Homeless and Struggling In New Orleans
On the Fourth Anniversary of Katrina, New Orleans is Still Far From Recovery
by Jordan Flaherty / August 25th, 2009
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
Using conservative estimates, UNITY estimates at least 6,000 squatters, and a total of about 11,000 homeless individuals in the city.
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.
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.”
Life in Abandoned Homes
“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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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.”
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.”
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.
Fear and Harassment
“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.”
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.”
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
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.”
Jordan Flaherty is a journalist based in New Orleans and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. 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 has been published and broadcast in outlets including Die Zeit (in Germany), Clarin (in Argentina), Al-Jazeera, TeleSur, and Democracy Now!. He can be reached at: neworleans@leftturn.org. Read other articles by Jordan, or visit Jordan's website.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Traded two tables for a tent today
I traded my landlord two folding tables for a tent today. It was a good deal. I got rid of two things I didn't need and got something I might. Looks like we are nowhere near bottom and could get considerably worse.
Fed offers bleak economic outlook: The Federal Reserve cut its economic outlook for 2009 on Wednesday and warned that the United States economy would face an "unusually gradual and prolonged" period of recovery as the country struggles to climb out of a deep global downturn
10,000 Americans Going Into Foreclosure Every Day
It's Time to Treat America's Homeowners as Well as We've Been Treating Wall Street's Bankers
By Arianna Huffington
The New Depression
By Martin Jacques
The business and political elite are flying blind. This is the mother of all economic crises. It has barely started and remains completely out of control.
Fed offers bleak economic outlook: The Federal Reserve cut its economic outlook for 2009 on Wednesday and warned that the United States economy would face an "unusually gradual and prolonged" period of recovery as the country struggles to climb out of a deep global downturn
10,000 Americans Going Into Foreclosure Every Day
It's Time to Treat America's Homeowners as Well as We've Been Treating Wall Street's Bankers
By Arianna Huffington
The New Depression
By Martin Jacques
The business and political elite are flying blind. This is the mother of all economic crises. It has barely started and remains completely out of control.
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
Email from Katrina Thanks, Kat
Hello there, I came across your website on google search. I looked through it and I just wanted to send you an email and share my homeless story.
My name is Kat and I live in my car with my boyfriend and my two dogs. Last year my boyfriend and I were kicked out of our roomates house because she was a druggie and turned her house into a crack house basically. My boyfriend and I don't do drugs at all and our roomate and us butted heads because of this a lot. We didnt have any place to go and didnt have a job at the time (we got laid off). We started looking for jobs and found one with a guy who owned an ice cream shop. He knew we were homeless and offered us to live with him and he would pay us by rent basically. Well this is around the time we also found out that I am pregnant. So we lived with our boss and he didnt pay us but just let us stay with him and we had to work 40-50 hours a week, do all the house chores and figure out a way to pay for our gas and food. Well we got food stamps which really helped. Then our boss, decides to move and gives us less than a few days notice that he needs us out to move out and sell his house. So, right now I am 5 months pregnant, still going to a community college, trying to find a job (since he closed his business and didnt pay us) and figure out how to survive in this economy. My boyfriend and I live in our car again with our 2 dogs. Our food stamps have been lowered since we have no job and no address anymore. Its been a very hard and difficult year for us, and we have been putting so many applications in to so many places and we havent heard anything back yet. We have been to a few job interviews but still havent heard anything from them. I just am so desperate for a job but who hires a girl who definitly looks pregnant?? Im so scared but I still have a little bit of hope left. My boyfriend and I are staying close and keeping each other from falling into a deep depression. We are both 21 years old and we are really trying but so many people are on a hiring freeze right now!! I pray every day that something will come up and change our lives...until then I will keep hoping!
Katrina
My mailing address is 10014 June Dr Apt 2 St. Ann MO 63074, its my boyfriends brothers address he lets us use it.
