Mike Miller, M.S.W., director of supportive housing placement at UNITY of Greater New Orleans, is a member of UNITY’s Outreach Team.  He rescues disabled homeless persons from abandoned buildings and re-houses them.

We have a big problem here in New Orleans.  In fact, we have 63,000 of them.  Four years after the federal levees failed to hold back the wrath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans now ranks #1 as the most blighted city in America.

I could write about the hundreds of people that we have found living in these abandoned buildings: the schizophrenic, the elderly, the addicted, the mentally retarded, the sick discharged from hospitals onto the streets — the poorest, most vulnerable people unable to afford post-Katrina rents.  But today I want to write about the buildings in which we find them.

What is it like to live in an abandoned building? Well, in a nutshell, it’s awful. We find people living in buildings that were flooded four years ago and have not been touched.  Many still have the remnants of the previous occupants, including moldy furniture, rotting clothes, cans of rusty food.   The air is putrid and reeks of the black mold on the walls.  The floorboards are termite-infested and give without warning, forcing our clients to navigate carefully in the dark of late night.  The roofs are often tattered from the winds of Katrina or the pick axes used to escape rising flood waters.  Rain pours inside.

The facilities are primal.  Without plumbing, you have to tote water into the house.  Some of it is placed into the toilet in order to dispose of the human wastes, the rest is left in the sun, collecting mosquito larvae and bird droppings, used for drinking and for lukewarm sponge baths to provide some relief from the stench of living in the New Orleans summer without air conditioning.

There is the constant threat of eviction.   The police are vigilant about arresting people as they enter and exit their squats.  You sleep lightly, paranoid that someone may decide you’re an easy mark for violence.  The door you walked through hasn’t locked in four years and crumbles when pushed.  You walked in around 11 PM while the neighbors slept.  You lay your head down, using your stinky tennis shoes as a pillow, knowing that you have to leave at 5 AM before the neighbors wake up and see you.

Winter is brutal.  40 degrees and 70% humidity soaks your blanket and leaves a cold saturated pillow as your headrest.   The frigid wetness is combated with a small fire, only set when you truly believe that the neighbors won’t see.  It’s usually late, late into the evening before you can get this incendiary and dangerous relief.  Houses burn this way.   Clients can burn this way.

Finally, it’s the bugs.  The swamp buzzes around your matted hair, stinging your scarred skin and biting your limbs.  Lice, mites and biting flies interrupt a scavenged meal and torment your sleep.  The bugs infect the scratches and spread diseases, providing an annoying soundtrack to an otherwise quiet dwelling.  Daylight can’t come too soon.

This is what it’s like living in a house that’s not a home.

UNITY of Greater  New Orleans is in need of household goods and furniture to house the homeless. Volunteers are also needed to host housewarming parties for recently housed disabled persons and to collect, sort, and deliver furniture. Please contact Catch Patton, Coordinator of UNITY’s Community Engagement Project, at 655-8815 to help house the homeless.

Click here to visit the UNITY of Greater New Orleans Blog