NEW ORLEANS — Over the last few months, the homeless population in New Orleans has climbed, according to a nonprofit leader. She believes it's partially due to a resource issue as housing help made available during the pandemic has ended.
"We can see everyday there are people who have become homeless and are showing up on the streets and shelter who weren’t homeless last week," said Martha Kegel, Executive Director of UNITY of Greater New Orleans.
According to UNITY's count, in January 2020 there were 555 people living on Orleans and Jefferson parish streets. That doesn't include those in shelters. At the start of the pandemic many were placed in hotels, dropping street homelessness to 30 in June 2020. In February 2022, Unity counted 364 people living on the streets.
"We've shown that when we have access to resources like during the pandemic, the numbers went way down and they're still not back up to where they were pre-pandemic, but at the rate things are going, they will be," Kegel said.
She said UNITY worked with those staying in hotels during the pandemic to help them get out of homelessness.
"We didn't just dump people back out on the street after, we actually put them in apartments, ended their homelessness," she said.
In another effort to add more shelters, over the last year, the City of New Orleans added 200 beds to the low barrier shelter downtown.
"For a total of 300 beds. Those beds are making a big difference because this is a shelter that a lot of people who sleep outside and may have a lot of mental challenges are nonetheless often willing to stay at," Kegel said.
Kegel said the city still needs more rental assistance and case managers to fight homelessness.
"Study after study has shown that an acute shortage of affordable rental housing is the primary driver of homelessness nationwide and that is certainly true in New Orleans as well. People tend to focus on the fact that many homeless people might have mental illness or substance abuse problems or other vulnerabilities and that is often true, but that doesn't explain rates of homelessness," she said.
Pandemic-related resources are not as abundant as they were.
"The problem is going to get worse unless we get more resources. This is a resource issue," Kegel said. "We've shown over and over again that what works is rent assistance and case management, we don’t have enough of that right now."
"A great first step in acknowledging this is an issue," said Chelsea Nelson, PhD who studied homelessness through her dissertation.
Nelson graduated with her PhD from UNO in December. For her dissertation, she interviewed 323 people living in homelessness across 15 cities. She asked them how they think homelessness should be resolved.
"My largest takeaway was that individuals do not want to be experiencing homelessness and while that’s the case, many want to share their perspectives on what a solution towards homeless would be, however very few individuals have ever been asked to share their input," Nelson said.
When UNITY is able to get someone housed, they often don’t have basic needs. You can donate gently used household goods and furniture to the UNITY warehouse by calling 504-483-9300 or emailing homelesswarehouse@unitygno.org.
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