Our mission is to transform unjust housing policies, discriminatory practices, and inequitable development schemes by engaging in strategies that create permanently affordable housing, advance tenant rights, expand housing security, and uphold equitable housing patterns and land use planning.
Legislation to Watch Out For: Attacks on Our Neighbors
Spring is ushering in many opportunities to fight for housing justice. Last year, our city united as individuals and organizations in coalition to defeat all of the dangerous anti-homeless bills at the state legislature. Once again we need you to speak up, rally, and take action to protect our most vulnerable residents. Please stay tuned to Jane Place, New Orleans Homeless and Houseless Advocacy (NOHHARRM), New Orleans Renters’ Rights Assembly, Louisiana Fair Housing Action Center, and other coalition partners’ social media for ways to join the fight!
Jane Place stands in solidarity and coalition with our unhoused neighbors and with those organizations that fight alongside them. This month, our friends at NOHHARRM have helped provide information on bills targeting unhoused individuals that have come out of Louisiana’s current legislative session. The session began on Monday, March 9 and is scheduled to run no later than June 1. Below are two troubling bills to watch and fight, and others can be found over at NOHHARRM’s Instagram page (@nohharrm), where updates will be highlighted throughout the session.
This bill, authored by Representative Debbie Villio (R – Kenner), makes “unauthorized camping on public property” a crime, and imposes strict penalties: up to six months of incarceration and/or a $500 fine upon first offense, and upon the second offense, between one and two years of incarceration, with the option for hard labor, and a $1,000 fine.
If this bill feels familiar to you, it’s because it is, in its first half, a word-for-word lift of last year’s Senate Bill 196, unsuccessfully brought forth by Senator Bob Owen (R – St. Tammany).
HB 211’s second half may also look familiar, as it is a mostly word-for-word lift from last year’s House Bill 619, unsuccessfully brought forth by Representative Alonzo Knox (D – New Orleans), which sought to establish a pathway by which Louisiana localities can set up “sanctioned encampments,” or government-run sites for authorized public camping, à la the Super Bowl-era warehouse the State erected for 10 weeks to house fewer than 200 individuals, many of whom left without being connected to resources and after having been forced to sleep there without adequate heating or water access, to the tune of more than $17 million.
As of this article’s writing, HB 211 is waiting to be heard in the House Committee on Judiciary, and we must work to ensure it doesn’t make it farther than that.
This bill, authored by Representative Knox, may also look familiar if you followed last year’s legislative session closely. It mirrors language added in as an amendment to Knox’s own HB 619, the above-referenced sanctioned encampment bill. The addition spoke to a protracted fight between state service providers and the state Legislative Auditor over how much information is really needed to effectively audit state homeless nonprofits.
Notably, HB 616 is phrased so broadly that the scope of its proposed data-seizing powers could include homeless services nonprofits who do not receive state funding. Service providers and unhoused advocates are concerned that the bill has no clear exceptions for protecting information, like unhoused individuals’ private health information, citizenship status, or histories of system involvement, which could violate the existing federal privacy standards with which state service providers must comply in order to receive continued funding from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD. HB 616 also stands to continually move independent service providers under the surveillance of our state government, who has made clear they are interested in moving away from evidence-based programs like Housing First and Harm Reduction.
Security Deposits: It’s YOUR Money, Don’t Let Your Landlord Steal It!
We get an intense amount of calls via our English and Spanish renters’ rights hotline regarding landlord security deposit theft. To counteract this issue, we have created a concise Google Doc guide at tinyurl.com/NolaSecurityDepositInfo that can help you out.
This guide will walk you through what to do before you move in, how to document while living in a rental unit, and what to do after you move out. This following link, tinyurl.com/NolaSDLawsuit, will help you to sue a landlord in Small Claims Court if they illegally withhold your deposit. The good news is that the process is very easy! During April, our renters’ rights legal clinics will focus a lot more on security deposits, so stop on by. See the dates below.
Upcoming Fun Events, Workshops, and How to Connect
Wanna get involved? Get informed? Join us at these events!
New Orleans Renters’ Rights Assembly (and Renters’ Rights Legal Clinic)
Thursday 4/2
6 to 8 p.m.
First Grace UMC (entrance through back parking lot)
3401 Canal St. 70119
Rally and Day of Action on Homelessness at the State Capitol
Wednesday 4/8
9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
The State Capitol
900 N. Third Street, Baton Rouge, LA 70802
(follow UNITY @unityofgreaterneworleans and Jane Place on social media for updates on precise timing the week beforehand)
Renters’ Rights Legal Clinic (come chat with a lawyer for free!)
Tuesday 4/14 and Wednesday 4/22
6 to 8 p.m.
Jane Place’s Office
200 S. Broad Street, Ste. 200
30 Days of Housing Justice Celebration and Summer Resource Fair
Saturday 6/6
11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
First Grace UMC (entrance through back parking lot)
3401 Canal St. 70119
(Volunteer at tinyurl.com/30Days2026)
For more information, go to jpnsi.org or @janeplace_communitylandtrust on Instagram, email frank@jpnsi.org, or text UPDATES to 504-517-5470 with your name and the event you have interest in.
This space is provided to Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative as a community service and does not necessarily reflect the opinions or editorial policies of ANTIGRAVITY.
