Four Years After Katrina, Thousands Are Homeless and Struggling In New Orleans

via AlterNet:



Four Years After Katrina, Thousands Are Homeless and Struggling In New Orleans

By Jordan Flaherty, Left Turn. Posted August 28, 2009.

With recovery still lagging in New Orleans, thousands are living in storm damaged and abandoned buildings.



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 sun-drenched 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 full-time 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. ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/rights/142287/four_years_after_katrina%2C_thousands_are_homeless_and_struggling_in_new_orleans/

Please explain why after all the money spent things are not better? Take a look at Galveston less then 1 year after Ike flooded the whole island and they are a lot farther along in recovery.

Two hundred years ago, people like Mickey were urged to work the land and lay claim to it (never mind if there were indigenous peoples who thought it belonged to everyone). The Homestead Act formalized it a little more by saying that if a homesteader would work a piece of land for a few years, the government would give them title to it. It appears time to bring that back. If there are abandoned places, and if there are people that will improve them and make them economically worthwhile again, they should be able to get title to them and call it their own.

They are concerned only with people who earn about 60,000 dollars
annually and up. The people there keep voting Blue Dogs in
whose main loyalty is to Small Business. How many of you
watched Landrieu on CNN, Sunday? Conservative Economic Policy
is at the root of the problem.