Homelessness down in New Orleans, but challenges remain

The city of New Orleans continues to battle its homelessness crisis, and that battle comes with good news and bad news.

The good news: groups working on the front lines of the battle say added resources are helping get people off the street.

"The numbers are down from what they were a year ago, and they're continuing to go down," said Martha Kegel, the executive director of UNITY of New Orleans.

Kegel told WWL's Tommy Tucker that resources from the city as well as federal grant money are helping UNITY house the homeless.

"(The grant) has enough resources to house 420 permanently," Kegel said. "We've housed about a quarter of that so far with that grant."

Kegal says those resources are also working to keep those people in permanent housing.

"Of the people that we housed out of the Tchoupitoulas encampment, 90 percent of them have remained stably housed and are stably housed today in their apartments," Kegel said.

However, Kegel admits that fighting homelessness is like playing Whack-a-Mole.

"Every week, there are people out on the street who weren't there last week," Kegel said, noting that most of those people are from the Greater New Orleans area, with some coming from other parts of the United States.

According to Kegel, the root cause of homelessness is simple.

"This is all being fueled by an affordable housing crisis," Kegel said. "About a quarter of our population in the city of New Orleans is below the poverty line. There's no way people can pay those kinds of rents."

Because rent prices in the metro area are unaffordable, Kegel says those who for one reason or another can't make their rent payments end up among the city's homeless.

"What happens is that people start living tripled up with other families," Kegel said. "They are sleeping on the couches of friends and family, and at some point, that's just unsustainable. People can't put up with that any more. So whoever actually controls the lease tells the other people it's time to go, and they wind up on the streets, and we see this over and over again."