<html>
<body>
<h1><b>Homeless and Struggling In New Orleans<br><br>
<br>
</b></h1><h3><b>On the Fourth Anniversary of Katrina, New Orleans is
Still Far From Recovery</b></h3><font size=3>August 25, 2009 By <b>Jordan
Flaherty</b> <br><br>
<a href="http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22425" eudora="autourl">
http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22425<br><br>
</a>Crawling through a hole in a fence and walking through an open
doorway, Shamus Rohn and Mike Miller lead the way into an abandoned
Midcity hospital. They are outreach workers for the New Orleans
organization UNITY for the Homeless, and they do this all day long;
searching empty houses and buildings for homeless people, so they can
offer services and support. "We joke about having turned criminal
trespass into a fulltime job," says Rohn. <br>
<br>
Up a darkened stairway and through the detritus of a building that looks
like its been scavenged for anything of value to sell, Rohn and Miller
enter a sundrenched room. Inside is Michael Palmer, a 57-year-old white
former construction worker and merchant seaman who has made a home here.
Palmer - his friends call him Mickey - is in some ways lucky. He found a
room with a door that locks. He salvaged some furniture from other parts
of the hospital, so he has a bed, a couch, and a rug. Best of all, he has
a fourth-floor room with a balcony. "Of all the homeless," he
says, "I probably have the best view."<br>
<br>
Mickey has lived here for six months. He's been homeless since shortly
after Katrina, and this is by far the best place he's stayed in that
time. "I've lived on the street," he says. "I've slept in
a cardboard box." He is a proud man, thin and muscled with a fresh
shave, clean clothes and a trim mustache. He credits a nearby church,
which lets him shave and shower. <br>
<br>
But Palmer would like to be able to pay rent again. "My apartment
was around $450. I could afford $450. I can't afford $700 or $800 and
that's what the places have gone up to." Keeping himself together,
well-dressed and fresh, Mickey is trying to go back to the life he had.
"I have never lived on the dole of the state," he says proudly.
"I've never been on welfare, never collected food stamps."
Palmer rented an apartment before Katrina. He did repairs and
construction. "I had my own business," he says. "I had a
pickup truck with all my tools, and all that went under water."
<br>
<br>
Palmer is one of thousands of homeless people living in New Orleans'
storm damaged and abandoned homes and buildings. Four years after
Katrina, recovery and rebuilding has come slow to this city, and there
are many boarded-up homes to choose from. The Greater New Orleans
Community Data Center counts 65,888 abandoned residential addresses in
New Orleans, and this number doesn't include any of the many
non-residential buildings, like the hospital Mickey stays in. Overall,
about a third of the addresses in the city are vacant or abandoned, the
highest rate in the nation. UNITY for the Homeless is the only
organization surveying these spaces, and Miller and Rohn are the only
fulltime staff on the project. They have surveyed 1,330 buildings - a
small fraction of the total number of empty structures. Of those, 564
were unsecured. Nearly 40% of them showed signs of use, including a total
of 270 bedrolls or mattresses.<br>
<br>
Using conservative estimates, UNITY estimates at least 6,000 squatters,
and a total of about 11,000 homeless individuals in the city.<br>
<br>
UNITY workers have also found that not all people living in New Orleans'
abandoned homes are squatters. In the last three months alone, they have
found nine homeowners living in their own toxic, flood-damaged, often
completely unrepaired homes. These are people living in buildings -
identified as abandoned and not fit for human habitation - that they (or
extended family members) actually own. <br>
<br>
The abandoned building dwellers they've found are generally older than
the overall homeless population, with high rates of disability and
illness. The average age of folks they have found is 45, and the oldest
was 90. Over 70% report or show signs of psychiatric disorders, and 42%
show signs of disabling medical illnesses and problems. Disabling
means "people that are facing death if not treated properly,"
clarifies Rohn. "We're not talking about something like high blood
pressure."<br>
<br>
Life in Abandoned Homes<br>
<br>
"This leg here bent backwards and the muscle came up," says
Naomi Burkhalter, an elderly Black woman in a wheelchair, sitting outside
of the abandoned house she lives in and gesturing to her badly twisted
leg. She was injured during Katrina, and can't walk. She stays in a
flood-damaged house in New Orleans' Gert Town neighborhood, with no
electricity or running water. She says the owner - who cannot afford to
repair the home - knows she lives there, along with two other women. When
they need water, they fill bottles up from neighbors. When she needs to
get in and out of her house, she crawls, very slowly dragging herself up
and down the steps with her hands, leaving her wheelchair outside and
hoping no one takes it. Miss Naomi worked at a shrimp company and rented
an apartment before Katrina. Now, between her injury and higher rents,
she can no longer afford her former home. "My rent was 350
dollars," she explains. "But when I came back, my rent was up
to $1200." Burkhalter has been homeless since then.<br>
<br>
UNITY has received funding from the federal government for 752 housing
vouchers specifically to help house the city's homeless population. They
have put people on a list, with those in the most danger of dying if they
don't get help on the top of the list. However, the vouchers still have
not arrived, and at least 16 people from the list have already died while
waiting. "The stress and trauma that these people have endured
cannot be overstated," says Martha Kegel, executive director of
UNITY. "The neighborhood infrastructure that so many people depended
on is gone."<br>
<br>
This problem was exacerbated by the demolition of thousands of units of
public housing, an act which not only took away the community that many
people found brought them comfort and safety, but has also made
affordable rentals for poor New Orleanians even harder to find. Section 8
subsidized housing has been offered as a solution for those displaced
from public housing and other poor renters, but a new study from Greater
New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center (GNOFHAC) shows that
discrimination keeps many people from finding quality housing through the
program. According to the report, 82% of landlords in the city either
refused to accept Section 8 vouchers, or added insurmountable
requirements.<br>
<br>
The study found that both discrimination on the part of landlords (99% of
Section 8 voucher holders in Orleans parish are Black) and mismanagement
on the part of the housing agency were barriers. One prospective landlord
told a tester for GNOFHAC that he wouldn't rent to Section 8 holders,
"until Black ministers...start teaching morals and ethics to their
own, so they don't have litters of pups like animals, and they're not
milking the system."<br>
<br>
The mismanagement from the Housing Authority of New Orleans (HANO) was
also a big problem for prospective landlords. "I faxed HANO the
needed information 12 times for the rent I was never paid" said one
landlord. Another housing provider said, "I called every day
for a month and never got a call back."<br>
<br>
Last month, more than a hundred members of STAND for Dignity, a
grassroots membership project of the New Orleans Workers Center for
Racial Justice, protested outside of the offices of HANO, decrying their
lack of action. A single mother named Ayesha told the crowd that she had
been on the Section 8 waiting list for eight years, and still hasn't
received any help. She is paying 80% of her income on rent, and has been
forced to go months at a time without water, gas or lights. George
Tucker, another member of STAND, and also (like Mickey Palmer) a former
merchant mariner, told the assembled crowd his story of being evicted
from his apartment because HANO lost his paperwork. Because of
bureaucratic carelessness, he was homeless for thirteen months.
