Many Still Feel Wrath of Storm

NEW ORLEANS WRESTLES WITH GROWING NUMBERS LIVING ON CITY'S STREETS

NEW ORLEANS -- Cedric Allen once wrestled with his crack addiction in
an apartment he shared with his fiancee or in a home surrounded by
his four grown daughters.

Today, Allen, 48, struggles with the same addiction alone in a
camping tent under an interstate overpass in downtown New Orleans.
His daughters and fiancee are gone, displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
His old apartment is unaffordable.

Allen is one of an estimated 12,000 people who are homeless in New
Orleans, many of whom landed on the streets after Katrina. Homeless
people account for 4% of the city's overall population -- more than
four times that of most cities.

"It's rough going," said Allen, a day laborer. "You might have a job
one day, two days, maybe even a month. Then, nothing."

Advocates for the homeless and officials said many of the city's
homeless are like Allen: low-income residents who lost apartments
after Katrina because of rising rents. Many also struggle with drug
addiction or mental illnesses. Some are out-of-town laborers who came
to work in the post-Katrina building boom then lost their jobs, said
Mike Miller, a director with UNITY of Greater New Orleans, a group
that advocates for the homeless.

Katrina destroyed many of the outreach centers that serviced drug
addiction and mental health problems, Miller said. Charity Hospital,
which housed the city's main public psychiatric ward, has also been
closed since the 2005 floods.

"It's usually hard finding a place for homeless people," Miller said.
"It's 10 times harder in a place like New Orleans."

New Orleans' homeless dilemma comes amidst a controversial plan to
demolish the city's four major public housing developments, or 4,500
units, and replace them with mixed-income housing. Federal and local
officials have said the city's diminished population has less
public-housing needs. Housing advocates argue the demolitions will
create more homelessness. "Public housing is really for people who
are on the precipice of homelessness," said James Perry of the
Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center.

The New Orleans Mission, one of the city's main homeless shelters,
fills to its 150-person capacity each day, said Ron Gonzales, the
mission's executive director. The center recently received a large
Quonset-style tent through grants from the city and a local church to
house residents.

Before Katrina, most of the mission's residents were chronically
homeless and typically jobless, he said. Today, about 40% of the
people who stay at the mission have full-time jobs, Gonzales said.
"They're homeless because they can't afford an apartment or house," he said.

The homeless population created by Katrina has motivated advocates
for the homeless to coin a term, "homeless homeowners," for those
residents who paid off their mortgages and may not have had insurance
when Katrina's floods devastated their homes and were forced into the streets.

Natural disasters often cause temporary spikes in cities' homeless
populations, but for a homeless population to continue to grow two
years after a disaster is unprecedented, said Michael Stoops,
executive director of the National Coalition for the Homeless. "Being
the victim of a natural disaster is no longer a guarantee that the
government is coming to your rescue," Stoops said.

Mayor Ray Nagin and city leaders this past week appealed to federal
lawmakers for help in solving the homeless problem. They asked for
$20 million in rental assistance and 3,000 more permanent supportive
housing vouchers, among other things, said Ceeon Quiett, a mayoral spokeswoman.

"We have to address increasing affordable housing, and we have to
increase health care," she said. "Those are the two main factors
contributing to our homeless situation."

One of the most popular gatherings for the homeless is under the
Interstate 10 overpass at the corner of Claiborne Avenue and Canal
Street in downtown New Orleans. A handful of camping tents and
sleeping bags pre-Katrina soon bloomed into more than 100 tents after
the storm, homeless activists and police said.

Fathers with full-time jobs and no homes share confines with paranoid
schizophrenics and heroin addicts. A recent UNITY survey of the
people living under the bridge showed 30% of those interviewed ended
up there after losing FEMA assistance. Another one-third had
high-risk ailments, including diabetes and AIDS.

"If you can't advocate for yourself at a very minimal level, you slip
through the cracks," said Miller, the UNITY director.

After Katrina, Allen, the day laborer, tried to return to his Central
City two-bedroom apartment. The rent had risen from $400 a month to
$900, well beyond his means, he said.

His daughters had moved to Houston and nearby Metairie. He tried
staying in New Orleans and finding work, but his crack addiction
crept in again, keeping him jobless and in and out of jail, he said.
He moved under the I-10 overpass this past year.

"I'll just keep doing this," he said. "What choice do I have?"