Notices posted around the Tchoupitoulas homeless encampment under the Pontchartrain Expressway overpass, seen here on Nov. 15, 2023, indicate that the camp is set to be cleared by officials. Credit: Minh Ha / Verite News
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In City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the court ruled that states can criminalize people sleeping or camping on public property, even if there is nowhere else for them to go. The frightening judicial decision raises the stakes of New Orleans’ push to close encampments: as the city puts up fencing and warns of the arrests for those who don’t leave, guaranteed housing has become an even more crucial protection. That’s especially true in a city that faces escalating extreme heat and storms, and a spiraling, climate-driven insurance crisis.
Starting around October, there has indeed been a visible rehousing push. Recent reporting celebrated a 12% drop in New Orleans’ unsheltered population since last year.
But even as there are fewer people living on New Orleans’ streets, the number of people without permanent housing — living in shelters, motels, or family members’ floors — rose since last year.
While encampments are fenced off, basic and essential housing services are being neglected. Even as the city celebrates encampment closures as victories, there are fewer places where a homeless person in New Orleans can walk in to seek housing help
Make the goal housing, not encampment closures
The city of New Orleans hired Clutch Consulting last summer to oversee efforts to shutter encampments beginning in November, rushing to accommodate private interests developing the new River District, future home to Shell regional headquarters and a TopGolf complex.
A joint use agreement concerning the first encampment, on Tchoupitoulas, went into effect November 17 (the day of the camp closure). The JUA meant the land was “essentially becoming private property,” according to Office of Homeless Services Deputy Director Taylor Diles in emails obtained by public record request. It provided the River District Neighborhood Investors (RDNI), a private corporation, with authority to manage the land. A planned timeline distributed by Diles noted that at 9 a.m. on the 17th, “RDNI begins installation of fencing along the field (Top Golf).”
When an outreach worker asked about moving that deadline if residents weren’t all housed after the encampment was cleared, Diles told her there were “too many parties at the table” to delay the fencing date. And indeed, the deadline was kept, even though the city was unable to house all camp residents in time.
According to a November 20 statement from the Mayor’s Office, the initiative’s goal is to achieve low or no unsheltered homelessness by the end of 2025. But the major focus of the effort has been framed around “decommissioning” homeless encampments.
Verite News reporter Lue Palmer reported on some of the equity issues with the camp closure efforts as they began unfolding at Tchoupitoulas, in what one local housing organizer told me was “hands-down one of the most brutal things [he’s] watched” in this work.
“Folks that had nowhere to go were basically scrambling to organize their stuff while bulldozers destroyed tents,” said Ed Strohsal of Southern Solidarity in a November message. “My initial take on what the…plan really is: make a half-assed attempt to house a few people so you can drop the hammer on the rest.”
The cIty’s approach has reportedly softened since then. But the approach is not just alarming because it is insufficient, or that it’s a good-hearted effort implemented poorly: the city’s skewed priorities are doing harm.
Our own City Councilmembers, Freddie King and Eugene Green, and business leaders like Louis Charbonnet have already been eagerly vilifying unhoused people for the deplorable conditions they are forced to survive in.
Meanwhile, extant housing resources — like the severely underfunded Community Resource and Referral Center (CRRC) — are falling apart.
The CRRC is the building that hosts both the Low Barrier Shelter, and other social services (like the Harry Tompson Center andTravelers Aid), including the offices where houseless people can get a housing case manager and begin efforts to obtain a housing voucher. While a low-income person is eligible for Section 8 vouchers through HANO, someone experiencing homelessness would be applying for different kinds of vouchers – either a permanent supportive housing (PSH) voucher, or a rapid rehousing voucher in the case of severe vulnerabilities.
But that necessary first step has gotten more difficult, as years of deferred maintenance at CRRC have caught up.
FiIrst, beginning fall 2022 until last spring, there were months of plumbing issues that caused a “huge amount of sewage” to back up behind the building, “at time[s] multiple inches deep,” forcing case managers to meet clients elsewhere. Visible markings remain on some walls, according to Angela Owczarek, a social worker who has worked in the CRRC since 2019. Owczarek and others also periodically dealt with sewage backing up and pouring from office sinks, and “sewage remnants” and toilet paper “remained stained in a ring around my office baseboards … which I’d scrub off myself.”
