Housing and Homelessness in New Orleans'
I offer these statistics as a sort of framework and also because I’ve found it tricky to find reliable numbers on housing and homelessness in post-K NOLA. Most of the data comes from articles in the Times-Picayune and the Greater New Orleans Community Data Center. The GNOCDC aggregates findings of different Government and NGOs including the Brookings Institution, FEMA and the USPS. I’ve linked it all up, but I am not the best chart reader–amendments, corrections and context are always appreciated.
According to the Brookings Institution there were 228,000 houses in the storm’s flood zone, nearly 45 percent of all homes in the New Orleans metro area. The city was the 31st largest city with a population of 485,000 before the storm.
Nearly a year after the storm only half the population of Orleans Parish had returned to the city. Still the population is only back to 73 percent of pre-Katrina numbers. There’s no official data on how many residents are still displaced, but because of the influx of residents who have moved here from elsewhere it’s safe to assume that the number that still haven’t returned exceeds 27 percent.
As of September 2009, New Orleans had approximately 61,000 unoccupied residences. That’s approximately 29 percent of residences in the city. Many of these abandoned homes are occupied by the city’s 11,500 homeless.
Not a mile from the Mid-City apartment I’ve been subletting while here there used to be a camp under the I-10 overpass. And while rebuilding is extremely high profile in the city, the homeless population flies largely under the radar of voluntourist groups out in New Orleans for a week or two.
In New Orleans, like in most US cities, there’s a widespread belief that people who are homeless don’t want to work, or are at fault in some way. Needs of the homeless population here involve access to food, education, employment opportunities, legal aid, healthcare, civil rights, counseling and treatment for substance abuse, in addition to access to sustainable, affordable and safe housing.
Because of the number of homes destroyed after Hurricane Katrina, the amount of public housing demolished in the city since the storm, and increases in insurance and construction costs rental properties are significantly less affordable than they were before the storm. Section 8 housing has replaced public housing but landlords discriminate against tenants with Section 8 and the voucher program besides being overburdened can be prohibitive and difficult to navigate.
As a volunteer, I’ve tried to move beyond the obvious rebuild work and connect with organizations working on behalf of the homeless population. In the future I’ll write about some of my experiences, most notably at the Harry Tompson Center.