got a lot of attention in recent months as the city got ready for the mega weekend of concerts, the Bayou Classic, the NCAA Sugar Bowl playoff game and the .
It's not always that a group gets .
It's not always that someone wants to hide them.
In the fall, in December, and as recently as the week and weekend of The Big Game, I drove around some of the city's better-known locations where people without homes have been living for years. There were noticeable differences. There were people in some of the usual spots downtown, in the Central Business District and in the French Quarter before the Swifties took over much of the city. Then, in the days leading into the Shake It Off weekend, some were gone — moved from an underpass area off of Calliope Street and  to a more isolated underpass along Claiborne Avenue, not far from a .
More recently, after court battles over Gov. Jeff Landry's right to ignore city officials and local notification laws, Landry ramped up his efforts to spruce up the state's most popular and prominent city ahead of Super Bowl LIX. Frustrated by a city-advocate partnership plan to move unhoused people into permanent housing by Thanksgiving, the guv cut an expensive deal to build a temporary housing facility in a vacant, 70,000-square-foot warehouse in New Orleans' Gentilly section on France Road.Â
Gentilly is a larger neighborhood designation for a bunch of neighborhoods. France Road is not a destination for eating, shopping, gassing up or much of anything. Certainly not housing. A particularly restless person determined to get some fresh air and see something outside of their temporary housing quarters would likely walk along a street without a sidewalk, dodge tractor-trailers going into and coming out of the Port of New Orleans or locals driving in the area because they know there's more than one way into New Orleans East. NFL fans desperate for a place to stay landed at the , a comfortable but rocky walk away from the shelter. The two-star hotel says on its website site "Some rooms are equipped with a private bathroom with a bath and a shower."
Though one is free and the other is about $100 per night, it seems staying at the temporary shelter is a better deal than a hotel that has a motorized security gate. At least the Crescent City Casino is a short walk away. It's not anything like Caesars, but they, too, are happy to take your money.
At the shelter, courtesy of Landry, there are three meals, bedding and on-site staff available to help with individual health and other needs, to connect with resources and to assist with pets who arrived with their humans.Â
Much better than the New Orleans Inn, for sure. All it should be? Nope.
A bus drops off people at the temporary homeless shelter on France Road in New Orleans, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025.
The 5601 France Road transition shelter cost more than $11 million to stay open for 60 days, and there's an option for it to stay open another 30 days. The shelter population is getting 24/7 care and security with an expensive staff earning between $50 per hour and $117 per hour, depending on the position, adding up to about $2.2 million.
As of Wednesday, there were 153 people — 115 men and 38 women — at the shelter. And two pets. Less than a handful of unhoused people chose to take the state option to leave to stay with family or friends.
As the state moved forward with moving unhoused people into the warehouse shelter, city officials announced that they will build a 65-bed, apartment-style shelter on an empty plot of land between South Gayoso and South Dupre streets, once the home of the New Orleans Police Department's crime lab. This project will cost about $8 million, funded by Department of Housing and Urban Development money.
That's about $20 million for a temporary transition shelter and a permanent transition shelter.
There are other shelters, but they're often full each night. We need more temporary and transitional housing. We need more permanent affordable housing.Â
It will take money. Lots of money.
If we're so concerned about how our state's tourist jewel looks with people on the street, state and city officials need to find more money to fund creative, long-term housing options well in advance of the next time the state and the city host another NFL Super Bowl.
It will cost millions, but more currently unhoused people will have housing vouchers to live comfortably in street-free, apartment-style or pod housing like what's happening in Nashville.Â