They’ve since faced leaking and collapsing ceilings, intermittent power and internet outages, and then months without hot water, forcing residents and clients to take cold showers during wintertime.
Next, an April power grid failure lasted months; now, there’s mold everywhere.
In fact, as a result of these mounting health hazards, Travelers Aid has ceased to operate in the CRRC. Veterans Affairs, which serves homeless veterans, has also shifted operations elsewhere pending “repairs in the CRRC,” according to Chief of Public Affairs Phillip Butterfield. The Rebuild Center nearby, has been undergoing needed renovations, and thus has had limited services.
What that means is that at points this spring, there was not a single place for an unsheltered person to take a shower, do laundry or seek walk-in housing services in New Orleans.
There are, as of last week, limited services being offered again. Rebuild has reopened with limited hours. Travelers Aid moved locations (twice) and offers walk-in services two days a week (down from four days). Donna Paramore, CEO of Travelers Aid, confirmed the organization was forced to relocate from the CRRC “due to lack of reliable power to the building.”
This all represents reduced capacity to provide housing services compared to prior years.
“There has been a shortage of services available to people because of lack of facilities,” confirmed Eva Sohl of the Harry Tompson Center, a homeless services provider a few blocks from the CRRC.
One housing outreach worker recently told me he gets calls and texts almost daily from New Orleanians looking for housing help. But often, he said, there’s nowhere he can send them: not to start applying for housing vouchers or for food stamps, or even just sit down and talk about their experiences.
The truth is that this was entirely predictable. Sophie Kasakove has reported on how Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration has been aware of the building’s appalling issues since December 2022. The city consistently failed to pay its private contractor on time, never increased the operating budget, did not provide a “permanent fix” to any of the maintenance issues, and the bulk of its attention went elsewhere: the same day the City was busy forcibly displacing those left at the Tchoup camp, the electricity went out in the LowBarrier Shelter kitchen. It stayed out for days.
It’s notable that the Low Barrier Shelter is being allowed to fall ever-deeper into disrepair while developers are refurbishing Charity Hospital, across the street, into suites of nice condos and Tulane research facilities.
Just as years of intentionally deferred maintenance helped the state justify closing Charity Hospital after Katrina, this same deferred maintenance could similarly position the city to justify the closing or relocation of the shelter. We may well see it moved someplace else — someplace, of course, less visible.
City-wide, support systems scarce
It’s worth noting that the unsheltered population, the ones targeted by this rehousing push, skews disproportionately white compared to the unhoused population citywide. Unsheltered homeless New Orleanians are about 39% white and 52% Black, while sheltered homeless New Orleanians are about 22% white and 72% Black, per a recent report from UNITY. Sheltered homelessness is also more common than unsheltered homelessness in New Orleans. That means that Black unhoused New Orleanians are disproportionately left out by the focus on encampment closures over broad housing services.
For those precariously housed, only on the brink of homelessness, support is also scarce.
Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) funds, distributed via the Office of Community Development (OCD) for tenants facing eviction from federal COVID-19 relief funds, are going to run out soon — likely by the end of August, according to multiple sources familiar with the program.
“We’re definitely all sitting here staring down the end of that program,” said Hannah Adams of Southeast Louisiana Legal Services.
Adams estimates that at least 80% of New Orleans evictions are due to non-payment. Before ERAP, “those cases were really hard.” Now, people use the program “regularly” to avoid eviction; Adams said over 24,000 households have been helped through the “incredibly useful tool.”
Meanwhile, the new Healthy Homes Ordinance – a fantastic and necessary piece of regulation spearheaded by Jane’s Place, which requires landlords to provide sufficient air conditioning in bedrooms, among other protections — has a modest $2.5 million budget, but only for personnel, and nothing for other operating expenses such as public outreach.
