Turning human misery into big money
Gov. Jeff Landry treats homeless people like a commodity. It’s shameful, and Louisiana faith leaders should be denouncing it
To Gov. Jeff Landry and his allies, some human beings are little more than commodities. If certain people are among those Landry and his allies regard as less than human, their bodies can be brokered for profit.
Last February, Landry showed us that incarcerated individuals are one such commodity. Under the guise of getting tough on crime, Landry pushed and signed laws to generate many new bodies for Louisiana sheriffs to warehouse in parish prisons for big state-funded payoffs.
It’s how Landry got sheriffs to endorse him for governor: Back me, and I’ll ensure you never have a shortage of warm (primarily Black) bodies.
You can read what I wrote about it at this link.
Now, Landry has shown us he believes homeless persons are also a commodity he can trade to generate hefty profits for his cronies.
As the Louisiana Illuminator reported last week, Landry wants to rid New Orleans of the homeless in the run-up to next month's Super Bowl, but only temporarily and not because he cares about people without a home. He appears to worry that homeless people might embarrass him and the Crescent City, making it unpleasant for well-off visitors to stroll down Poydras Street while being forced to ignore a down-and-out human being.
Landry will reportedly pay the company of a prominent GOP contributor — Seth Lemoine, the stepson of 2019 GOP gubernatorial candidate Eddie Rispone — as much as $16 million to warehouse 200 homeless people for up to three months. The millions that Landry will give Lemoine, whose stepfather endorsed Landry in 2023, is enough to pre-pay apartment rent for each person for almost ten years. As the Illuminator reported:
[Last week], Landry again ordered New Orleans encampments cleared, including the formerly state-sanctioned site on Earhart Boulevard. On Wednesday, two days after the announcement, the state moved in. Encampment residents were sent to a new temporary shelter, located in a warehouse on France Road, near the Industrial Canal.
The 200-bed “Transitional Center,” as the state refers to it, will be open for at least two months. Landry’s administration promises it will provide three meals a day, basic medical care and support for finding housing — all of which comes at a high cost to Louisiana taxpayers. According to a draft plan submitted by the state’s contractor, The Workforce Group, 60 days of shelter operations will cost the state $11.4 million. An optional 30-day extension will bring that price tag up to $16 million, double the city’s ask.
And who is Lemoine and The Workforce Group? According to the Illuminator:
The Workforce Group is a subsidiary of the Lemoine Co., a Lafayette-based, family-owned conglomerate. Its ties to state government include a history of bipartisan contributions to elected officials and political action committees, according to state Ethics Administration campaign finance records.
Since 2019, the Lemoine Co. has given $60,000 to the Republican Party of Louisiana. While the business has supported some Democratic candidates, including former Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, it has not given directly to the state party.
Contributions from company founders and brothers Lenny and Tim Lemoine lean toward the GOP, as do donations from their nephew, Seth Lemoine, who leads the Workforce Group.
The Lemoine family’s connection to Republican power brokers in Louisiana is arguably stronger than their financial ties. Seth Lemoine is the stepson of Eddie Rispone, the Baton Rouge businessman who ran unsuccessfully for governor and was a key backer of Gov. Jeff Landry in his 2023 election win.
As Gambit reported, Landry is also spending state money to ship some homeless people out of state.
Next time someone tells you Louisiana lacks the resources to address homelessness, remind them that we had enough money to fund permanent homes for 200 people in New Orleans but chose to spend that money on a massive payday for a prominent Landry supporter.
If we wanted to help homeless people, we would do it. But if our priority were to make one of Landry’s political supporters richer by turning homeless people into a commodity, we’d do that, too.
To do the former, Landry would view those people as humans. For the latter, all he needs is a desire to make his cronies richer on the back of human misery.
Louisiana isn’t alone in abusing its homeless people
Sweeping up homeless people before big events is nothing new in the United States or elsewhere. Political leaders in both U.S. parties do this to rid their cities of embarrassing social problems before Super Bowls, Olympic games, and international summits.
Paris did it last year before the Olympics. As documented by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, many other cities have done it:
In 1980, Moscow rounded up those suffering from substance abuse disorder and dumped them at various locations beyond the city’s borders, in an effort to remove the city’s “undesirables” from the public eye.
In 1984, Los Angeles police conducted aggressive sweeps of African American and Latino youth homeless populations around Olympic venues and changed ordinances to ban public camping and sleeping on benches.
In 1996, the city of Atlanta changed its laws to arrest over 9,000 people experiencing homelessness and spent public money on bus tickets for unhoused people out of the city.
In 2020, Tokyo evicted hundreds from its poorest neighborhoods and provided small stipends to live elsewhere, a similar act to its removal of public housing projects ahead of the 1964 Games.
In 2022, ahead of the Superbowl, Los Angeles law enforcement began more aggressive sweeps of unhoused populations around areas near Sofi Stadium.
Ahead of the G20 summit in New Delhi in 2023, the Indian government destroyed 9 homeless shelters and forcibly removed thousands of homeless families from the city’s poorest neighborhoods in a “beautification effort.”
