The one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina finds pockets of progress mingled with miles of destruction. “This isn’t about nails and hammers, it’s about families that need to go home” | Jamie Dean
NEW ORLEANS — On a sweltering August morning in downtown New Orleans, Harrah's Casino is doing brisk business. It's only 11 a.m. on a Tuesday, but already dozens of gamblers are sipping tiny cocktails and pushing blue chips across green poker tables. On the casino's south end, rows of patrons sit under glittering lights holding cold beers and pulling silver levers on gaudy slot machines with names like "Money to Burn."
Across the street in a gutted office with brown shag carpeting, Tobey Pitman doesn't have money to burn, but he does have scores of people to help. Pitman operated a Southern Baptist homeless shelter in New Orleans for nearly 30 years until Hurricane Katrina largely dispersed the city's chronically homeless population last year (see "Storm shelter," April 15, 2006).
New Desire
School opens in new site—again
When Hurricane Katrina flooded the Ninth Ward last year, the future looked grim for Desire Street Ministries (DSM), a Christian, urban renewal ministry. But DSM managed to keep its academy for boys open, leasing a camp in Florida for the 2005-2006 school year ("Homecoming on hold," Oct. 22, 2005).
Nearly 100 students will return to the academy at its new home in Baton Rouge Aug. 28, where DSM purchased a shuttered church building and an adjacent school facility. DSM assistant director Ben McLeish says the campus will likely house the academy for the next few years, and more than 50 boys will live in dorms on site.
While DSM waits to see what will happen in the Ninth Ward, McLeish says the ministry is exploring opportunities in additional cities. DSM launched a new urban ministry near a large housing project in Birmingham, Ala., this summer with Reformed Theological Seminary graduate Brian Kelly and his family. McLeish says that DSM will explore more cities this fall, and that he's excited to "find out what the Lord has up His sleeve."
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No pious baloney