The office’s displacement funds — funds to help people move out of unsafe homes — would hypothetically come from the $50-$250 fees leveled against non-compliant landlords, but that amounts to such a small amount that the office hasn’t been able to distribute any, according to a source who works with the city who asked not to be identified by name over concerns of professional repercussions.
Other resources are scarce. The OCD has not updated its website’s affordable housing resources since 2020, and the number listed for its Affordable Housing Unit is out of service.
When asked about this, Cantrell’s Press Secretary Leatrice Dupre replied that “services available to residents are the Owner Occupied Rehabilitation program, which is administered by the non-profit SBP, Inc.” That program uses volunteers to fix up disaster-damaged homes, but does not directly address affordable housing.
The Office of Resilience and Sustainability (ORS), meanwhile, knows that “low-income communities are the most heavily impacted by climate change,” but the ORS “does not have general funds allocated to provide direct services to low-income residents,” according to external affairs manager Anna Nguyen.
Instead, what’s available for low-income renters and homeowners seems to be mostly various rebates and discounts via private and non-profit partnerships, such as a planned, publicly-funded outreach to teach low-income residents about certain Entergy discounts.
In short, direct aid for someone in a housing crisis is virtually nil across city offices.
Even for someone lucky enough to get services and find a voucher, source of income discrimination — e.g., landlords refusing to rent to any voucher holders — is still legal in New Orleans, which means vulnerable tenants struggle to find a landlord. .
Adams saidlack of housing choice contributes to people being stuck in shocking conditions: housing with mold, leaks, rats and sparking wires.
Housing advocates have been calling for a ban on source of income discrimination for years, a measure already in place in many cities and states.
“The lack of source of income discrimination protection is a real serious problem in our region,” confirmed Adams of SLLS. “It means that voucher holders have little to no housing stability, and they have no housing choice.”
Adams stressed what a difference the protections that do exist — ERAP andRight to Counsel — have made. In the last couple years tenant representation has risen from about 6% to 65%, she said, and the rate of evictions stemming from filings has dropped from over 60% to 25%.
Bravo to the organizers and legislators who helped put such support in place.
But as tenants are priced out, and the stakes just become far higher, New Orleans needs to be proactively seeking to house — not merely hide — the displaced.
The bigger picture
This City’s goal must not be closing encampments, but universal housing.
Climate change has, and will continue, to destroy and worsen housing stock. Our reliance on the tourism sector to fuel the city’s economy will face declining returns as extreme heat and worsening storms threaten the tourism season. And the property insurance crisis – costs also passed on to renters – will continue to worsen as climate change escalates, threatening more and more with displacement, especially those on a fixed income. Just since last year, New Orleans has seen a 15% increase in fair market rent.
The people most affected by rising housing costs and dwindling help will be poor, elderly, Black and brown New Orleanians — housed and unhoused — pushed further to the margins, socially, financially, and geographically.
In the near-term, support and fund extant services like the CRRC building, ERAP and the Healthy Homes program, rather than funneling services through private partnerships. It’s crucial the city also sustain current funding for social service workers rehousing the unsheltered, as people’s rapid rehousing vouchers from HUD are temporary, and will expire in 6-24 months. Workers will be trying to shift everyone to what are called Permanent Supportive Housing vouchers, and they must be given the resources and support needed to ensure no one slips through the gaps.
But to keep New Orleans habitable in the longer term, we need universal, affordable housing that isn’t funneled through landlords. A reasonable housing plan looks like public housing with supportive social services, expanding protection for renters (including rent control and a ban on source of income discrimination), direct access for low-income households to resiliency and retrofit projects, reparations for communities of color who’ve been stripped of wealth due to centuries of racist housing policies, and ultimately an end to the commodification of housing.
As some of the most housing- and climate-vulnerable people in the country, we ought to lead the country in our goal to truly house everyone in New Orleans.
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In rush to house most visible, city neglects housing services
by Delaney Nolan, Verite News New Orleans July 3, 2024
Delaney Nolan is a freelance writer, whose work focuses on climate and the environment, housing and displacement, and where these issues intersect. Her writing has appeared in Al Jazeera English, Mother...
