LogFAQs > #881533494

https://www.arktimes.com/arkansas/loaves-and-fishes/Content?oid=7260408

The last time I talked about this was before they decided to table the ordinance and instead put it into an interim 45 day study.

The city administration is essentially taking the exact argument @Clad made back then, which is that feeding homeless people is bad because they're drug users and make a mess of city property:



"A basic human need is survival and food," said Alan Sims, Little Rock Convention and Visitors Bureau vice president for sales and services. "So if you're feeding, it's an attractant. They're going to be attracted there. Why can't we balance? Why can't we attract them? It doesn't have to be in a park. It doesn't have to be where our children are. It doesn't have to be where there are safety issues and visitor issues. Why can't we attract them someplace else? I hope this group can find that. We want to feed and we want a great city. We can have both."

Asked whether he believes there is a direct correlation between feeding in Riverfront Park and needles found in the park, Jones repeated that the perception of a link is there.

"Are there facts to support that? I don't know. There's a perception that there is," he said. "There are a lot of homeless people who do sleep in the park. ... There are some people who think that when the feedings take place, they're going to stay where they're fed, and they'll stay there until the next day. That is a perception of citizens that call us all the time. They believe that. Is it a fact? I can't say that I have actual documentation to back that up."


...

"Our convention center is right downtown, our primary hotels are right downtown, and they're all adjacent to the park," he said. "To be a guest in the hotel and look out the window and there's a large mass feeding going on right outside your hotel room, I'm questioning whether that's the image or the perception that we want. Would there not be a better place that might be more conducive to the feeding?"

Of course, the groups who actually work with the homeless justifiably point out that the homeless congregate downtown regardless, as demonstrated by Jericho's Way and by Our House, both homeless shelters that are not located downtown
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