Back to New Orleans, but no home

Despite more rentals opening up, lower-income former residents find they're now too expensive.

from the December 5, 2007 edition

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"People are being moved out of trailer parks largely because of safety issues," says Brian Sullivan, a spokesman for HUD, referring to the formaldehyde fumes from building materials in the trailers that have sickened some occupants. "But the trailer parks were always intended to be temporary housing, not permanent homes," he says.

Citing the more than $10 billion in federal aid that Louisiana has received for hurricane recovery, and the $12.2 million in funding that HUD provided in the past year for assisting the homeless in Orleans and Jefferson parishes, Mr. Sullivan says it was up to state and local governments to use their funding to come up with effective housing programs.

The slow pace of housing recovery can, in part, be attributed to necessary oversight and planning, he adds. "A lot of money is already there, but it's like trying to drink from a fire hose – you can't just start spending it without good plans, or the process is opened up to abuse or fraud."

With federal assistance, a state-run small-property recovery program has done much in the past year to help landlords in New Orleans repair rental housing, and "for rent" signs are seen in many neighborhoods. But with landlords charging higher rents, many of the homeless can't afford to live in them.

"For many people returning, the Big Easy has become the big squeeze," says Martha Kegel, executive director of UNITY of Greater New Orleans, a coalition of nonprofits serving the homeless. "This is a much different city now than it was before the storm." One reason: The family and neighborhood ties that once offered a safety net are now mostly gone.

"I had never been homeless in my life before now," said Mr. Gioustover, who owned a car, earned a decent living as a carpenter, and lived in a two-bedroom apartment in New Orleans East, a suburb devastated by Katrina, before losing it all to 15 feet of floodwater. "If I had family here like I did before Katrina, I'd be staying with them. But all of my family lost their houses in the flood, and they're still in Texas and Georgia. I'm the only one back."

The city is working with nonprofit agencies to address homelessness, according to Mayor Ray Nagin. He said in a statement that the city's office of public advocacy has aided more than a thousand homeless people in the past year. The mayor urged state officials to speed up the delivery of promised funding for a few hundred housing subsidy vouchers, which nonprofit agencies will use to help the homeless in the plaza.

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