It's a crisis happening at animal shelters across the country and here at home: overcrowding and overpopulation pushing advocates over the edge. "It's really the worst we've really seen in many, many years," Ginnie Baumann Robilotta with Animal Rescue New Orleans, said. "Many of the municipal shelters cannot take animals as surrenders immediately, and so we see animals just let loose in the streets."In the past year, the number of strays, surrenders and new litters coming in are forcing many of these animal advocates to make really tough decisions. A problem that they haven't seen in years. "I mean, we have three dogs in every kennel! It just breaks your heart," Denise Gutnisky with the St. Tammany Parish Department of Animal Services, said. "We're getting in sometimes five litters a week. What do you do with five litters of up puppies?"Several factors are playing into this, like pet restrictions at rental homes, home insurance restrictions, the cost of care, and many families being back at work following the COVID-19 pandemic. "Evictions, unemployment at this point, but also the animals coming back from COVID, believe it or not," Baumann Robilotta said. "It's so hard to find a pet-friendly rental property around here and one that's not breed-specific," Rebecca Melanson with the Louisiana SPCA said. It's forcing many of these nonprofits to get creative. The LASPCA is even going beyond offering low-cost care and adoptions to providing food, supplies and even collars to keep pets in homes. "So if you need a kennel, if you need a bag of food until you can get to your next paycheck, you know your dog needs to eat. We have that as well," Melanson said. St. Tammany Animal Services has been forking out hundreds of dollars per dog in some cases recently to have them transported out of state. However, that option is very costly, and proving to be more difficult by each passing month. "Three years ago, the rescues in Canada and Delaware and anywhere we went, they paid the transport fee. They were anxious to get dogs that they could in turn adopt, and make some fees off of. Now, if you didn't offer the transport fee, they wouldn't even talk to you," Gutnisky said. The group is also working with Washington Parish to spay/neuter animals for free, which these advocates will tell you is the top way to reduce the population. "Jefferson Parish has a program they neuter for feral cats, and we have seen a huge impact since it went into place many, many years ago," Baumann Robilotta said. Animal lovers are also looking to lawmakers to help loosen the leash, requiring spaying and neutering to be mandatory in some communities so that rental and insurance companies can't discriminate based on breed."But what we don't have anything like that," Gutnisky said. "And some sort of small breeding permit fee because you're going to get backlash from the breeders because they're just having puppies left and right."St. Tammany Animal Services is also hosting a Paws for a Cause event on GiveNola Day, hoping to raise $20,000 to transport even more animals and help the shelter maintain its no kill status, despite the rates of euthanasia rising across the country. The group is also hosting a ribbon-cutting ceremony for its new Rainbow Bridge, honoring our pets who've passed on. The event is from 10 a.m. until 3 p.m. at the shelter: 31078 Highway 36, Lacombe, LA 70445. It's being put on by Scott's Wish and Mardi Paws.