First, there are scores of kids who returned to New Orleans WITHOUT their parents.While I do not live in the city at present, I do try to keep my ear to the ground, reading the blogs as well as the "Cat Box Liner" site. And I've neard nothing like this! Sounds like it would make a great article for maybe the Gambit.
and ban such a practice with criminal penalty specific to the Emergency declarationAren't minors living without adults already technically wards of the state or something? Then again, that begs the question of where you would put all these children. There never would have been enough foster homes to house them all. There certainly wouldn't be now.
Secondly, some neighborhoods with the worst crime (Ninth, Midcity and Hollygrove)Mid-City has some of the worst crime? I was just there twice during my visit (the second place is actually in Faubourg St. John). My host there describes his part of Mid-City as the "Triangle of Hope". Is there a particular area that's bad?
And certain areas that have no residences should be CLOSED until residents returnWasn't the National Guard supposed to be in those areas, so NOPD could patrol the populated areas? (Oh, right, half of them are in Iraq. :P ) A compromise might be to block off various side streets, thereby turning the area into a sort of "gated community" with only one or two entrances (and exits).
I too live in NOLA, and work in restoring homes throughout the ninth ward, gentilly, lakeview and old MetairieBravo! :yourock: What organization are you with?
Right now, you can kill someone in Hollygrove, and go into 9 out of 10 houses in any direction to hide in which are still vacant on every block.Eurghh. I'd heard at least one organization (Trinity Christian Community) had AmeriCorps volunteers in Hollygrove working to rebuild. What, then, of other neighborhoods that don't even have that?
If there's a neighborhood that's so down it doesn't have its own group yet, I might be tempted to come back and start one, along the lines of Tulane/Gravier's Phoenix of New Orleans (
http://www.pnola.org ), with whom I met during my all-too-brief visit.