The Harry Tompson Center in New Orleans

After I’d spent a couple weeks volunteering building and rebuilding homes, I started to get the sense that the housing crisis in New Orleans was much bigger than simply helping people purchase affordable homes or move back into homes they owned before the storm. People would mention a camp under I-10 on Claiborne and saying they “don’t know where all those people went…” before trailing off.

Homelessness is clearly a problem in New Orleans—it’s a problem in most cities—and since I was volunteering to support people’s access to housing, I knew I needed to be working with the homeless community here. Rebuild and blight are clearly the high profile volunteer cause, and many homeless people in the city lost their housing directly because of the storm, but right now there are at least 11,500 homeless people in New Orleans.

When my friend (and very temporary roommate) Maria Cicci came here a few years back when in school for non-profit management at DePaul, they met with a group of Presentation Sisters who worked at The Harry Tompson Center. The Center has been around since 1999, but in 2007 The Harry Tompson Rebuild Center opened behind St. Joseph’s Church on Tulane. It’s a facility where homeless people can come between 9am and 2pm for breakfast and lunch, to use the phones, do laundry, take showers, and get some mental health, medical and legal services. Run by a partnership between the Presentation Sisters’ Lantern Mission, Catholic Charities Hispanic Apostolate, the Center also has its own director and assistant director. It’s also staffed by Jesuit Volunteer Corp—like Americorp but faith-based–doing a year of service in New Orleans.

Maria wanted to see the place and Sister Vera, one of the sisters she met on her last visit, and I was looking for somewhere to volunteer so we stopped by one sweltering Monday afternoon in September.

The Rebuild Center is a courtyard lined with benches. There are showers and sinks around the perimeter and guests chat or surreptitiously doze (sleeping is not allowed) while waiting for lunch or for to be called for the shower or phones. The Center has bright, leafy planters and that day visitors tried to find space in any available shade. While we waited for Sister Vera at the entrance, I noticed a tired woman sitting on a bench near the check-in desk fanning herself with a piece of paper. A younger woman with a nametag and a genuinely sympathetic look was giving her what I had to assume was bad news. The woman said little, but her face registered resigned frustration. The staffer walked away.

Sister Vera greeted us and immediately launched into a rapid fire tour of the facility:

“In the mornings, people start lining up around 8am. We officially open at nine and we serve a small breakfast and then people are able to do laundry and take showers. We do about 20 loads of laundry a day. Our health clinic is open four days a week, and we’ve got financial services and prescription care–”

As she walked past, a man called out to her:

“Sister, when you gonna come talk to me?”

“Oh, I’m very busy right now,” she said, taking his hand, “but remember, I am your friend.”

Sister Vera was formidable, with short, wavy grey hair. Raised by a lapsed Catholic father and a Jewish mother, I have had limited experience with nuns. But I understand the stereotype: tough, unsentimental and efficient. Sister Vera introduced us to Emily Bussen, the assistant director at the Center who stopped to chat briefly between fielding requests from guests. I asked her about volunteering and she gave me her card and told me I could come whenever.

Without much warning, it was time for lunch. Another nun with a megaphone stepped up and instructed everyone to take a colored ticket. “People seated will receive tickets first!” she repeated sharply. Once the tickets were handed out, it was time to start lining up. The crowd surged, and shifted anxiously—“orange tickets my line up. Only orange.”

The line began to snake through every hallway of the Center, and back onto the patio. Mostly people filed through, but the nuns tolerated little dissent in the ranks. “Feel like cattle being herded” I hear someone mutter. “Ah, these nuns, you like that?” a man to my left asks me. “It’s like being in school all over again. They don’t mess around. You better line up.” The man tells us he just got in from Detroit eight days ago. “They’ve got depression-era unemployment. I’ve had so many jobs, I just know I gotta be able to find work down here, no doubt about it.”

After lunch we chatted with people on the benches about the heat, whether Chicago is better than New York, and someone’s recent trip to Atlanta. The guests to the Center that day seemed to be mostly middle-aged African American men with varying degrees of obvious need. The clean, open-air surroundings—no cafeteria tables or fluorescent lighting–the good company of guests we talked with, and the responsive and upbeat staff made the environment welcoming despite obvious physical discomfort. When a staff member passed by, I smile at her and ask if she needs any help.

“Actually, yeah, can you work the phone list?” She sits me down at a small desk and shows me the list. There are four phones in a small room. People who want to use the phone have to sign up on the list and each person gets about ten minutes to talk. “After ten minutes is up I usually go in and say, ‘two more minutes’ and just keep reminding them.” I sit down and start taking names.

In the following weeks when I volunteer at the Harry Tompson Center, this is my job. I get a chance to talk with people as they wait for lunch or the phone, and it’s a great way to get to know guests. Some days the Center isn’t too crowded and people barely have to wait, but it still feels somewhat wrong that I am in control over when and for how long men and women my parents’ age get to use the phone. Remembering names takes on deep significance for me. I’m not good at this in any scenario, but here I begin to see it as the most obvious and essential way to show respect and build a foundation and I work doggedly at it.

I mention this to Emily and she explains that it’s a way to make the exchange about relationships rather than one-way giving and receiving. Emily has a soft, deeply responsive face and she uses the same warmth and openness when describing to me“the first time you remember their name and it catches them off guard, like, ‘you remember my name?’” as she does when at her job helping someone make an doctor’s appointment.

As I work the phones and slowly get to know several of the guests, I become more aware of the specific challenges facing homeless people in New Orleans. A huge number of the calls made are about jobs—following up with potential employers or trying to pursue leads on work. Many spend most of an afternoon on hold with “welfare” or trying to figure out both government and non-profit bureaucracies. I know this both because people have told me about their struggles and needs and because when you use a phone at a homeless drop-in center, there’s a general lack of privacy as well as control over your own affairs and how and when they’re taken care of.

I get a greater sense of empathy, but still, am reminded of how little I know about life on the streets (It’s hard, sometimes, to even know what that phrase means). One day a man I’d seen before walking, disheveled with a broken backpack,downtown approached me with a fixed stare.

“Do you say your prayers at night?” He asked. I told him that I do, in my own way. “Do you pray for a better world?” He continued. “Yes, that’s definitely what I pray for,” I told him, realizing in the moment how true it was. Things are easy for you.” He continued, “but it’s a hard world out there.” His gaze was fixed on me. “ It’s hard out there.”

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