One man’s journey home

20th January 2015   ·   0 Comments

By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer

A personal story from New Orleans’ efforts to end homelessness among veterans

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu pledged to end homelessness amongst the city’s veterans by the end of 2014. Earlier this month, he announced New Orleans was the first city to reach such a goal.

Two of the people helped by this recent initiative are Coast Guard veteran Merlin Verrett, age 62, and his wife Valerie, age 61. In order to join the Coast Guard in 1972, Merlin concealed the fact that he suffered from bipolar disorder. To help hide his illness, he asked for a remote posting so he wouldn’t encounter as many people. He served in Kodiak Island in Alaska driving patrol boats from 1972 to 1976.

When Hurricane Katrina and the subsequent levee failure occurred, the Verretts were living in an apartment on Chef Menteur Hwy in New Orleans East. Twenty feet of water flooded the building and the Verretts were homeless. After four months of living in a hotel via government assistance, Valerie moved to Houston to stay with their daughter Angelina. From then until they recently found their new apartment, Valerie would shuttle between the homes of family members.

But Merlin’s pride kept him from asking his daughters for help. They offered and begged him to come live with them, but he always refused.

“I didn’t want my daughters to have to take care of me,” Merlin said.

After they left their hotel room, Merlin moved back to New Orleans to try to reestablish himself. But post-Katrina rents were expensive, too pricey for the disability and pension checks he received (Merlin now suffers from 13 major disabilities ranging from arthritis to heart disease to bipolar disorder to lymphoma). For the first eight months, he slept on the steps of the library on Loyola Avenue with three other vets. Eventually, they were chased off the steps and relocated under the overpass by the Greyhound Bus Terminal.

But the situation quickly became dangerous. Thugs would rub the homeless veterans of whatever money, food, or possessions they had. Merlin would eat meals at the New Orleans Mission and stay there for 14 days a month (the maximum allotted time), then sleep under the overpass for the rest of the month.

Merlin began to doubt his pro­spects of finding a home in New Orleans, as more homeless people came into the city from out of town. So he relocated to Baton Rouge. He would stay in shelters for as long as he was able, but spent the rest of the time near the Mississippi River on Florida Street. Local youths began throwing rocks at homeless men as they slept, so Merlin and his friends took to sleeping on the steps leading to the river. They slept on the first step up from the water so youths couldn’t see them at first glance when they passed by.

He moved under an overpass on Florida Street. Ants were a problem in the summertime, one he’d fight by spreading alcohol or peroxide in a circle around the cardboard he used as a bed. But this location became too dangerous as well. Drug dealers robbed the homeless men and one was beaten to death.

After bouncing around Houma and Alexandria, Merlin returned to New Orleans in 2008. Over the years, he would travel on the bus to briefly visit his wife and daughters in Houston before returning to the streets. In 2008, he started out on the steps of the Trademark Building near Harrah’s Casino. He was forced from that location, moving to Lafayette Square, which he said was safe because of the lawyers government workers in the area. But he would eventually be chased out of this spot by authorities.

Eventually, he moved back to the library because there was a faucet on the side of the building he and his friends could use to wash themselves late at night. After more than a year by the library, he moved back to Florida St. in Baton Rouge. He began to get sick. He suffered his first heart attack there in 2009.

Merlin stayed in Baton Rouge General Medical Center, then went to his daughter Angelina’s house in Houston, where he suffered a second heart attack. After recovering, he moved to the house of another daughter, Antoinette, in South Houston, where he suffered a third heart attack.

Once he was released from the hospital, Merlin decided to return to New Orleans. As hard as it was on the streets, the city was still his home. And he didn’t want to burden his daughters anymore, even though they assured him they were happy to care for him.

“I said to myself ‘I gotta go back home, I’m too stressed here,’” Merlin said.

Back in New Orleans, he moved around. Last year, he was in Duncan Plaza when exhaustion overwhelmed him. He called Valerie and said, “I’m so tired. I just can’t go no more.”

But Merlin carried on. When asked what kept him from quitting in his darkest moment, Merlin pointed to Valerie and said, “Her.”

Shortly after making this phone call, Merlin encountered a staffer from Volunteers of America, who learned he was a veteran and eagerly took his information, promising they would help him soon. He also talked to representatives from UNITY of Greater New Orleans, Catholic Charities, and the VA Hospital, who assured him they would help. When he speaks of the people who aided him, Merlin’s eyes fills with tears and he briefly has to stop telling his story.

In October of last year, just when it seemed that Merlin was going to be placed in Exodus House, his brother Leo informed him that he was dying of pancreatic cancer. Leo didn’t want to die in a hospital, so Merlin stayed for a month and a half in Leo’s Section 8 apartment in New Orleans East. Leo died in December.

After his brother’s death, Merlin was contacted by social workers Kathleen North and Wilma Netters, who worked to place him in UNITY of Greater New Orleans’ Sacred Heart Apartments on Canal Street, near S. Jeff Davis. On December 19, Merlin and Vanessa finally had their own home again.

UNITY is a collaborative of 60 agencies working together to end homelessness, and the Sacred Heart Apartments currently house 23 formerly homeless veterans. The Verretts can stay in their apartment for the rest of their lives if they choose to. It’s a cozy one-bedroom unit with a large window overlooking Canal St. They keep it clean and tidy.

“When you don’t have a home for nine years, you want to keep things nice,” Merlin said.

Martha Kegel, executive director of UNITY of Greater New Orleans, said that every homeless vet on their list who would accept housing has been placed into a home. A rapid response system is also ready to match a person with a home within an average of 30 days. The goal is to maintain a “functional zero” for veteran homelessness where the number of vets newly homeless never exceeds the number UNITY is able to house in 30 days.

“We have fewer resources per homeless person than other cities, but what we do have that other cities do not is that New Orleanians have a great passion for rebuilding our city and trying to make it the best it can be by helping the least fortunate…that is borne out of our shared experience at all having been homeless to one extent or another after Katrina,” said Kegel.

While Merlin is happy to finally find a home, he tears up when he thinks of his homeless veteran friends in Houston, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette who have not been as fortunate. He said for many veterans, homelessness is a vicious cycle. When a vet is on the streets, he often becomes depressed, which leads to self-medication through drugs or alcohol, which makes everything worse until it seems like there’s no way out. He hopes other cities will follow New Orleans’ lead and do more for men and women who served their country and need a home.

“There are veterans out there hurting…They’re hurting and they’re dying,” Merlin said.

This article originally published in the January 19, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.