/ Local News

05/16/2008

By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN  / Associated Press

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin says he was just joking when he offered this solution to the city's growing homeless population: one-way bus tickets out of town.

But the city's homeless don't think it's a laughing matter.

During a panel discussion Thursday, Nagin said helping the homeless is one of his top priorities and named two advocacy groups — the New Orleans Mission and UNITY of Greater New Orleans — as worthy recipients of donations to alleviate an estimated doubling of the city's homeless population since Hurricane Katrina.

The mayor said the city has up to 12,000 homeless people, many of whom came here looking for jobs after the 2005 disaster. Then he punctuated his comments with what he later called a "tongue-in-cheek" remark.

"I'm not suggesting that they were dumped here, but we have a lot of people from a lot of different places around the country, and you may be helping one of your citizens. Maybe we can even find some bus tickets. We'll see. One way," Nagin said told audience members at an event sponsored by the American Association for Public Opinion Research.

Kenneth Rouzan, 51, one of about 150 homeless people living in battered tents beneath a stretch of freeway overpass, saw little humor in the mayor's remarks. Rouzan said Friday that Nagin would like to get rid of the colony to hide the city's problems.

"It was no joke," said Rouzan, who called himself a lifelong resident of New Orleans. "He would give us a one-way ticket straight to hell if he could."

Nagin, whose off-the-cuff comments frequently get him in trouble, didn't offend one of the city's homeless assistance providers.

Ron Gonzales, executive director of New Orleans Mission, said the group has provided one-way bus tickets to homeless people after verifying that that they had family or other means of support at their destination.

"It's not realistic what they are expecting to find (in New Orleans)," Gonzales said. "They find something different and they want to go home."

Gonzales also noted that Nagin recently donated $14,000 of his own money to the mission.

"It was a personal check," he said.

Thursday's panel discussion also included former White House hurricane recovery chief Donald Powell and Louisiana Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu. After the event, Nagin said he was "just kidding around."

"The solution to the problem as I said earlier was for them to help us with donations to those two organizations," he said.

Nagin offered a more serious outlook on the city's homeless population during a meeting in April with the Bush administration's "homeless czar."

The homeless are "our most vulnerable citizens, and they have to be treated fairly," Nagin said after meeting with Philip Mangano, executive director of the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness.

During his visit, Mangano toured the tent city where Rouzan lives. Nagin has said his administration plans to replace the colony with a military-style barracks where people would be provided with bunk beds, meals and other care.

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Associated Press writer John Moreno Gonzales contributed to this report.