More by Delaney Nolan
In rush to house most visible, city neglects housing services
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Everyone deserves access to quality information. Sign up for our free newsletters.
In City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, the court ruled that states can criminalize people sleeping or camping on public property, even if there is nowhere else for them to go. The frightening judicial decision raises the stakes of New Orleans’ push to close encampments: as the city puts up fencing and warns of the arrests for those who don’t leave, guaranteed housing has become an even more crucial protection. That’s especially true in a city that faces escalating extreme heat and storms, and a spiraling, climate-driven insurance crisis.
Starting around October, there has indeed been a visible rehousing push. Recent reporting celebrated a 12% drop in New Orleans’ unsheltered population since last year.
But even as there are fewer people living on New Orleans’ streets, the number of people without permanent housing — living in shelters, motels, or family members’ floors — rose since last year.
While encampments are fenced off, basic and essential housing services are being neglected. Even as the city celebrates encampment closures as victories, there are fewer places where a homeless person in New Orleans can walk in to seek housing help
Make the goal housing, not encampment closures
The city of New Orleans hired Clutch Consulting last summer to oversee efforts to shutter encampments beginning in November, rushing to accommodate private interests developing the new River District, future home to Shell regional headquarters and a TopGolf complex.
A joint use agreement concerning the first encampment, on Tchoupitoulas, went into effect November 17 (the day of the camp closure). The JUA meant the land was “essentially becoming private property,” according to Office of Homeless Services Deputy Director Taylor Diles in emails obtained by public record request. It provided the River District Neighborhood Investors (RDNI), a private corporation, with authority to manage the land. A planned timeline distributed by Diles noted that at 9 a.m. on the 17th, “RDNI begins installation of fencing along the field (Top Golf).”
When an outreach worker asked about moving that deadline if residents weren’t all housed after the encampment was cleared, Diles told her there were “too many parties at the table” to delay the fencing date. And indeed, the deadline was kept, even though the city was unable to house all camp residents in time.
According to a November 20 statement from the Mayor’s Office, the initiative’s goal is to achieve low or no unsheltered homelessness by the end of 2025. But the major focus of the effort has been framed around “decommissioning” homeless encampments.
Verite News reporter Lue Palmer reported on some of the equity issues with the camp closure efforts as they began unfolding at Tchoupitoulas, in what one local housing organizer told me was “hands-down one of the most brutal things [he’s] watched” in this work.
“Folks that had nowhere to go were basically scrambling to organize their stuff while bulldozers destroyed tents,” said Ed Strohsal of Southern Solidarity in a November message. “My initial take on what the…plan really is: make a half-assed attempt to house a few people so you can drop the hammer on the rest.”
The cIty’s approach has reportedly softened since then. But the approach is not just alarming because it is insufficient, or that it’s a good-hearted effort implemented poorly: the city’s skewed priorities are doing harm.
Our own City Councilmembers, Freddie King and Eugene Green, and business leaders like Louis Charbonnet have already been eagerly vilifying unhoused people for the deplorable conditions they are forced to survive in.
Meanwhile, extant housing resources — like the severely underfunded Community Resource and Referral Center (CRRC) — are falling apart.
The CRRC is the building that hosts both the Low Barrier Shelter, and other social services (like the Harry Tompson Center andTravelers Aid), including the offices where houseless people can get a housing case manager and begin efforts to obtain a housing voucher. While a low-income person is eligible for Section 8 vouchers through HANO, someone experiencing homelessness would be applying for different kinds of vouchers – either a permanent supportive housing (PSH) voucher, or a rapid rehousing voucher in the case of severe vulnerabilities.
But that necessary first step has gotten more difficult, as years of deferred maintenance at CRRC have caught up.
FiIrst, beginning fall 2022 until last spring, there were months of plumbing issues that caused a “huge amount of sewage” to back up behind the building, “at time[s] multiple inches deep,” forcing case managers to meet clients elsewhere. Visible markings remain on some walls, according to Angela Owczarek, a social worker who has worked in the CRRC since 2019. Owczarek and others also periodically dealt with sewage backing up and pouring from office sinks, and “sewage remnants” and toilet paper “remained stained in a ring around my office baseboards … which I’d scrub off myself.”
