As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin prepares to appoint a blue ribbon panel to map out a 10-year plan to end chronic homelessness in the city, officials say New York's "mixed-use" housing approach that has drawn praise to the Big Apple may be just right for the Big Easy.

In recent years in New York, the city has collaborated with business and community interests to transform ramshackle buildings and decrepit hotels in some of Manhattan's priciest neighborhoods, including Times Square, into affordable permanent housing for vagrants.

New York officials attracted major donations from national corporations to finance the project, in large part, because companies receive federal tax credits for investing in affordable housing programs, said Roseanne Haggerty, executive director of Common Ground, the nonprofit organization that developed the housing in New York.

In fact, these same Fortune 500 corporations that invested in New York's plan could be interested in partnering with New Orleans, Haggerty said. Nagin as well as his housing and neighborhood development director, Alberta Pate, said the city's own public-private initiative to end homelessness would likely follow this strategy.

New York's program "is the model we like best," Nagin said Wednesday.
By the end of this month, the mayor is expected to appoint business and community leaders, as well as homeless advocates, to a committee to draft a plan to provide permanent housing for an estimated 5,000 people living on the streets of New Orleans.

"We want to be certain we get input from the agencies that provide the services so there's not just one agency that takes control of it," Pate said.

More than 100 cities have launched 10-year plans since President Bush in 2001 set an ambitious goal of ending homelessness in a decade.

Philip Mangano, Bush's homelessness czar, said he is optimistic that Nagin's committee will be able to craft a "management agenda that is research and data driven, performance based and, most importantly, results oriented."

But a successful plan rests on comprehensive community partnerships, Mangano said in an interview this week from Las Vegas.

"No one level of government can get it done alone," said Mangano, executive director of the Interagency Council on Homelessness. "It's been tried and it hasn't worked. New Orleans can't do it alone, Louisiana can't do it alone and frankly we can't do it alone in Washington. It's literally a partnership that begins in the White House and extends to the streets."

Mangano said he met with Nagin a few months ago to discuss the city's options and looks forward to returning as the city's plan develops.

At the U.S. Conference of Mayors last June in Denver, 225 mayors unanimously approved Bush's 10-year initiative.
"Partnership trumped partisanship," Mangano said. "On this issue of homelessness, there is no 'D' or 'R' or 'I' or 'G,' but we're just Americans partnering to end a national disgrace."

In New Orleans, Unity for the Homeless Executive Director Martha Kegel said the challenge facing the city is to bring everyone to the same table.

"If all we do is have somebody over here trying to keep people from sleeping on benches and panhandling and somebody over here wants a 24-hour shelter, we are not going to solve anybody's problem," Kegel said. "I think it's going to take a unified vision of what this community wants to happen and a very concrete plan that we'll stick to for 10 years."

In the late 1990s, nonprofit groups proposed a $12 million, 24-hour multiservice center on Poydras near the Broad Street overpass, but the plan folded when finances ran dry. Just two years ago, former Mayor Marc Morial's task force on homelessness concluded the city still needed a 24-hour emergency homeless shelter.

But now, city officials and homeless advocates say the main solution to chronic homelessness is to build affordable housing.

Nagin said his administration is scouting the city for feasible locations for new shelters. He said it is a "struggle" to provide housing in addition to social services and predicted there would be some resistance to any change in the way the needs of the homeless are met. The city has several facilities that offer food, temporary shelter and medical services to the homeless, but officials acknowledge a "severe shortage" of affordable housing. Studies show that affordable housing is necessary to pull vagrants back into society.

The mayor said he is excited to work with Common Ground to replicate their design.
Haggerty came to New Orleans last year to survey the city and said Nagin seems excited to solve the "tragedies of homelessness in a way that creates economic possibilities" -- much like her group did for New York.

"What also was striking is that there is such a significant number of abandoned housing units and you look at a place like New Orleans and say the solution is masquerading as another problem," Haggerty said. "In solving homelessness, you can solve other problems in getting these buildings back to use."

Developing dilapidated buildings into housing units for homeless people, Haggerty said, is a proven technique.

"This isn't pie in the sky," she said. "We're not dreaming. We're saying roll out the best practices and use this targeted approach."

New Orleans Convention and Visitor's Bureau Vice President Beverly Gianna said a homelessness plan that includes such economic development would be a "win-win situation."

"I certainly know it will speak well for New Orleans," Gianna said. "When you see people lying in the street, you just don't want to see that. It's not just a question because it's a blight, but it's about helping that human."