43°
Baton Rouge, Louisiana
7 Day Forecast

Latest Weather Blog

Follow our weather team on social media

New Orleans homeless population to relocate to French Quarter hotel

3 years 11 months 3 weeks ago Thursday, March 26 2020 Mar 26, 2020 March 26, 2020 12:08 PM March 26, 2020 in News
Source: WWL-TV

NEW ORLEANS – City and state officials collaborated in a plan to move members of New Orleans’ homeless population off the streets and into a 155 room-hotel.

According to WWL-TV the general manager of the Hilton Garden Inn- New Orleans French Quarter/CBD confirmed that officials are working to start moving people in groups of 35 from encampments and house and feed them for the next 30 days.

The money to fund the process comes from a combination of federal, state, and philanthropic means.

“We have transitioned our hotel into an intake facility,” said hotel general manager Adam Turni told WWL-TV in an exclusive interview. “We have painter’s tape to designate 6 feet indicators so everybody can keep proper spacing. We're only allowing one individual to use our elevator at a time, we're only allowing so many persons on each floor at a time.”

The hotel is prepared to serve the guests three meals a day, clean their rooms daily and provide laundry service under the deal. He said the National Guard would deliver equipment and other supplies and police would help with security in every floor and at all exits to make sure the homeless guests remain isolated the whole time.

Mayor LaToya Cantrell said in a news conference she hoped to move people into hotels by the end of the week.

"The state of Louisiana is working to get everything finalized on the contract to make sure that the process can start as soon as possible," said Gov. John Bel Edwards' spokeswoman, Christina Stephens.

All of the people being moved to the hotel will be screened to make sure they are not showing symptoms of coronavirus.

Turni mentioned that Hilton Hotels staffers learned a lot about emergency intake during Hurricane Katrina so they already know how they’re going to handle this situation.

According to nola.gov, New Orleans has a rate of 302 people who are homeless for every 100,000 of its residents.

More News

Desktop News

Click to open Continuous News in a sidebar that updates in real-time.
Radar
7 Days