They’ve since faced leaking and collapsing ceilings, intermittent power and internet outages, and then months without hot water, forcing residents and clients to take cold showers during wintertime.
Next, an April power grid failure lasted months; now, there’s mold everywhere.
In fact, as a result of these mounting health hazards, Travelers Aid has ceased to operate in the CRRC. Veterans Affairs, which serves homeless veterans, has also shifted operations elsewhere pending “repairs in the CRRC,” according to Chief of Public Affairs Phillip Butterfield. The Rebuild Center nearby, has been undergoing needed renovations, and thus has had limited services.
What that means is that at points this spring, there was not a single place for an unsheltered person to take a shower, do laundry or seek walk-in housing services in New Orleans.
There are, as of last week, limited services being offered again. Rebuild has reopened with limited hours. Travelers Aid moved locations (twice) and offers walk-in services two days a week (down from four days). Donna Paramore, CEO of Travelers Aid, confirmed the organization was forced to relocate from the CRRC “due to lack of reliable power to the building.”
This all represents reduced capacity to provide housing services compared to prior years.
“There has been a shortage of services available to people because of lack of facilities,” confirmed Eva Sohl of the Harry Tompson Center, a homeless services provider a few blocks from the CRRC.
One housing outreach worker recently told me he gets calls and texts almost daily from New Orleanians looking for housing help. But often, he said, there’s nowhere he can send them: not to start applying for housing vouchers or for food stamps, or even just sit down and talk about their experiences.
The truth is that this was entirely predictable. Sophie Kasakove has reported on how Mayor LaToya Cantrell’s administration has been aware of the building’s appalling issues since December 2022. The city consistently failed to pay its private contractor on time, never increased the operating budget, did not provide a “permanent fix” to any of the maintenance issues, and the bulk of its attention went elsewhere: the same day the City was busy forcibly displacing those left at the Tchoup camp, the electricity went out in the LowBarrier Shelter kitchen. It stayed out for days.
It’s notable that the Low Barrier Shelter is being allowed to fall ever-deeper into disrepair while developers are refurbishing Charity Hospital, across the street, into suites of nice condos and Tulane research facilities.
Just as years of intentionally deferred maintenance helped the state justify closing Charity Hospital after Katrina, this same deferred maintenance could similarly position the city to justify the closing or relocation of the shelter. We may well see it moved someplace else — someplace, of course, less visible.
City-wide, support systems scarce
It’s worth noting that the unsheltered population, the ones targeted by this rehousing push, skews disproportionately white compared to the unhoused population citywide. Unsheltered homeless New Orleanians are about 39% white and 52% Black, while sheltered homeless New Orleanians are about 22% white and 72% Black, per a recent report from UNITY. Sheltered homelessness is also more common than unsheltered homelessness in New Orleans. That means that Black unhoused New Orleanians are disproportionately left out by the focus on encampment closures over broad housing services.
For those precariously housed, only on the brink of homelessness, support is also scarce.
Emergency Rental Assistance Program (ERAP) funds, distributed via the Office of Community Development (OCD) for tenants facing eviction from federal COVID-19 relief funds, are going to run out soon — likely by the end of August, according to multiple sources familiar with the program.
“We’re definitely all sitting here staring down the end of that program,” said Hannah Adams of Southeast Louisiana Legal Services.
Adams estimates that at least 80% of New Orleans evictions are due to non-payment. Before ERAP, “those cases were really hard.” Now, people use the program “regularly” to avoid eviction; Adams said over 24,000 households have been helped through the “incredibly useful tool.”
Meanwhile, the new Healthy Homes Ordinance – a fantastic and necessary piece of regulation spearheaded by Jane’s Place, which requires landlords to provide sufficient air conditioning in bedrooms, among other protections — has a modest $2.5 million budget, but only for personnel, and nothing for other operating expenses such as public outreach.
