NOLA Mayor Asks the Public For Donations to Stop City Evictions

It's been a rough couple of months for Americans, and Louisiana is not exempt from troubles related to the coronavirus pandemic. Businesses shut down, people losing their jobs, people losing their lives, it's all so not what we wanted 2020 to be.

And it's been especially hard for people who are worried about having a roof over their head in the middle of all of this chaos. Well, New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell has a solution for that. On Thursday, she asked the public to pitch in and pay landlords to stop evictions on their neighbors. According to the Gambit, Cantrell is openly acknowledging the failure of the government to get a grip on the city's housing crisis, and is seeking citizens' help with the Rental Assistance Program.

She told Gambit “We have been doing our best to keep up with rental assistance programs since the beginning of this pandemic. In early April, the City opened up a rental assistance program for several weeks with a total of over 8,300 applicants, which quickly exhausted the program’s resources." A second round of assistance was implemented on July 27th, but those resources have apparently already been exhausted as well.

Cantrell issued the request through her Forward Together New Orleans organization, and is asking for the donations to go through Givebutter.com crowdsourcing site. The website states that "The rental assistance program will be open to individuals whose household income has been reduced as a result of COVID-1,9 and who are not receiving rental assistance through other organizations."