NEW ORLEANS—If you drive downtown, or many other parts of the city, it’s hard to escape seeing homeless camps.
Now, the City of New Orleans has a new office dedicated to tackling that issue.
Nathaniel Fields is the director of the newly created Office of Homeless Resources. Fields hails from Baltimore, and was once homeless. He says his goal is to marshal resources so that the city better deals with the issues.
According to Fields, “(The goal is to) make homelessness rare and brief. And the goal in that is creating new housing opportunities for individuals who are currently experiencing homelessness and connect them to landlords who are willing to work with them on these issues.”
Councilwoman Lesli Harris has pushed for the office’s creation since she landed on the council.
Harris says that the un-housed problem directly related to affordable housing, “We’re facing an affordable housing crisis in New Orleans and so we need to look at the bigger picture of mental health services, affordable housing, and really getting people off the street.”
Many that live on the street complain about the amount of time it takes to get resources.
One homeless resident suggested, “Cut some of the red tape and do something. It takes 2 weeks to get emergency food stamps, it takes 6 months or a year to get into housing.”
Residents that live in neighborhoods where the encampments have sprung up are frustrated by what they say is a lack of action from the city on a problem that keeps getting worse.
Treme Resident Safiyyullah Yusuf stated, “People at city hall some of them are saying ‘they’re human and they deserve this and that but they don’t pay taxes so they have more rights than the citizens have.”
According to Fields, this will require a community effort, “What we have to do, as a people is recognize that we have human lives down here that want to be a part of the community it is up to us to assist with what that looks like and not throw people away, but be a part of the solution and not just point at the problem.”