NOWS began operations in October 2005 after Hurricane Katrina as a rudimentary women’s facility to respond to the massive loss of housing due to the storm. The Community Future Collectives, a 501(c)3 non-profit provided financial support to a local grass roots organization to run the facility. When funding ran out in summer of 2007, the New Orleans Women’s Shelter LLC was established as an interim vehicle to facilitate the establishment of a long-term program to provide women with tools to alter their situation in a sustainable way. Congregation Gates of Prayer agreed to serve as NOWS fiscal agent until it obtained its own 501(c)3 status. In October 2007 NOWS relocated to a newly renovated facility and the program was revised with a greater emphasis on case management and increased support for the women to achieve independence. NOWS 501(c)3 status was approved and a newly constituted 14 member Board of Directors was installed in March of 2009.

As the program has developed and evolved, NOWS has continually sought to change the trajectory of homeless women’s lives who have nowhere else to turn by providing them support and access to living wage jobs, banking services, educational and parenting classes to move them from service clients to community citizens. The shelter is located in the Upper 9th Ward of New Orleans, and serves women from across the metropolitan area. NOWS can house 20 women and their children at any one time and averages an 80% occupancy rate. The majority of the residents live in the shelter for three to six months until they are ready to transition to private housing or independent living.

According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, New Orleans' rate of homelessness (estimated to be 12,000 individuals) is more than four times that of most U.S. cities. Since Hurricane Katrina the number of homelessness has nearly doubled according to the homeless advocacy group UNITY of Greater New Orleans. While many of the homeless are the elderly and disabled, as with the rest of the nation, women and children under 8 make up the greatest proportion of those without a permanent place to call home.

Katrina exposed to the nation that poverty has always been an intractable part of the New Orleans’ community. The women and children NOWS serves are no strangers to the cruel results of limited opportunity and poor choices. Compounding their struggles is the unique condition of post-Katrina New Orleans, where housing prices increased 30% since 2005[1] making affordable housing for those with minimum wage jobs almost out of reach. The housing and social-service infrastructure to provide needed assistance has not sufficiently recovered to effective respond to the tremendous need. Katrina taught the citizens of New Orleans the power of perseverance and tenacity to recreate one’s own life. By assisting our residents in creating a realistic plan for independence and providing the opportunities and support to help them chart a new course for themselves and their children, we are slowly, one family at a time decreasing the number of homeless in New Orleans.

We started the program believing that with support the women could begin to envision a different life for themselves and learn the skills to achieve that vision. Homeless women are referred to us through the UNITY network or contact us directly. They are explained the rules and expectations and if there is room, accepted into the program. Pregnant homeless women are able to stay at the shelter, deliver their baby and return from the hospital to continue their work towards independence. Each woman works with the case manager who conducts an assessment of their needs and develops with them individual goals and benchmarks for the next stage of their life. The women meet with the case manager on a bi-weekly basis and have daily involvement with their case aide who facilitates the delivery of medical and social services, participation in job training or educational classes, assistance in job searches and enrollment of their children in school and/or daycare. We have a partnership with a local credit union and require our residents to open a savings account and make weekly deposits.

When they are ready to leave, we match 25% of the money they have saved to help defray the costs of setting up a new household. We believe assisting women with budgeting and helping them establish a bank account is an important step towards life -long independence. All residents are coached on life skills and parents participate in weekly parenting classes. Weekly house meetings are held to review everyone’s progress and work through issues which inevitably arise in communal living situations. Through these meetings and individual sessions the women learn new conflict management and problem solving skills. We also provide structured art classes for the children once a week. By stressing employment, literacy, caring parenting and financial management we prepare the women for independence and stay in supportive touch with them after they leave to provide them a caring ear when they encounter obstacles. Their success becomes ours, and we rebuild a city which more closely mirrors our collective hopes and values.

We are highly dependent upon our network of partners to meet the variety of needs of our women and children. We have formed strong relationships with the other shelters serving women and have referred clients to them when it is apparent that a women is not sufficiently motivated to work towards independence We are members of the collaborative established by UNITY which serves as a clearinghouse for agencies working with the city’s homeless.

We continue to network with those in the human service and business world to access services and connections on behalf of our residents. Covenant House provides GED Classes, pre-school and day-care and along with Common Ground Health Clinic some medical services for our clients. Tulane, Southern and Loyola Universities provide us with students and staff training, Dress for Success outfits our women with work attire, Jewish Family Services provides counseling and Adopt A Family gives out women furniture and household supplies when they are ready to move out on their own. All of these services are provided free of charge. We were chosen by UNITY to be a partner in their rapid re-housing program which provides subsidized apartments. By developing these relationships we are able to access a wide variety of services and programs for our clients.

There are other shelters for homeless women in the city which have a primary focus on substance abuse, domestic violence or mental illness. We are the only program which is exclusively designed for indigent women with a focus on providing the assistance needed to end the cycle of poverty and homeless for these young families who often bounce from one temporary chaotic living situation to the next. The toll taken on the children is school failure, limited social skills and most tragically a sense that the world is unpredictable and unsafe, that nurturance and promise of a productive future is beyond their grasp. NOWS aims to change the trajectory of these lives by giving the women a chance to set goals for their lives and provide the structure and assistance to make their hopes for the future a reality.