The office’s displacement funds — funds to help people move out of unsafe homes — would hypothetically come from the $50-$250 fees leveled against non-compliant landlords, but that amounts to such a small amount that the office hasn’t been able to distribute any, according to a source who works with the city who asked not to be identified by name over concerns of professional repercussions.
Other resources are scarce. The OCD has not updated its website’s affordable housing resources since 2020, and the number listed for its Affordable Housing Unit is out of service.
When asked about this, Cantrell’s Press Secretary Leatrice Dupre replied that “services available to residents are the Owner Occupied Rehabilitation program, which is administered by the non-profit SBP, Inc.” That program uses volunteers to fix up disaster-damaged homes, but does not directly address affordable housing.
The Office of Resilience and Sustainability (ORS), meanwhile, knows that “low-income communities are the most heavily impacted by climate change,” but the ORS “does not have general funds allocated to provide direct services to low-income residents,” according to external affairs manager Anna Nguyen.
Instead, what’s available for low-income renters and homeowners seems to be mostly various rebates and discounts via private and non-profit partnerships, such as a planned, publicly-funded outreach to teach low-income residents about certain Entergy discounts.
In short, direct aid for someone in a housing crisis is virtually nil across city offices.
Even for someone lucky enough to get services and find a voucher, source of income discrimination — e.g., landlords refusing to rent to any voucher holders — is still legal in New Orleans, which means vulnerable tenants struggle to find a landlord. .
Adams saidlack of housing choice contributes to people being stuck in shocking conditions: housing with mold, leaks, rats and sparking wires.
Housing advocates have been calling for a ban on source of income discrimination for years, a measure already in place in many cities and states.
“The lack of source of income discrimination protection is a real serious problem in our region,” confirmed Adams of SLLS. “It means that voucher holders have little to no housing stability, and they have no housing choice.”
Adams stressed what a difference the protections that do exist — ERAP andRight to Counsel — have made. In the last couple years tenant representation has risen from about 6% to 65%, she said, and the rate of evictions stemming from filings has dropped from over 60% to 25%.
Bravo to the organizers and legislators who helped put such support in place.
But as tenants are priced out, and the stakes just become far higher, New Orleans needs to be proactively seeking to house — not merely hide — the displaced.
The bigger picture
This City’s goal must not be closing encampments, but universal housing.
Climate change has, and will continue, to destroy and worsen housing stock. Our reliance on the tourism sector to fuel the city’s economy will face declining returns as extreme heat and worsening storms threaten the tourism season. And the property insurance crisis – costs also passed on to renters – will continue to worsen as climate change escalates, threatening more and more with displacement, especially those on a fixed income. Just since last year, New Orleans has seen a 15% increase in fair market rent.
The people most affected by rising housing costs and dwindling help will be poor, elderly, Black and brown New Orleanians — housed and unhoused — pushed further to the margins, socially, financially, and geographically.
In the near-term, support and fund extant services like the CRRC building, ERAP and the Healthy Homes program, rather than funneling services through private partnerships. It’s crucial the city also sustain current funding for social service workers rehousing the unsheltered, as people’s rapid rehousing vouchers from HUD are temporary, and will expire in 6-24 months. Workers will be trying to shift everyone to what are called Permanent Supportive Housing vouchers, and they must be given the resources and support needed to ensure no one slips through the gaps.
But to keep New Orleans habitable in the longer term, we need universal, affordable housing that isn’t funneled through landlords. A reasonable housing plan looks like public housing with supportive social services, expanding protection for renters (including rent control and a ban on source of income discrimination), direct access for low-income households to resiliency and retrofit projects, reparations for communities of color who’ve been stripped of wealth due to centuries of racist housing policies, and ultimately an end to the commodification of housing.
As some of the most housing- and climate-vulnerable people in the country, we ought to lead the country in our goal to truly house everyone in New Orleans.
And we can. If we want to.
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Delaney Nolan
Delaney Nolan is a freelance writer, whose work focuses on climate and the environment, housing and displacement, and where these issues intersect. Her writing has appeared in Al Jazeera English, Mother... More by Delaney Nolan