Homelessness Comes to Church

My shoes were covered with his tears. My suit was stained with his tears. He just could not stop crying.

His name was Charles. That’s all I learned from him when he came for prayer. He was so overcome with emotion he could not speak.

I prayed with him and promised to talk afterward, and he returned to his place in the pew.

Charles is one of the homeless people who live in tents under the interstate bridge on Claiborne Street. Mark, a man in our church who ministers to the homeless, picked him up that morning, along with two others, and brought them to church.

The message I brought that day was about Abraham, the father of the faithful, and how he lived in tents like a stranger in the Promised Land. I did not realize when I preached the message that at least three people in the congregation actually lived in tents themselves.

Charles said he is drug-free and sober but unemployed. God is using him, he said, to minister to the people in the tent community who are “fighting their demons,” so he is not anxious to relocate. The population in the tents changes continually yet is stabilized by longer term residents who know one another and watch out for each other.

The New Orleans Mission has expanded its capacity in a variety of ways. The large shelter we recently constructed for this emergency will open when the inspection by the state fire marshal is done. Then the mission will have capacity to accommodate everyone in the tent community who wishes to sleep indoors.

The highly visible homelessness in New Orleans these days came as something of a surprise. Immediately after Hurricane Katrina the homeless were gone. Providers of homeless services in the city guessed that homelessness was at a very low level and that it would be five years before the city would see any resurgence of that population.

Overnight, it seemed, a homeless population appeared, a homeless community formed, and it became a highly visible part of our post-Katrina puzzle. Homeless services, including health care and housing, continue to be quite limited in our city, though the capacities of the various shelters are steadily growing.

We hear reports of thousands of people living in abandoned houses in the areas devastated by flooding. These people are at high risk in many ways but especially from criminals who now prey on the migrant workers, the transient, and the elderly. One older man finally moved into his rehabilitated home this week only to be assaulted and murdered.

A hundred square miles of neighborhoods in Orleans and St. Bernard parishes went under water during the great storm. These vast stretches of houses, numbering near 150,000 structures, vary greatly in their current condition and population. Some areas where few people have returned are simply dangerous places to reside.

Long term solutions to our homeless crisis will come very slowly. Homelessness itself is a complicated phenomenon with a wide variety of social and personal causes. Even in “normal” conditions urban communities are hard-pressed to manage, let alone solve, this social puzzle.

The restoration of medical services and residential treatment centers for the mentally ill may do more than any single development to meet the need on the street in New Orleans. Persons suffering from mental illness may constitute a quarter of our current homeless population.

Housing for our workforce in New Orleans remains in short supply and terribly expensive. A high percentage of the current homeless population passing through the New Orleans Mission actually have jobs, according to director Ron Gonzales, but they cannot afford the post-Katrina rents.

Homeownership is the best solution for many in the workforce. Single family home construction projects like the one by Habitat for Humanity and the Baptist Crossroads Project in the Upper Ninth Ward help secure a stable financial future for many families. Homeowners are more likely than renters to keep their properties well-maintained. They pay property taxes directly, another level of investment in the community. And their monthly outlay of cash builds their personal wealth and develops a financial legacy for their families.

A hundred homes have been completed in New Orleans through Habitat partnerships since the storm, and hundreds more are planned. Thousands of volunteers are already committed for blitz building by the Baptist Crossroad Project during Spring Break and the coming summer months. This reproducible and sustainable model for the economic transformation of families deserves full support and cooperation from all community entities, public and private. It addresses many aspects of our recovery by providing safe, new, and affordable houses for families in our workforce.