Posted on 05/27/2008 6:13:55 PM PDT by Eric Blair 2084
Mayor C. Ray Nagin recently suggested a way to reduce this city’s post-Katrina homeless population: give them one-way bus tickets out of town.
Mr. Nagin later insisted the off-the-cuff proposal was just a joke. But he has portrayed the dozens of people camped in a tent city under a freeway overpass near Canal Street as recalcitrant drug and alcohol abusers who refuse shelter, give passers-by the finger and, worst of all, hail from somewhere else.
While many of the homeless do have addiction problems or mental illness, a survey by advocacy groups in February showed that 86 percent were from the New Orleans area. Sixty percent said they were homeless because of Hurricane Katrina, and about 30 percent said they had received rental assistance at one time from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
Not far from the French Quarter, flanking Canal Street on Claiborne Avenue, they are living inside a long corridor formed not of walls and a roof but of the thick stench of human waste and sweat tinged with alcohol, crack and desperation.
The inhabitants are natives like Ronald Gardner, 54, an H.I.V.-positive man who said he had never before slept on the streets until Katrina. Or Ronald Berry, 57, who despite being a paranoid schizophrenic said he had lived on his own, in a rented house in the Lower Ninth Ward, for a dozen years before the storm. Both men receive disability checks of $637 a month, not nearly enough to cover post-hurricane rents.
“If I could just get a warm room,” Mr. Gardner said, sitting on the cot under which all his belongings are stored, “I could take it from there.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
I can answer the questions that the NY Times author Shaila the lib with an agenda didn't answer for her puff piece.
I did something that she didn't do no doubt...much like the libs who film hungry people in the third world don't give them a sandwich.
In my drunken stupor walking back from Bourbon Street I threw 1 and 5 dollar bills around like candy and I talked to these people.
Surprisingly, my version of the facts on the ground is a little bit different than the NY Times version.
I'll be happy to share them as long as nobody tells the world that I gave people money for no reason. My reputation as an uncaring capitalist pig took years to earn and I won't have anyone harm my carefully crafted reputation.
Paging Captain Obvious!
Do what everyone else does. Send em to San Francisco, while their at it, send along the rest of their illegals to. Every city should use this policy, if you have illegals, send them to a sanctuary city. It’s a win-win situation; if I could say so myself.
Muhahaha.
Are you trying to suggest that the able bodied man purposely staked out a spot in front of the Sheraton on Canal Street and claimed to be a victim of Katrina to explain why he can’t get a job?
I don’t believe you.
I wonder if these "men" consider that REPARATIONS?
It SHOULD be -- along with the TRILLIONS paid in taxpayer provided welfare or Christian charity to "African Americans" for the past century or two.
There are folks who have worked an honest job their entire life - PAID into Social Security and are receiving less or little more that these POS living on the streets...
He said this on May 27th?
The temperature in New Orleans was in the nineties today.
Nobody was looking for a warm room.
LOL!
CA loves the homeless.
No better place to go if you are a homeless crack addict or illegal alien with 9 kids.
Come one, come all. It’s a mini experiment in Socialism within the USA. They didn’t get the memo that it doesn’t work and has been tried elsewhere. The lib state legislators don’t know that yet.
Get in there and get your money before the State files for bankruptcy.
There was a 6 month pregnant woman on the corner of Canal and Bourbon. She had this really “neat” trick.
She would ask:
“I”ll bet you $10 I know what kind of shoes you’re wearing.”
Then she would get on her knees and clean them and say “clean shoes”
I gave her $2. She said “Uh, uh, that’s $5 per shoe.”
I suppressed my wise ass response out of fear for my life.
“Two outreach workers have tested positive for tuberculosis,” Mr. Miller said. “There’s hepatitis C, there’s AIDS, there’s H.I.V. Everyone out there’s had an eye infection of some sort. I got one.”
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This place sounds like a cesspool of disease. They really need to clean it up and get those people out of that tent city.
Not all of these opportunists on the street were black.
There were plenty of poor white ones.
They were trained professionals on a closed course....do not attempt this at home.
They had the whole “I just ended up on this dead end street by accident, please give me 80 cents for bus fare” scam down to a science.
There were at least 20 of them over four days. I gave them $2 each for a round trip.
They probably thought I was a sucker. I made $1,100 the night I got there playing craps and blackjack at Harrahs.
I was just giving back to the community.
All of that Aids and Hep C must have been caused by the Second Hand Smoke in the bars.
That stuff is a killer.
Dude I’m serious. People in medieval Europe did not live this badly and they produce the “Black Plague”. Actually I am afraid that is what these people will produce if they are not cleaned up and moved out!
“In my drunken stupor walking back from Bourbon Street I threw 1 and 5 dollar bills around like candy and I talked to these people. “
Wow, you are fortunate you are alive to tell this story.
I’m a trained martial artist on a closed course....do not attempt this at home.
Chalk it up as another sign the the Apocalypse is Upon Us.
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