Recent editorials from Louisiana newspapers:
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May 25
NOLA.com/The Times-Picayune on finding home for the homeless:
After getting homelessness among veterans under control in New Orleans, advocates are working on an ambitious plan to get all homeless families here into permanent housing by Thanksgiving. They are committed to ending homelessness among disabled people by next July and among young people by the end of 2019. By the end of 2020, the goal is to reduce homelessness here overall by 75 percent.
That will take hard work, focus and money, but it ought to be doable. Unity of Greater New Orleans, which is leading the effort, has made remarkable progress in getting people into homes.
In 2014, Unity, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the Housing Authority of New Orleans and dozens of nonprofits worked together to move more than 200 homeless veterans into permanent housing.
That collaboration helped New Orleans become the first U.S. city to effectively end homelessness among military vets - which means a home can be found within 30 days for veterans living on the street or in a shelter. The city has maintained that standard for the past 16 months. During that time, Unity and its partners have housed 202 new veterans.
It will take a similar collaboration to reach the city’s new goals.
A $3.4 million grant awarded early this month by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development will help. The money will go to permanent supportive housing, rapid re-housing and case management. The hope is that beefing up those and other services will allow Unity and its partners to reach their goals. New Orleans also got a $2.37 million grant from HUD in March.
“We know how to end homelessness and these grants support local programs that are proven to prevent and end homelessness as we’ve come to know it,” HUD Secretary Julian Castro said when the latest grant was announced.
Last year, Unity did a one-night count in New Orleans and Jefferson Parish and found 63 homeless families with a total of 193 people. There were 423 people considered chronically homeless, which is a disabled person who has been living on the streets or in a shelter for more than a year. The count found 279 people younger than 25 who were sleeping on the streets, in abandoned buildings or in shelters or transitional housing.
Homelessness ballooned in New Orleans post-Katrina to more than 11,660 in January 2007. But with hard work by Unity and other agencies and support from Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s administration, the number of chronically homeless people in the city has dropped dramatically. The number fell from 4,579 in 2009 to 677 in 2013.
To persuade veterans to accept help, outreach teams included current and former members of the military. Col. Richard Hansen, who became commander and district engineer of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers New Orleans District in 2013, was one of them. “A veteran speaking to a veteran is a very powerful tool,” he said. “There’s a camaraderie that always exists … a base level of trust.”
It is important to have volunteers like him who are willing to help. Unity executive director Martha Kegel believes that New Orleanians understand homelessness better than many other people.
“We are the only community in America where everybody experienced homelessness together” after Hurricane Katrina and the levee breaches, she said at Unity’s 2014 annual meeting.
“It’s a shared experience we all understand in a way we didn’t understand before; how important it is for every human being to have a home,” she said. “We understand our community will not be recovered … until everybody in our community has a home.”
We aren’t at that point yet. But we are much closer thanks to Unity and the nonprofit and government agencies working with them to solve homelessness.
Online:
https://www.nola.com/
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May 23
The Advocate on legalizing marijuana:
With the state in budgetary chaos, will Louisiana turn to legalizing recreational marijuana to raise more money?
Law enforcement agencies don’t want to see that happen, and we agree with them at this point. Louisiana can afford to wait and see how this works out in other jurisdictions in this country.
But there is another and better case for the use of cannabis as a medicine.
Medical marijuana has been legal in Louisiana for more than two decades, but no one’s been able to legally use it because the state didn’t establish a framework for the distribution or cultivation of the plant, which remains a Schedule I narcotic on the federal level. Lawmakers and officials continue to work through legal hang-ups for distribution and cultivation.
The key proposal this session - Senate Bill 271, which would increase medical conditions that would be covered - was passed by lawmakers and signed by Gov. John Bel Edwards. We see it as a way to aid the afflicted, not as a stepping stone to legalization.
Under current law, glaucoma, spastic quadriplegia and symptoms stemming from chemotherapy are the only medical conditions covered. SB271 would add, among other ailments: HIV and AIDS, cachexia, seizure disorders, epilepsy, Crohn’s syndrome, muscular dystrophy and multiple sclerosis. Many of these afflicted are young children.
We think the governor is right about this issue: “I, quite frankly, think the state ought not be between the doctor and parents on what’s best for those children,” he told reporters during consideration of the bill. “I’m not willing to continue to make this unavailable to people with medical conditions because I’m fearful that at some point, it might lead to creep.” Edwards was referring to the fear that the medicinal use of cannabis oil eventually will lead to the widespread recreational use of the smoked drug.
As in other states that have passed similar laws, the drug treatment would be “recommended” by physicians, rather than “prescribed” to skirt federal drug laws. There are, nevertheless, going to be real logistical problems for the growing and processing of the weed; Agriculture Commissioner Mike Strain, a veterinarian, said last year that the quality control for making the medicines - not joints but pills - would be considerable.
He is right, but we do not see medical marijuana as the same issue as legalizing recreational use of what law enforcement and federal agencies still consider a dangerous narcotic. That decision, if it ever comes, should not cloud today’s concerns.
With Edwards, we don’t see this as creeping legalization of the weed. That’s a different decision than the safe and responsible framework for this drug’s production and use.
Online:
https://theadvocate.com/
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May 23
The Courier of Houma on giving inmates another chance:
Terrebonne Parish is one of five expected to enter a program aimed at getting prisoners prepared for life outside of prison.
The new part of the program, which also will include Calcasieu, Livingston, St. Helena and Tangipahoa parishes, gears nonviolent offenders toward bettering themselves and becoming better prepared to re-enter society.
The idea has been implemented at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola and is already being used by prisoners from 12 other parishes. But a bill passed by the state House and Senate and expected to be signed into law by Gov. John Bel Edwards would extend the program to prisoners from Terrebonne.
The program is a good one. It allows nonviolent offenders and those who have no violent or sexual offenses on their records to qualify for a limited number of spots.
The participants, who are serving from two- to 10-year sentenced, must get their GEDs and receive vocational training that will help them get jobs once they are released.
They can learn skills in car repair, carpentry, welding, cooking, painting, horticulture, masonry and plumbing - any of which would ease their transition into the work world and lessen their chances of returning to prison.
And that is the overall goal.
“It’s kind of an incentive not to go back (to Angola), because you get to see what it’s actually like to be a working and productive member of society,” said Terrebonne District Judge Juan Pickett, who spearheaded the effort to extend it to prisoners from our region. “That way, you don’t have to worry about selling drugs on the corner, looking over your shoulder and thinking the police are going to come and arrest you.”
Louisiana’s prison situation is grim. We lock away huge portions of our population, many of them incarcerated as punishment for nonviolent drug offenses.
As these prisoners move toward release, our state must begin to make plans for getting them back into society and breaking the chain of criminal behavior and imprisonment.
This seems like an excellent way to do just that.
The prisoners, once they complete their school and training, can apply for early release. If it is granted, they are matched with employers who need the skills they have learned. The prisoners are then released on probation and have incentives to remain free and out of trouble.
Innovative programs like this have to be part of our approach to crime and punishment. Drug courts, which keep many offenders out of jail, are also important in diverting some people away from jail in the first place.
Still, getting people who are in prison successfully integrated into society must be a priority - unless we want to bear the time and expense of locking them up time and again.
Congratulations to Pickett and the many local folks this will help.
Online:
https://www.houmatoday.com/
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