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BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) – With little pushback, the proposal to make it illegal to give homeless money from your car has already made it halfway through the process of becoming law. According to the lawmaker behind it, the primary concern is the safety of everyone on the road.
“It’s illegal for the person to be out there. Now, what we’re doing is we’re going to say the person offering that currency to them, we’re gonna hold them accountable as well,” said Rep. Dixon McMakin (R-Baton Rouge) who wrote the bill.
He says although the intention comes from a good place, those handing out money are putting themselves and those around them at risk, not to mention holding up traffic.
“Well, number one it could cut down on some of the congestion at an intersection, and number two the person who is giving the money, let’s try to keep them safe and let the homeless people go through the proper channels of organizations here in the Baton Rouge area,” said Jesse Guillory, a local we talked to.
“Um, I do worry sometimes about the safety issues when people stop to give homeless people money. I worry about the homeless people as well,” said Sarah Wylie who also lives in the city.
McMakin says for anyone saying the bill is heartless and uncaring, he would argue his reason for bringing it is quite the opposite.
“I’ll flip it on them and say I’m more concerned. I want less people out on the interstate highway systems, I want people not to be out there do that. I want them to go seek the proper help and that’s where the idea comes from,” McMakin explained.
“You should be able to still give it if it’s during the day or at night, I don’t feel threatened. Usually when I give change, they tell me god bless me and they’re thankful for me giving some change,” said Dadreal Simmons who lives in the city but says the bill is unnecessary.
As for how this would be enforced, McMakin says you would enforce it like any other law and says hopefully people can learn to self-enforce.
To try and get all perspectives around this idea we popped our heads into several homeless camps to hear their thoughts, but no one would comment. The camps we visited were located right next to some of the hotspots in McMakin’s district like the one on college drive. Recently the city just spent several thousand dollars on a barricade under the Siegen overpass due to large groups on homeless camping out there and using drugs.
We contacted BRPD to ask how they would go about enforcing this and were told they did not want to comment on the bill until it officially becomes law.
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