As New Orleans continues its extensive push to fight homelessness, housing advocates and homeless service providers say they are concerned that some of the city’s most vulnerable residents are being left behind.
The city has hired the Houston-based firm Clutch Consulting to oversee the massive effort to get hundreds of people off the street. Clutch, along with local nonprofits UNITY of Greater New Orleans and the Travelers Aid Society, is managing an effort to clear encampments, focusing on housing people who have been living in tents in areas like the Pontchartrain Expressway underpass and other parts of town near major tourist attractions. Earlier this month, the city closed the Tchoupitoulas encampment below the expressway, relocating 36 people to apartments as of Dec. 1 but leaving others behind.
The approach is a departure from the way agencies normally prioritize housing for unhoused people, said Jesse Rabinowitz with the National Homelessness Law Center. Organizations like UNITY typically follow standards set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which dictates that people with greatest needs get priority for housing vouchers.
“It’s very clear that prioritizing people for housing based on visibility and not vulnerability is not a healthy solution and is not an equitable way to distribute scarce housing,” Rabinowitz said.
When a new client makes contact with a housing agency, they are typically assigned a “vulnerability score” based on factors such as having disabilities or being unhoused for a long period of time. Service providers then try to place them into temporary or permanent housing using housing vouchers or locate a shelter bed, though both can be scarce. UNITY manages the process in New Orleans, assessing who is most vulnerable. “It’s kind of like ER triage,” said Martha Kegel, the group’s director.
Kegel said that UNITY is reassessing the housing process for upcoming encampment closures to account for equity issues, including race.
According to UNITY’s point in time count in January, 65% of New Orleans’ unhoused population were Black; only 28% of the people housed from Tchoupitoulas encampment were Black, Kegel said.
City officials and Clutch Consulting maintain the city’s new plan is inclusive of people living in shelters and those on the street.
Mandy Chapman Semple, Clutch’s managing partner, said that under the plan, people outside of encampments will still be assessed and placed into appropriate housing.
“We’re not saying these individuals need housing while others don’t,” Chapman Semple said of those in the encampments.
But as the city has concentrated on transferring residents from encampments into housing, one service provider says wait times for unhoused people in other parts of the city have increased.
Katey Lantto is a case manager at the Harry Tompson Center, a day shelter near the University Medical Center. Several of her clients have mental health disabilities and have been on the street for at least a year, factors that should mean they are prioritized for housing. Since this summer, Lantto said she has noticed an increase in wait times for her clients to get housed — and she suspects the city’s new encampment-based approach may be one reason why her clients are further down the priority list.
“I have double the amount of clients that’d usually have been housed by now,” Lantto said.
Usually, Lantto is able to refer clients to housing within a month of intake, she said. But now, her clients are waiting for up to three to five months.
However, there are people across the city tucked away in abandoned buildings, parks and cars, who also have urgent needs. Anthony Thomas, who has been on the street for three years, would be among the first in line for housing because of several disabilities including diabetes and congenital heart disease. He said he was also recently released from hospital after a serious infection. After first making contact with Traveller’s Aid a year ago, Thomas did an intake with a UNITY outreach worker in August for permanent housing. By late November, Thomas was still waiting.
“I’m just hoping and praying something is going to happen in the next couple of weeks cause it’s about to get cold,” Thomas said.
Deciding fairly who gets housing is one of the most difficult decisions agencies make, said Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
“These decisions are complicated by a nationwide scarcity of affordable housing units and of homelessness resources,” Oliva said in a statement. “They are even further entangled by political pressure that often places far greater priority on the most visible people experiencing homelessness in a community, rather than adherence to a prioritization process put in place by the system’s experts.”
Before its closure, the Tchoupitoulas encampment was a collection of tents sitting on the new River District development site. The River District broke ground Nov. 29th, days after the city and its contractors officially shut down and fenced off the encampment. The new $1 billion development is slated to include a new office building for Shell Oil, a complex for Topgolf and roughly 900 apartment and condo units, including some affordable units.
The Tchoupitoulas encampment was also the focus of public health concerns, with six deaths and 10 fires reported at the camp between March and September, along with overdoses, according to the Times-Picayune. Clutch has said its focus on prioritizing encampments is in response to those issues.
UNITY was awarded a $15 million federal grant from HUD, which is expected to be released in January. Kegel said these funds will be used to house 420 people across the city within a year.
“We are concerned about homelessness wherever it’s found,” said HUD spokesperson Scott Hudman in a statement to Verite News. “But it’s a mistake to think that other homeless will be ignored. The encampment effort is short term.”
Chapman Semple says Clutch Consulting is currently working with another encampment likely to close in January, but declined to name its location. She is confident there will be enough units to house everyone on the list from the next encampment.
“We have had no trouble finding enough units so far,” Chapman Semple said in a statement to Verite. “If this becomes a challenge we would obviously adjust our timelines to accommodate.”
In the meantime, service providers are also worried about people still waiting for housing who may face fines or jail time for seeking shelter in closed encampments.
As officials began dismantling the Tchoupitoulas encampment earlier this month, they put up fliers warning people that they would face fines and jail time should they return to the site.
“We are very upset about the flyers threatening fines and arrests, which goes against everything we do and stand for, and that these flyers would list UNITY’s name,” Kegel wrote in a text message to Verite News.
“Threatening people experiencing homelessness with arrest or fines is not a path forward,” Rabinowitz said.
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