NEW ORLEANS — About 350 people stay at the low-barrier shelter in downtown New Orleans. People who stay there say it can be chaotic.
"You put them in here in a low barrier shelter where you got people who’s probably on drugs you going to interact two people each other and boom you’re going to have exposure as of what just happened," Joseph Merritt, who stays at the shelter, said.
The city says Thursday a resident of the shelter stabbed two people and was then shot by a security guard. The city's homeless services director, Nathaniel Fields, says with so many people, incidents are bound to happen. He says they have security measures in place to try to avoid it.
The city has been working to improve the conditions of the dilapidated building. Plus, just a few weeks ago, the city announced they were looking for a new organization to run the shelter. Our partners at Nola.com found Mayor Cantrell's administration was late paying the shelter's former operator, Start Corporation. The city has since raised the budget to $4 million, but in the meantime, the city is running it themselves.
They say they're doing what they can. They say they're trying to keep everyone safe and the perception of the "low barrier" is often times misconstrued.
"When people think low barrier they think there's no rules, that’s not the case. What it is is that we don’t ask for identification or payment when you come into the shelter but it does not mean you can walk in from the streets and not be checked out. Our security officers check every individual who's on-site to make sure the individuals here are safe," Fields said.
► Get breaking news from your neighborhood delivered directly to you by downloading the new FREE WWL-TV News app now in the IOS App Store or Google Play.