please. Louisiana municipalities need to pass and/or strengthen these laws if they want to stem the wider negative impact of homelessness on the citizenry.
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