New Orleans 1st Logo

City's homeless brace for freeze

Section: Community

Mark Waller

With a blast of wintry air pushing toward the New Orleans area alongside the arrival of 2008, homeless shelters opened more spaces amid the New Year's celebrations and officials advised residents to cover plants and take pets inside.

New Orleans activated its freeze plan on New Year's Eve, allowing shelters to admit more people.

Ted Lewis, a case manager at Ozanam Inn on Camp Street, said that shelter set up 32 additional cots in its dining room and cleared some beds normally used by shelter workers. Lewis said only a couple extra people showed up Monday but that he expected more Tuesday as temperatures headed toward freezing.

"They all should stay somewhere," Lewis said of the city's homeless residents, particularly those in the largest cluster of tents under the Claiborne Avenue overpass. "It's going to be very cold. We don't want anybody to get sick or die."

Other shelters enacting the freeze plan in New Orleans were Covenant House on Rampart Street, the New Orleans Mission on Oretha Castle Haley Boulevard, the Salvation Army on South Claiborne Avenue and Bridge House on Camp Street.

A freeze shelter also opened on Monday in Slidell, located in the former parsonage of Mount Olive AME Church on Second Street and operated by Aldersgate United Methodist Church of Slidell.

Forecasters were expecting temperatures in St. Tammany Parish to dip into the 20s overnight on Tuesday and again Wednesday. In Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard, St. Charles, St. John and Plaquemines parishes, forecasters expected lows around 30 Tuesday night and in the upper 20s overnight Wednesday into Thursday morning.

Standing in a brisk breeze under the Claiborne overpass Tuesday, the Rev. Gregory Davis of New Light Baptist Church in New Orleans led church members in serving food to dozens of homeless people camped under the bridge.

Davis said he was concerned about their safety in the freezing night. He was urging people to take advantage of shelters.

"There are some little children out here," Davis said. "We definitely want them to get out of this cold weather."

But at least some members of the homeless enclave planned to tough out the frigid weather. Bambee Gorski said she was worried about some of the other homeless people gathered on Claiborne near Iberville Street because they lacked tents to block the wind. She was trying to gather more blankets for them.

But she said her own tent was toasty Monday night after she covered it with blankets and lit a candle inside.

"I woke up sweating last night," Gorski said. "This is my house. This is my piece of concrete."

More Articles