Sleep Out puts spotlight on homeless youth
16th November 2015 · 0 Comments
By Kendall Lawson
Contributing Writer
One day last week, a drop in temperature of a few degrees saw folk visiting Bourbon Street wearing jackets to fend off the crisp cold wind breezes. Several blocks over, the city’s sidewalks and underpasses sheltered people in search of warmth and a place to sleep.
Sleeping on a chilly concrete walkway alone is the tragic reality that faces the homeless in New Orleans. And homelessness knows no age limit.
Each day thousands of homeless youth in this city continue to search for food, warmth and a place to lay their heads, advocates say. And this week, those advocates, along with city officials, plan to participate in a sleep-out to draw attention to homelessness in the city, particularly the youngest faces forced onto the streets.
The sleep out on November 19 is in conjunction with National Youth Homeless Awareness Week that began November 14.
“We are caring for the most damaged population in New Orleans,” said Jim Kelly, the director of Covenant House in New Orleans, which takes in homeless youth from ages 16 to 21. The privately-funded 30-year shelter on Rampart Street offers food and crisis care services to runaways and at-risk youth.
In August 2015, UNITY of Greater New Orleans, a collaboration of non-profit groups, found that this area’s homeless population had decreased by 85 percent since 2007, the year homelessness peaked in the city post-Katrina. However, homelessness remains 14.9 percent higher in New Orleans after Katrina compared to 2005.
From abandoned buildings to shelters, the city has seen a reduction of 11,619 homeless people in 2007 to 1,703 in 2015, according to the 2015 UNITY report.
“I have slept on the ground before so there is nothing for me to ‘gain’ except stiff muscles,” said James A. Gray, the New Orleans Councilman for district E, who participated in a Sleep Out in 2014. “This is just a demonstration of my concern about the problem. It is a our families and our churches,” he said.
Event organizers hope that sleeping outside on the concrete for 12 hours will help the volunteers experience what these teens face daily.
This year the event has a large range of sleepers, from local residents ranging in ages from 25 to 85, to government officials and doctors. Kelly said they expect to see more sleepers than last year. Some 130 business representatives and civic leaders will participate in the campaign across the nation. Joseph Exnicios, the president of Whitney Bank and Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman, are among those joining Councilman Gray here in New Orleans.
“It’s a very good mix of people. The sleep out is the community coming together for everyone to learn about our kids and what we do,” Kelly said.
The event’s purpose is to raise awareness about the rising number of at-risk teens looking for a safe haven. “The sleep out allows us to take in every youth that knocks on our doors. It allows us to never turn away a child in need no matter how full we are,” Kelly said.
In 2013, Tulane University’s Cowen Institute estimated that there are around 12,000 to 16,000 at-risk youth across the city, who have the potential to end up homeless on the streets at any point. Advocates say they don’ t have firm numbers for how many young people are homeless in the city. However on a national level, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development estimated in a 2014 report that there were 194,302 homeless youth and children on a single night in 2014, nationwide. The National Alliance to End Homelessness gathers information from shelters and estimated that in a given year, roughly 550,000 unaccompanied youth are homeless for the duration of one week, with 380,000 of them being under the age of 18.
“As a community we can work on the causes of homelessness,” Gray said. “Every kid should be given as good of a chance as we can give the kid to be okay in this world.”
Troubled Lives Force Youth onto the Streets
Teens and young adults that do not have homes in the city must compete to find shelter space, particularly during colder months, Kelly said. Last year, Covenant House was able to provide 51 percent of youth walk-ins with safe and relatively comfortable shelter. Many of the youths that enter the shelter’s doors have experienced some degree of sexual abuse or neglect.
“Eighty percent of the kids have been abused, 30 percent have been in foster care,” Kelly said. “We get kids all the time that are victims to human trafficking.”
The city had initially faced a swell in homelessness across the board post-Katrina that were displaced from their families and lost their homes. The increase in numbers have placed a burden on local shelters to meet the demands for the city’s homeless.
“They got a homeless shelter a mile down that’s always full, they got another that’s rebuilding,” said Donna Smith, 34, who is homeless and says she is from Nashville, Tenn. Smith said she encounters unaccompanied youth on the streets and wonders about the medical attention some of the teens need from health risks after sleeping outside.
“Their health should be the first concern,” Smith said. “You’re supposed to get a physical at least once a year. When you’re homeless the years keep passing by.”
Shelters in the city have become overcrowded with many homeless patrons, despite the decline in numbers. Homeless youths and adults unable to secure shelter at nights set up camp as close to shelters as possible with the hopes of being the first in line to get a room the next day. Additionally, the shelters in the city, which depend heavily on donations, grants, or funds from the city, are run down and short on space. New Orleans Mission, a homeless shelter in Central City that takes in about 200 homeless residents, began renovations in July 2015. The total cost of the renovation is $6 million. The project received $1.1 million in bank grants and funds from the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority. The Mission expanded its services by renovating buildings that had fell into disrepair, and by adding more daytime rooms, a gym, computer area, and more restrooms. They also have begun to provide more access to medical and counseling services.
However, local homeless adults and youth say the improvements and expansion at local shelters are a slow process. In the meantime, many of them still do not have anywhere to go each night. “We rebuilt the city good, but there’s a whole population that hasn’t [benefited],” said James Dawkins, a homeless resident in Gentilly. Last year, Dawkins did not have a stable place to live. He was 19 when he was evicted from his apartment and had no option but to begin sleeping on the street. With no resources or shelter, Dawkins began his search for jobs and shelters. “Where will the teens go? Many shelters said they’re going to rebuild but it’s too slow.”
Advocates say for young people like Dawkins, the trauma of being on the streets is something they are fighting to eliminate. “You have no idea how loud it is until you sleep on the sidewalk,” Kelly added “If you haven’t slept under street lights and heard sirens all night, do you understand what it’s like to be homeless?”
Editor’s note: In the print edition of this story, it was incorrectly stated that the New Orleans Homeless Shelter received $6 million in funding from NORA. The shelter only actually received $1.1 million.
This article originally published in the November 16, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