My name is Kat and I live in my car with my boyfriend and my two dogs. Last year my boyfriend and I were kicked out of our roomates house because she was a druggie and turned her house into a crack house basically. My boyfriend and I don't do drugs at all and our roomate and us butted heads because of this a lot. We didnt have any place to go and didnt have a job at the time (we got laid off). We started looking for jobs and found one with a guy who owned an ice cream shop. He knew we were homeless and offered us to live with him and he would pay us by rent basically. Well this is around the time we also found out that I am pregnant. So we lived with our boss and he didnt pay us but just let us stay with him and we had to work 40-50 hours a week, do all the house chores and figure out a way to pay for our gas and food. Well we got food stamps which really helped. Then our boss, decides to move and gives us less than a few days notice that he needs us out to move out and sell his house. So, right now I am 5 months pregnant, still going to a community college, trying to find a job (since he closed his business and didnt pay us) and figure out how to survive in this economy. My boyfriend and I live in our car again with our 2 dogs. Our food stamps have been lowered since we have no job and no address anymore. Its been a very hard and difficult year for us, and we have been putting so many applications in to so many places and we havent heard anything back yet. We have been to a few job interviews but still havent heard anything from them. I just am so desperate for a job but who hires a girl who definitly looks pregnant?? Im so scared but I still have a little bit of hope left. My boyfriend and I are staying close and keeping each other from falling into a deep depression. We are both 21 years old and we are really trying but so many people are on a hiring freeze right now!! I pray every day that something will come up and change our lives...until then I will keep hoping!
Katrina
My mailing address is 10014 June Dr Apt 2 St. Ann MO 63074, its my boyfriends brothers address he lets us use it.
Monday, February 16, 2009
GM considering Chapter 11 - Forclosure picture wins award
GM considering Chapter 11 filing, new company: report
General Motors Corp, nearing a Tuesday deadline to present a viability plan to the U.S. government, is considering as one option a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing that would create a new company, the Wall Street Journal said in its Saturday edition.
US foreclosure image is 2008 World Press Photo
A picture of an armed sheriff moving through an American home after an eviction due to a mortgage foreclosure was named World Press Photo of 2008 on Friday.
General Motors Corp, nearing a Tuesday deadline to present a viability plan to the U.S. government, is considering as one option a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing that would create a new company, the Wall Street Journal said in its Saturday edition.
US foreclosure image is 2008 World Press Photo
A picture of an armed sheriff moving through an American home after an eviction due to a mortgage foreclosure was named World Press Photo of 2008 on Friday.
Email from Sandy Re: Causes of Homelessness. Thanks Sandy!
Please add these reasons to your list of causes for homelessness:
No means of transportation
Over-qualified for available jobs
Severe housing shortage crisis (in US about 50M or more people immigrated here over the past 150 years, & there never were enough housing units because US was virgin land without housing)
Chronic poor health
Old age
Disabilities of all sorts (not just mental illness -- blind, crippled, & many more)
Low wages being offered (many homeless people work but can't afford housing of any kind -- McDonalds etc pay too little)
Orphans (both child & adults who have no financially well-off relatives or friends who can help them)
Language barriers
Lack of education thru no fault of their own (immigrants but also many Americans either lived where it wasn't available --think back to 1865 in the south -- or the prejudices & laws were meant to keep them from getting education; poverty also kept most people from getting an education)
Education itself causes poverty (they can't afford transportation or materials, no matter how small, to get an education)
Trying to be an "Entrepreneur" (most fail thru no fault of their own -- they fail only because the System is set up to cause failure (Capitalism; the wage > Ref: The Rich & Super-Rich, by Ferdinand Lundberg)
loans (which shouldn't exist because they're slavery)
Stolen identity
poor Resume (employers stick them on the bottom or just burn them without looking because of the way it looks)
Unnatural disasters (fires of entire apartment complexes (example)
Housing bubble burst (not their fault)
the present economic woes caused by things out of a person's control (all people & nations are connected financially, so it's the domino effect - caused by capitalism, the wage which is slavery)
Inability to know how to spend money "wisely" (most people, if any even the rich) don't know how to handle money)
Automobiles (inability to afford repairs & maintenance thru no fault of their own, caused by low wage offered)
expensive child care vs. low wages
Unable to marry (it's hard to find some one, period, & add to that find someone who both work & earn enough to survive)
Inability to find a roommate
Bad luck (either one time or many times in a row)
Trauma (death of child or spouse or parent; car crash, etc)
Advertisements (brainwash them to spend too much; plus people shop & spend because there's nothing else to do)
Too many loopholes to fall thru (before many social services existed, & even after they existed there's no way for most people to know about the aid from social services available, esp. if there's a language barrier)
Job discrimination
Getting fired (causes trauma) thru no fault of their own most of the time
Having the wrong friends
Getting pregnant (both in & out of wedlock -- the poor can't take it to court since they're homeless)
Going thru Foster care (at age 18 the "help" forces those children out of foster care without a penny)
Adoption (money, or lack, always causes family problems but especially between adoptive child & parents)
Crimes against a person that contributed to their becoming homeless
Getting fired by a company just before "retirement" because the company doesn't want to pay it)
ALL of these causes are from one source: THE WAGE SYSTEM which is SLAVERY. Those reasons need to be added to your list of CAUSES of homelessness. Thank you.
