Seven miles from downtown New Orleans, along an industrial strip next to a shipping canal, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry turned an empty warehouse into a temporary shelter for homeless people who live in encampments near the Mercedes Benz Superdome. In a Monday-morning press release, Landry announced that the new shelter — dubbed “The Transition Center” — would open in two days, The Lens reports. That same day, on the Industrial Canal, construction crews worked around the clock to turn a former warehouse into a suitable shelter for 200 residents, installing floors, bathrooms, and privacy curtains. And down by the Superdome, officials began posting “relocation notices” at homeless encampments around the city, warning that failure to comply with the move may result in “enforcement actions or legal proceedings.”
New Orleans is hosting the Super Bowl in less than a month, on February 9. " It is in the best interest of every citizen’s safety and security to give the unhoused humane and safe shelter as we begin to welcome the world to the City of New Orleans for both Super Bowl LIX and Mardi Gras,” the governor’s press announcement proclaimed. Almost immediately, the idea was met with backlash from some city leaders and advocacy organizations, who questioned the remote location of the facility, the lack of coordination with local officials, and the governor’s commitment to long-term solutions for solving homelessness, versus a short-term shelter that kept homeless people out of the view of Super Bowl visitors. But the new center’s leader, Stacy Horn Koch, a seasoned administrator of homeless plans sees the new center as a genuine effort to transform the state’s Super Bowl relocation efforts into a way to step up citywide efforts to house homeless people. “This is a direct response to people saying, ‘You can’t just move people around, you need to help them,’” she said. “And that was the purpose of setting this up.”
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