Help for most needy offered

As the temperature across the Tri-parishes dips to frigid lows, directors at Gulf Coast Teaching Family Services said they have a plan in place to protect Houma’s homeless during nights of unbearable cold.

Monday night temperatures dropped to the mid-20 degree range, the coldest night of the winter to date. Tim Destri, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Slidell, said it might be the low point of the season.

“[Monday’s] hard freeze will probably be the coldest night of the season, actually,” said Destri, who also predicted January and February to be warmer than December.

“It’s really a tough call doing extended projects, as far as reliability, but that’s the way I interpret it,” the meteorologist said. “If it’s going to be closer to normal [temperatures, as forecast by the Climate Prediction Center], then we’re going to need warmer conditions in January and February.”

GCTFS, an agency that employs programs to help the homeless, has an agreement with the Houma Police Department that allows the social services agency to foot the bill for a night’s stay at selected area hotels if an HPD officer encounters someone who needs shelter for the night.

“If they locate homeless people during the cold nights, they can pick them up and transport them to a local motel or one of the shelters, and we will service the people the next day,” said Amy Lagard, program director for the homeless program at GCTFS for 11 years.

Lagard said she would prefer to keep the hotels they reached agreements with confidential, but said some of the needy will be transported to emergency shelters, including the Bunk House Inn and Beautiful Beginnings, or Houma Overnight, a rooming house.

Willie Green, Lagard’s colleague at GCTFS, said the homeless program is in need of donations or outside funding to keep it running throughout the next year.

The agency’s homeless programs are grant-funded by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, but the award requires a match from the recipients, something the GCTFS has done internally since 1997, Green said.

“All of the match is now coming through Gulf Coast, the agency itself,” said Green, who later added it was no longer possible for the agency to fund the match because of ordered cuts in the budget.

The Houma regional director said the grants total $250,000, and the match can come from nonprofit organizations, parish government or donations.

“We’ll have to severely limit the services we provide if we don’t receive assistance outside of the HUD contribution,” Green said.

Two weeks ago, with the temperatures expected to drop to 38 degrees, the City of New Orleans activated its freeze plan and opened five shelters with various stipulations in age and gender for the homeless population.

On a government level, the Tri-parishes lack a structured, official freeze plan that would trigger a series of shelter openings for the area’s homeless should temperatures dip below a specific threshold, emergency preparedness directors from Lafourche and St. Mary Parish said they do have agreements with churches to house the needy should the weather be deemed too harsh.

Duval Arthur, director of homeland security and emergency preparedness in St. Mary Parish, said the parish has an agreement with the St. Mary Ministerial Alliance that will provide a hotel room and a meal for the homeless.

“We have to contact them, give them the name of a person and where they are located and they will provide a motel room should one become available,” Arthur said.

In the case of a lack of hotel rooms, Arthur said another agreement is in place to find a church to open a school as emergency shelter, but he was not sure about the specifics of the plan.

Chris Boudreaux, who holds the same position in Lafourche Parish, said his department would work with the Office of Community Action to open a church somewhere in case of frigid temperatures.

“We don’t have a freeze plan in writing, but we don’t really have that many homeless people in Lafourche Parish,” Boudreaux said. “If need be, we can find a spot at a church, and they can stay at a church overnight.”

Boudreaux said Community Action opened a church last winter to provide shelter during a hard freeze, but nobody showed.

Both Arthur and Boudreaux acknowledged that there are no specific temperature requirements for their plans to be enacted. Instead, they will service the needy through an intangible determination.

The Terrebonne Parish Office of Emergency Preparedness did not respond to repeated messages left at their office.