re: Does the city of New Orleans even try to clean up its widespread homeless problem?

At least it's not seattle. The ones there have no shame in begging..

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At least it's not seattle. The ones there have no shame in begging..

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I was there last summer. Me and the SO walked out of a restaurant in Chinatown with leftovers. Two homeless guys immediately asked us for it. Zero shame...

What are the raggedy unkempt white people who have dogs with them called. Are they homeless or hobos

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I don’t consider Phoenix, San Antonio, OKC, Ft Worth to be liberal

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Maybe so, weather in those cities might also have a bearing. OKC being an outlier.

Most of them prefer to live that way. Rebeling against their parents or some shite.

Sepia people.

if you think nola is bad you really should see houston

Historically, our homeless population grows in the wintertime and shrinks, somewhat, in the summer, as the homeless move around.

All major cities have this. My uncle is in town this week from Portland, and he said it's 25x worse up there. He a mental health professional and he believes the more a city does to try to help the homeless, the worse the problem gets. A liberal enclave like Portland does a lot to help the homeless, and all it's done is just dramatically increase their numbers.

NOLA has a number of non-profits with homeless shelters, but those shelters have rules. Many of the homeless that are on the street are unable or unwilling to honor those rules.

Our homeless is basically the following:

1) The "gutter punks" who actually want to live on the streets and be urban campers, with their dogs and nose rings.

2) The mentally ill, who want to be outside 24/7 and actually freak out when they are in a room / on a bed.

3) The drug users who haven't or don't want to clean up their habit.

You see very, very, very few "down and out" homeless in NOLA these days. We have a pretty good economy and we have pretty good resources for those who need help and want to accept it.

I think the only way to ever "clean up" the problem, is to spend money on mental help and drug detox programs, and well, that sounds like tax money and gosh knows we Louisiana's aren't going to actually pay for that.

New Cmte setup to address this. They met for the first time this morning

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Quality of life in New Orleans, everything from potholes to blighted property, are now being tackled by a new city council committee, which holds its first meeting today.

Councilman Joe Giarrusso says from illegal dumping, to trash and even uncut grass will be things the committee will handle. They will also examine the city's issues with encampments of homeless people.

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Throwing them all in jail isn’t the answer. I honestly have thought about this many times and have never been able to come up with anything close to a solution outside of quit giving them food or money. All that does is enable them to never change. Some have mental issues and no support structure, yes...but the majority are just lazy assholes, drug addicts, and scam artists that will never change.

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I used to do some stuff with the Jimmie Hale Mission here in Birmingham. They would take in anyone who was willing to get clean, get an education, get job training, and get spiritual help. They do outstanding working helping those who want to be helped. The director told me many times to not feed or otherwise empower the homeless.

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I think the only way to ever "clean up" the problem, is to spend money on mental help and drug detox programs, and well, that sounds like tax money and gosh knows we Louisiana's aren't going to actually pay for that.

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We already spend tax money, taken from working citizens, to try and "fix" the homeless problem and to provide both drug detox and mental help resources. It's disingenuous for you to imply otherwise. At some point we should agree that enough tax money is being spent on this in light of the refusal of the vast majority of the homeless to utilize it.