New York Times Editorial Published: December 11, 2009 The real estate industry and some Louisiana politicians have been promoting the fiction that New Orleans has all the housing it needs and should be allowed to divert hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid from desperately...
“Uh, we’ve got a situation.” These were Mike’s words just before noon as we were checking out an old factory building along the river. We had been there before, knew the building, and – in an atypical move – allowed ourselves to get separated. I got...
Today’s Thanksgiving blog is by Angela Patterson, M.S.W., M.P.C., UNITY’s Director of Programs and the inspirational leader of UNITY’s outreach team. [caption id="attachment_162" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Angela Patterson, UNITY Director of Programs"][/caption] No one knows what really happened that first Thanksgiving. Important details seem to include a story...
[caption id="attachment_151" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Ms. Louis' Flooded Trailer"][/caption] It’s a little off the radar, tucked between two abandoned salvage yards littered with rusting hulks of Cadillac’s, Fords and Chevys. The nearest neighbor is almost a mile away and that is the rabid-looking mutt that guards a distant...
Today’s post is by Cynthia Mitchell, who recently began working as UNITY’s Director of Intake, in charge of helping homeless and at-risk people requesting assistance to access the many housing and service programs of UNITY and its member organizations. [caption id="attachment_147" align="alignleft" width="384" caption="Cynthia Mitchell, Director...
Sitting on a sidewalk outside one of our emergency shelters, I’m trying to complete an intake packet on a man who tells me he’s been hospitalized in at least 40 hospitals for bipolar and major depressive disorder, including many suicidal episodes. Tonight, though, he appears...
[caption id="attachment_130" align="alignright" width="300" caption="UNITY outreach worker Clarence White searches abandoned buildings to rescue the homeless"][/caption] God bless Clarence White. Seriously, may God bless Clarence White and I’m not even religious If you had a chance to read his post you got about half the man’s...
We listen to stories, personal biographies, all day long. We sit on porches, stoops, flea-infested couches, under bridges, inside cardboard boxes, next to bucket toilets, and listen. It’s what we do. Sometimes what we are listening to is psychotic ramblings and sometimes they are stories...
Today's post is by Clarence White, a Unity outreach case worker who is no stranger to homelessness. Four years after the levee failures, he lives in his flooded-out house in Gentilly, a house that was inundated in water for three weeks, leaving it uninhabitable. Four...