New Orleans’ violation of human rights

The Mayor’s mass eviction campaign reached new heights of heartlessness and irony. After the homeless encampment at Camp and Calliope yesterday held a press conference to speak out for their rights to housing and to be treated equally with other citizens in this city, they were served with a 72-hour eviction notice at about 9 p.m. The questions remain: Where will they go? How will those working hold down their jobs if they are forced into shelters, if there is even any room in the shelters? Where are the promised lockers for the storage of their belongings? Where are the Unity Outreach workers?

The UN recently condemned the criminalization of the homeless in the U.S. and specifically mentioned the outlawing of camping. If the city cannot provide the resources for affordable, decent housing for low-income workers, those on disability, and those struggling with addiction, what recourse do these folks have? The tent encampments are a symptom of the problem, and reflection of a crisis in housing here in New Orleans, and the mayor’s and the City Council’s answer, with the exception of two dissenting City Council votes, is simply to evict the encampments before the necessary resources are developed to insure that human rights are not being violated.

Unity for the Homeless bears responsibility, with other groups that are supposedly active and communicating with the mayor’s office on this issue, for missing in action when the Ordinance to unleash this mass eviction was voted on and approved on September 4. Unity knows that has severely limited resources to house the homeless beyond the already existing shelters, yet the organization had no representatives at the City Council meeting to speak this truth.

At the homeless encampment I met several people who are working one or two jobs, and actively job hunting as well. I met people on disability and one veteran. There was also someone there who appears to need medical attention. In addition, there were several who were active alcoholics and in obvious need of treatment.

The is a shameful chapter of the violation of human rights in New Orleans that has seen a massive increase in human rights violations since Katrina, with the demolition of public housing and the historic, African American lower-income, Mid-City neighborhood for the construction of the new hospitals, and the shuttering of Charity Hospital, and shows no signs of abating.

—Elizabeth Cook

This article originally published in the September 15, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.