When your job requires you to keep your shoes dirty, avoid florescent lighting and develop a nascent tolerance for mosquitoes and cockroaches, you pay a lot of attention to the weather. This week New Orleans has been sucker punched with the outer rain bands from...
Looking back on your life, has it taken the linear path you intended? Did you end up with the career, husband/wife, children and dream home you expected? Was the path easy? Did you finish high school, work straight through college and professional school, notching everything...
Coming up on the 5-year anniversary of Katrina and the levee failures, our Executive Director told the staff the other day she is concerned that people across the country may not realize that the devastation caused by Katrina still remains. “People think everything’s back to...
Sheila was raped yesterday. While Sheila was lying in her scavenged bed in an abandoned apartment a man came in through the door that no longer has a lock and he raped her. Sheila is already approved for housing. She has already completed the maze of information...
John Steinbeck would have loved the people we meet on a daily basis. I can imagine him sipping coffee in the morning with Ms. Donna – coffee warmed on the grated fire pit in front of her deteriorating, ramshackle home. He would have helped her empty...
MARCH 17 - “So what do you do for a living?” Normal enough question, I get it often especially when wearing my caution-yellow T-shirt that glows in daylight and says UNITY OUTREACH. The only thing that is odd is that I’m having this conversation sometime...
Today’s blog post is by Katy Quigley, who has joined Shamus, Mike and Clarence on the abandoned building outreach team. “Good Night beautiful boy. I love you.” As I bend over to kiss my 9 year old son I realize that teamwork is one of the tools...
Amputated in 1974 after I got shot. I didn’t have the heart to tell the man that he lost that left arm seven years before I was born. Mike is continuing to ask questions about his medical history when Katy and I hear someone scream...
[caption id="attachment_253" align="alignleft" width="150" caption="Laniker Hunter, Outreach Worker"][/caption] Today's blog is by Laniker Hunter, an outreach worker who often works with homeless families. On January 12th during the freeze, a family of six was referred to us by Senator’s Landrieu’s office. The family consisted of Gloria and her...
