Tuesday, March 16, 2010

St. Louis Has a New Policy to Protect Rather Than Dispose of the Possessions of the Homeless

"St. Louis (Missouri) has established a policy which now provides sturdy bags and waterproof identification tags to make it easier for homeless residents to store their stuff — and to retrieve it when it does get (thrown out by city clean up crews.)

"We keep an inventory and make arrangements for people to pick up whatever they've left behind," Siedhoff says the Director of Health and Human Services in the city.

It's an unusual policy. Cities are more likely to confiscate and destroy the property of the homeless than to monitor and store it."

www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124735830