Love and a little innovation can go a long way. A coalition of New Orleans charities have proven this, bringing the number of homeless people in their community down by 90 percent! They put housing and love for their neighbors first.
If you are moved by this story and would like to find out more about working with the homeless in your area, you can log in to your Giving Fund and search for charities. Or recommend your own favorite charity.
Across the US, more than a half million people have been identified as homeless.
New Orleans faced a major crisis in homelessness following Hurricane Katrina. In 2007, two years after the storm, there were more than 11,600 homeless people in the city. Since then, New Orleans stepped up its effort to tackle homelessness and has brought that number down 90 percent.
Martha Kegel, executive director of Unity of Greater New Orleans, tells Here & Now’s Jeremy Hobson the strategy to tackle the “unprecedented explosion” of homelessness in the city following Katrina was threefold.
First, Kegel says, Unity of Greater New Orleans – a nonprofit leading a collaborative of organizations providing housing and services to the homeless – had to assemble an outreach team that “was willing to go anywhere and do anything to rescue and rehouse a homeless person.”