Sandy
No means of transportation
Over-qualified for available jobs
Severe housing shortage crisis (in US about 50M or more people immigrated here over the past 150 years, & there never were enough housing units because US was virgin land without housing)
Chronic poor health
Old age
Disabilities of all sorts (not just mental illness -- blind, crippled, & many more)
Low wages being offered (many homeless people work but can't afford housing of any kind -- McDonalds etc pay too little)
Orphans (both child & adults who have no financially well-off relatives or friends who can help them)
Language barriers
Lack of education thru no fault of their own (immigrants but also many Americans either lived where it wasn't available --think back to 1865 in the south -- or the prejudices & laws were meant to keep them from getting education; poverty also kept most people from getting an education)
Education itself causes poverty (they can't afford transportation or materials, no matter how small, to get an education)
Trying to be an "Entrepreneur" (most fail thru no fault of their own -- they fail only because the System is set up to cause failure (Capitalism; the wage > Ref: The Rich & Super-Rich, by Ferdinand Lundberg)
loans (which shouldn't exist because they're slavery)
Stolen identity
poor Resume (employers stick them on the bottom or just burn them without looking because of the way it looks)
Unnatural disasters (fires of entire apartment complexes (example)
Housing bubble burst (not their fault)
the present economic woes caused by things out of a person's control (all people & nations are connected financially, so it's the domino effect - caused by capitalism, the wage which is slavery)
Inability to know how to spend money "wisely" (most people, if any even the rich) don't know how to handle money)
Automobiles (inability to afford repairs & maintenance thru no fault of their own, caused by low wage offered)
expensive child care vs. low wages
Unable to marry (it's hard to find some one, period, & add to that find someone who both work & earn enough to survive)
Inability to find a roommate
Bad luck (either one time or many times in a row)
Trauma (death of child or spouse or parent; car crash, etc)
Advertisements (brainwash them to spend too much; plus people shop & spend because there's nothing else to do)
Too many loopholes to fall thru (before many social services existed, & even after they existed there's no way for most people to know about the aid from social services available, esp. if there's a language barrier)
Job discrimination
Getting fired (causes trauma) thru no fault of their own most of the time
Having the wrong friends
Getting pregnant (both in & out of wedlock -- the poor can't take it to court since they're homeless)
Going thru Foster care (at age 18 the "help" forces those children out of foster care without a penny)
Adoption (money, or lack, always causes family problems but especially between adoptive child & parents)
Crimes against a person that contributed to their becoming homeless
Getting fired by a company just before "retirement" because the company doesn't want to pay it)
ALL of these causes are from one source: THE WAGE SYSTEM which is SLAVERY. Those reasons need to be added to your list of CAUSES of homelessness. Thank you.
Sandy
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Talked to Bear and Mary
Had a month of work in November, a temp position. Good to have money again. Bought some of the thermal reflective blankets for myself, Bear and Mary and Wayne, a guy who lives in the woods and rides around on a tricycle, sometimes with all his belongings in the baskets.
Talked to Bear and Mary a couple of weeks after I gave the the blankets and they said they worked well. We're lucky to be in central Florida where the weather is not too severe in the winter.
Haven't seen Wayne lately but I hope to get the blanket to him soon.
Doesn't seem to be any good news out there.
US loses most jobs since 1945: The US economy lost more than half a million jobs in December for the second month running, new figures showed on Friday, making 2008 the worst year for job losses since 1945.
Panic could herald dollar rout: There is growing evidence that Washington is in a state of increasing panic. Despite its massive cash injections, market manipulations and "rescue" plans, the recession is clearly deepening and spreading.
Talked to Bear and Mary a couple of weeks after I gave the the blankets and they said they worked well. We're lucky to be in central Florida where the weather is not too severe in the winter.
Haven't seen Wayne lately but I hope to get the blanket to him soon.
Doesn't seem to be any good news out there.
US loses most jobs since 1945: The US economy lost more than half a million jobs in December for the second month running, new figures showed on Friday, making 2008 the worst year for job losses since 1945.
Panic could herald dollar rout: There is growing evidence that Washington is in a state of increasing panic. Despite its massive cash injections, market manipulations and "rescue" plans, the recession is clearly deepening and spreading.
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