A Good Katrina Recovery Story From New Orleans

[Sean in New Orleans]

COMING HOME
Former homeless veteran rebuilding his 7th Ward house to shelter eight
Saturday, November 11, 2006
By Gwen Filosa
Stephen Corley hasn't lived on the streets for a decade. But autumn still reminds him of the sorrow that comes with having no place to call your own, only heightened by the chill in the air and the holidays on the calendar.

"This time of the year, the homeless problem is the worst problem in the world to have," said Corley, as he surveyed the 7th Ward house he is rebuilding for homeless veterans in New Orleans. "You're depressed. You want to be able to sit at a table with a clean shirt and pants and eat turkey and dressing."

Corley, 54, started the nonprofit We Care Outreach Community Development Corp. in 2004 as a way to help distressed, homeless military veterans rebuild their lives. Hurricane Katrina wiped out his eastern New Orleans shelter on Flake Street, which had helped about 20 veterans since it opened in 2001. So this year, Corley is repairing his own flooded house with plans to offer supportive housing for up to eight veterans.


"This is my vision. This is my dream," said Corley, inside the pink shotgun double in the 2600 block of Republic Street. "This is just the beginning."

The house remains a work in progress, but Corley's insurance money helped pay for new electrical wiring, Sheetrock and fixtures, as well as the rest of the 30-year mortgage. But the double, which sits vacant in a storm-shelled neighborhood of FEMA trailers and empty houses, needs about $30,000 in repairs and supplies, including the installation of a wheelchair ramp.

15 years on the street

Ten years ago, Corley himself was immersed in what he calls the "homeless cycle," coming up on a 15-year stretch of staying in and out of homeless shelters, trying to stretch a disability check far enough to simply survive. He was an Air Force medic in the early 1970s, and while he didn't go to Vietnam during the war, he saw plenty of agony in the lives of the soldiers he helped.

"I dealt with them when they came back," Corley said. Once home from the service, he went to nursing school and worked as a licensed practical nurse. His longtime struggle with depression and anxiety only grew, he said, and he eventually found himself unable to work.

By 1997, though, Corley found solace and help from the St. Francis of Assisi order in Houma, where the brothers took him in for several months. Today, he is months away from finishing a master of business administration degree from the University of Phoenix in Metairie, where he earned his bachelor's degree in business.

Corley relocated to Bogalusa after losing his possessions and house to the floodwaters of last year's levee failures. He kept his job with the Department of Labor, where he started in 1999 and continues working as an advocate for homeless veterans. Yet he routinely commutes to New Orleans to work on the Republic Street house.

Inside the raised shotgun double, Corley envisions a place that offers more than just a warm bed. Corley's nonprofit adheres to "supportive housing," which enlists professionals to offer a homeless man with life skills, from personal hygiene to money management and mental health counseling.

Corley calls it giving people a sense of belonging. "That touchy-feely kind of thing," he said with a smile. "At a shelter, in the morning they've got to take their bag, put it on their back, and leave. We're here to make people feel like they're part of the community."

Numbers grow after storm


On any given day, about 200,000 veterans live on the streets or in shelters, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. That figure is one-third of the estimated adult homeless population in the nation. Almost all are single men who grew up poor, while nearly half have mental illness.

In New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina and the floodwaters have only exacerbated the homeless crisis, with a new population of families struggling to find the most basic of needs.

"It's the greatest crisis of homelessness in the nation's history, what's happening right here," said Martha Kegel, executive director of Unity of Greater New Orleans, the lead agency for the local network of homeless service organizations.

Before Katrina, about 6,300 people were homeless in and around New Orleans, according to Kegel's agency, including about 1,000 people living in assisted living homes with case managers and in-house social services.

Unity plans to do a new homeless count in January, but Kegel's colleagues are seeing a growing crisis on the city's post-Katrina streets.

"Without a doubt, it's much higher," Kegel said. "A lot of people are squatting in flooded buildings or abandoned buildings. People are living in cars. The organizations that exclusively serve the Latino population estimated to me there might be over 10,000 migrant workers" living in substandard, make-do shelters.

Corley knows the drill. So he will stay in Bogalusa, he said, and rebuild his former home for others in need.

"They have their own personal wars," he said, of homeless men and women. "A lot of people are ashamed of the lifestyle and what has happened to them. They can't seem to forgive themselves. We want people to be able to forgive themselves."

. . . . . . .

For more information on We Care New Orleans, visit http://www.wecareneworleans.org. Unity of Greater New Orleans' site is http://www.unitygno.org.

Gwen Filosa can be reached at gfilosa@timespicayune.com or (504) 826-3304.

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