"This governmental crookedness is not new," he said. "But
it cannot continue without consequences."<br>
<br>
Last week, at least partly in response to criticism from folks like the
members of STAND, HANO announced that they would accept new applications
for Section 8 vouchers, for the first time in six years. The period that
they will accept applications in is only a week long - from September 6
through 12. <br>
<br>
Fear and Harassment<br>
<br>
"My best friend died three weeks ago in this chair," says
Mickey Palmer gesturing next to him in his room in the abandoned
hospital. "There was two other people staying here with me. One
gentleman got in an accident about two months ago and he's paralyzed in
the hospital. Another friend of mine OD'ed and died here three weeks ago.
My best friend. So I'm here alone."<br>
<br>
Palmer also fears police harassment. "The police hate homeless
people," he declares. "They'll arrest me on drunk in
public," he says. "I haven't had a drink in months."
Gesturing around the room that he has made into a home, he adds, "Of
course, this is illegal. If I get caught I can not only be evicted, but
incarcerated. I could go to jail for trespassing."<br>
<br>
This fear drives the homeless further underground, and makes it even
harder for organizations like UNITY to find them and offer help.
"Our city has a long history of police criminalization of
homelessness, so people have reason to hide," explains Martha
Kegel.<br>
<br>
Despite the size and scope of this problem, help has been hard to come
by, from either the city, state, or federal government. "I'm not a
politician and I'm not politically savvy," says Palmer. "But I
don't think they care." <br>
<br>
In a rare step forward last month, both houses of Louisiana's legislature
unanimously passed a bill creating a statewide agency - to be almost
entirely funded by the federal government - to address the issue of
homelessness. However, Governor Jindal vetoed the bill. Jindal also
vetoed funding for the New Orleans Adolescent Hospital, further reducing
medical and mental health services in the city - another factor that has
made life hard for many homeless folks in the city. As rates of mental
illness rise in the city, we now have less treatment available then ever
before.<br>
<br>
For people like Mickey, caught in a city with few good paying jobs, much
more expensive housing, and ever-decreasing social services, there are
not many options. "At one time we were part of the city and part of
the workforce," Mickey says. "But people cannot afford the
housing in New Orleans anymore. I find most of the people I know, my
friends, they can't afford the rent."<br>
<br>
Like most people in his position, Palmer has felt hopelessness at his
plight. "I try not to get depressed, he says, nervously
flicking his lighter. "But this can get you depressed. Coming back
here last night got me a little depressed."<br>
<br>
Jordan Flaherty is a journalist, an editor of Left Turn Magazine, and a
staffer with the Louisiana Justice Institute. He was the first
writer to bring the story of the Jena Six to a national audience and his
reporting on post-Katrina New Orleans shared a journalism award from New
America Media. Audiences around the world have seen the reports he's
produced for Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, and Democracy Now. He can be reached at
neworleans@leftturn.org.<br>
<br>
Housing and Homelessness in New Orleans:<br>
UNITY of Greater New Orleans -
<a href="http://www.unitygno.org/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.unitygno.org<br>
</a>Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center -
<a href="http://www.gnofairhousing.org/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.gnofairhousing.org</a> <br>
STAND for Dignity -
<a href="http://www.nowcrj.org/about-2/homeless-worker-organizing-project" eudora="autourl">
http://www.nowcrj.org/about-2/homeless-worker-organizing-project<br>
</a> <br>
Other Resources:<br>
Left Turn Magazine -
<a href="http://www.leftturn.org/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.leftturn.org<br>
</a>Louisiana Justice Institute -
<a href="http://www.louisianajusticeinstitute.org/" eudora="autourl">
http://www.louisianajusticeinstitute.org<br>
</a>Justice Roars -
<a href="http://louisianajusticeinstitute.blogspot.com/" eudora="autourl">
http://louisianajusticeinstitute.blogspot.com<br><br>
<br><br>
</a></font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#008000">415 863-9977<br><br>
</font><font size=3 color="#0000FF">
<a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">
www.Freedomarchives.org</a></font><font size=3> </font></body>
</html>