Is the rent too damn high?

I wish somebody would tell me because there is just no way to know for sure.

Still, in cities like New Orleans where job opportunities haven’t kept pace with rapidly rising housing prices, advocates are worried that recent gains may be reversed.

Before Katrina, half of all apartments in the city used to rent for less than $500. Now, it’s difficult to find anything under $1,000. At the same time median household income in New Orleans has fallen from $39,000 in 1999 to $37,000 in 2017 when adjusted for inflation, according to a February report by The Data Center.

The same report found that, between 2004 and 2017, median gross rent — rent plus utilities — rose from $742 to $962 in New Orleans, a 30 percent increase after adjusting for inflation.

That's actually contextual background in a story about homelessness in New Orleans.  Earlier this month the City Council passed an ordinance requiring a more aggressive regime for clearing out encampments under the overpasses.

If the new ordinance becomes law, the city would theoretically institute more regular cleanings and would have to post notices 24 hours in advance of any cleaning. The ordinance also mandates store-and-release practices for people’s possessions, to address complaints that camps were basically clear-cut by city sanitation workers, who cut up tents and threw them into garbage trucks along with people’s other meager possessions.

UNITY’s advocacy committee thought the law missed the mark. “The ordinance would increase the amount of time and attention spent on removing homeless people’s possessions and moving homeless people around, neither of which will reduce homelessness,” they wrote in a letter to the council.

“People are already so stressed living on the street. They are so stressed,” said Nan Roman, who heads up the National Alliance to End Homelessness and supports the idea of a clean camp environment. Still, she opposed the new ordinance because it seemed too focused on “moving people around.”

This doesn't seem like it's going to help anybody find a home any faster.  It helps councilmembers appear responsive to people emailing them complaints about having to look at tents when they drive downtown, though.  The mayor's office has tried to push back on it. That's to their credit.  There had even been some talk of a veto at one point but I'm not sure that would stick.

Anyway, it's tough to keep up with the bills around here. If they don't save me a spot under the bridge I might have to start working on a new fallback.