In November 2023, the city of San Francisco removed unhoused individuals from its downtown areas ahead of the Asian-Pacific Economic Cooperation Conference, in an effort to downplay the city’s homelessness crisis ahead of the global event.
Ahead of the 2024 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, officials evicted many residents from a downtown temporary shelter to make room for other unhoused people who were forcibly relocated from one of the city’s largest encampments that recently had been permanently shut down near convention sites.
The problem with what Louisiana and these other places have done is that displacing homeless people rarely helps homeless people. It only makes the host city look better for a month or two. The actions are primarily about cosmetics, rarely about dealing seriously with human misery.
To Paris’s credit, about a third of the buildings built for the Olympic Village will be used to create permanent housing for low-income renters.
To quote the National Alliance to End Homelessness:
Displacing people experiencing homelessness from a mega-event’s host city allows attendees to ignore that city’s housing and homelessness crises ahead of large global events and only serves to exacerbate social inequities.
Local and national leaders are obviously concerned about public perception of their municipalities ahead of the heightened attention: visible homelessness in public spaces can be a negative reflection on their governance and policy record.
These large-scale displacements are a symptom of a larger problem: resorting to a short term “fix” to put a much larger systemic issue out of sight. Instead of these short-term stopgaps, elected officials should use that desire to put forth affordable housing and other legislative priorities desperately needed to support the unhoused residents of their cities.
Of the millions Landry is spending to warehouse homeless people for a few months, New Orleans District B Council Member Lesli Harris says Louisiana would be wiser to invest in the city's Home for Good Program, a collaboration with the city's health department, the Office of Homeless Services and Strategy and Clutch Consulting.
"Collaborating with local stakeholders could have alternatively delivered a low-barrier shelter for just $6.5 million for a year of services — less than half the cost of this temporary effort [if extended to 90 days] and with proper health and safety guidelines," she said.
Why are so many church leaders silent about this?
I’m not sure why I haven’t heard more prominent Louisiana faith leaders speaking out against Landry’s callous treatment of the homeless. It’s cruel and inhumane to treat people as a commodity. This abuse of the poor is precisely the kind of behavior the church should denounce.
This strange silence by church leaders reminds me of the mournful words of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his famous “Letter from a Birmingham Jail.”
I mark every MLK Day by reading his famous letter from April 1963, which I recommend to you. It’s one of the most eloquent, potent commentaries ever written to defend creative nonviolence and nonviolent protest.
This passage near the end of the letter is particularly appropriate in light of the silence of many prominent bishops, pastors, and other church leaders:
But despite these notable exceptions, I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall lengthen.
When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.
In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would understand. But again I have been disappointed.
I have heard numerous southern religious leaders admonish their worshipers to comply with a desegregation decision because it is the law, but I have longed to hear white ministers declare: “Follow this decree because integration is morally right and because the Negro is your brother.” In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: “Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern.” And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.
I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South’s beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: “What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?”
Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love. Yes, I love the church. How could I do otherwise? I am in the rather unique position of being the son, the grandson and the great grandson of preachers. Yes, I see the church as the body of Christ. But, oh! How we have blemished and scarred that body through social neglect and through fear of being nonconformists.
There was a time when the church was very powerful–in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. Whenever the early Christians entered a town, the people in power became disturbed and immediately sought to convict the Christians for being “disturbers of the peace” and “outside agitators.”‘
But the Christians pressed on, in the conviction that they were “a colony of heaven,” called to obey God rather than man. Small in number, they were big in commitment. They were too God-intoxicated to be “astronomically intimidated.” By their effort and example they brought an end to such ancient evils as infanticide and gladiatorial contests. Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent–and often even vocal–sanction of things as they are.
But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today’s church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century.
Beyond the seeming political patronage, we don't focus nearly enough on the details of contracts like this with costs that exceed what the average citizen might imagine we are paying. However, few watchdogs report them and apparently almost no regular citizens even pay attention to them.
In this case it would appear we are going to pay this contractor to provide services similar to those provided to state prisoners at a cost of $958 per day. It costs us a maximum of $70 per day to house state prisoners in state prisons, depending on how you allocate direct and indirect costs. Last I knew we paid sheriffs $26.39 to house state inmates. No matter how you figure it, this difference begs a lot of questions.
Those of us who have been around for a good long while can remember a time when homelessness was a rarity in the United States. If I were to guess about a period to which MAGA people think we can return, that was it. How can they believe making America great again does not include doing something about homelessness, an international embarrassment and human tragedy?
Churches may not do enough to address the problem, but some do what they can. I follow the First United Methodist Church of Baton Rouge and they seem to have an active outreach program for the homeless, so do other churches and St. Vincent DePaul is a Godsend. Others simply ignore them. I guess they figure they are in God's hands and/or that there's no fighting karma.
Mighty big government, certainly big enough to support Jeff and his pals.
Thank you Bob and The Illumanator for the reporting and writing.