UPDATE: New Orleans Vote Deferred— Could Join Dozens Of Cities Restricting Food Donations To The Homeless

New reports have revealed that New Orleans City Council Members are considering methods for restricting food donations to the hungry and homeless in the city. Opinions are mixed, but one thing is certain, more restrictions mean less food donated, and that means more people go hungry.

According to Fox 8 LIVE, “A proposed ordinance will go before a New Orleans city council committee Monday (July 24) afternoon that would restrict the way people living in underpass encampments are fed, citing the unregulated food distribution currently happening in the city as a contributor to litter, rodent infestations, and a decrease in the quality of life of individuals within homeless encampments.”

The proposed ordinance from council members, Eugene Green, Oliver Thomas, and Freddie King would increase penalties for food waste and distribution in homeless encampments unless strict restrictions are followed.

Green explained the measure, “What we are looking to avoid is the rat and rodent infestation that is caused by dumping of food items. It’s guidelines that everybody should weant to follow,” Green said according to Fox 8.

“If you really want to help people out you can bring packaged food, food in containers, you can serve food and clean it up at the end of the day.”

Some, however, who work feeding these communities every day like Angela Owczarek with the Travelers Aid Society of Greater New Orleans disagree. Owczarek warned that the proposed penalties “removes a vital food source for people who are living outside and already living difficult lives where they are hungry most of the time.”

Under the new restrictions as reported by Fox 8, there would be no “distribution of unsealed food containers.” Nor should anyone, “leave behind litter, food waste, or pans of food or other unsealed bulk foodstuffs that cannot be reasonably consumed in one sitting,” thus precluding bulk donations from restaurants and grocers who historically donate unsold portions.

New Orleans is poised to join dozens of major cities across the country in imposing restrictions on the most admirable, good, Christ-like and charitable impulses of the people, and something that the Big Easy has been known for, for over a century: feeding the hungry. Indeed the culinary capital of the south, the daughter of Paris is like her mother before her about to turn a cold-shoulder to those in need. (*Paris has made controversy by aggressively shipping out homeless people and generally neglecting them for over a decade).

For want of sanitation, and instead of working hand in hand with churches and charities the city is instead opting to hand-down restrictions that will make charitable food donations less spontaneous and simple, and thereby less likely.

The back alley doors of some of the greatest restaurants in the South once fed scores of the needy, but now it seems likely those doors will slam shut, with business owners unwilling to pay for packaging and additional trash receptacles. Its easier just to throw out the leftovers.

Simply put, if you want to encourage giving, you don’t make it harder. So why really is New Orleans taking this step instead of the alternatives of better sanitation and more work alongside charitable and faith based organizations? Because its’ simply easier to make the problem go away then to try and actually help.

UPDATE: According to Fox 8 Live Tuesday, the City Council Quality of Life Committee voted to defer the vote on the ordinance to a vote by the full city council allowing for additional debate on the controversial subject. “Let’s work it out and communicate and not be enemies with each other,” Councilman Eugene Green told the committee.

Local, DemocratMatthew HollowayNew Orleans, Local, Louisiana