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W e d n e s d ay, M ay 7, 2025
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Jan Risher LONG STORY SHORT
At 30,000 ft, embarrassment has an upside
STAFF PHOTOS BY BRETT DUKE
Emily Wain, executive director of the Harry Tompson Center, sits at the center recently in New Orleans.
GROWING HOME Harry Tompson Center expands day shelter for the needy and unhoused
BY STEPHANIE RIEGEL Staff writer
Like many cities, New Orleans has struggled to address its homelessness crisis in a way that is both compassionate and effective. While there are no easy solutions, a day shelter on the edge of the Central Business District, the Harry Tompson Center, is showing the way, providing its “guests” with clean showers, private bathrooms, device charging stations and other vital services to help them find a permanent home. Over the past few years, the Harry Tompson Center has helped about 150 individuals a year, on average, qualify for housing — a monthslong process that involves assessment, handholding, paperwork, medical screenings and behavioral health counseling. The center helps hundreds more each year ready themselves for that process. But that’s just a fraction of the more than 17,000 mostly men and some women who avail themselves of the center’s hygiene services. The Harry Tompson Center sees hygiene as a gateway to greater care, so the real way to measure its effectiveness is by the number of folks who go there to take a shower. “If you are standing around waiting for a shower, one of our housing case navigators can come around and talk to you and begin to have that initial conversation,” said Paisleigh Kelley, the center’s communications director. “It opens the door.” Now, the Harry Tompson Center is opening that door even wider with an expanded facility that will make hygiene services more accessible — and, staffers hope, more enjoyable — thereby enabling the organization to serve more people. In early March, the center cut the ribbon on an expanded hygiene area with 10 showers, six private bathrooms and twice as many sinks as before, 18 in all, with hot water. The new space also has a laundry facility, where a staffer will wash guests’ clothes, and a larger, better-lit common area. The facility is not only more spacious but also more functional. “It’s a better utilization of space that is beautiful and will help us better fulfill our mission,” said the center’s Executive Director Emily Wain. The $2.1 million project marked the first phase of a total $3.6 million overhaul of the center. Phase two, now underway, includes the build-out of three medical treatment rooms, four counseling/case management rooms, three private phone booths and new administrative offices.
Showers at the Harry Tompson Center are available for the needy and unhoused. works to keep them housed, trying to ensure they get the type of support they need once they’ve moved into an apartment. St. Joseph’s, the fourth partner in Rebuild, makes the property in its parking lot available for free. “It’s really a beautiful collaboration,” Beautiful collaboration Wain said. “It’s a partnership in the true The Harry Tompson Center was sense of the word and we all really work founded in the late 1990s by the late Rev. well together, even while staying in our Harry Tompson, a popular Jesuit pastor own lanes.” and high school administrator in New Orleans, who also founded Café Recon- ‘In it together’ cile and The Good Shepherd School. Wain came to New Orleans from St. It began when Tompson started offer- Louis in 2004 as a member of the Jesuit ing snacks and other assistance to needy Volunteer Corps, a service program for people at the community center building young adults. Her placement as a JV next to his church, Immaculate Concep- was with the Harry Tompson Center, tion on Baronne Street. After Tompson’s back when it was operating from the death in 2001, volunteers took over the space on Baronne Street. “I thought I would stay a year or two organization and officially incorporated and then figure out what to do with my it as a 501(c)(3) a few years later. In 2007, as the city began rebuilding life,” she said. More than two decades later, she’s after Katrina, the center moved to its present location in the parking lot be- firmly entrenched in New Orleans, with hind St. Joseph’s Catholic Church on a husband and two children, and has Tulane Avenue. It partnered with the built her career at the Harry Tompson pastor of St. Joseph’s and with Lantern Center. In 2020, weeks into the COVID Light Ministries, another local nonprofit pandemic, she was tapped to succeed that serves the homeless, to create what longtime executive director, Vicki Juis known as Rebuild. dice, who still volunteers at the center In the nearly two decades since, Re- and serves on its board. “It’s hard to capture in words how build has evolved into a partnership of four organizations, each working inde- special this place is,” Wain said. “Even pendently yet collaboratively to care for in the hard times, I’m surrounded by the homeless and needy in distinct and amazing people, guests, staff, voluncomplementary ways. teers. We’re in it together.” The Harry Tompson Center provides Her days at the center are unprehygiene and other basic services to help dictable, crazy and rewarding. Of late, stabilize guests and prepare them for she’s been preoccupied with keeping housing. services running as smoothly as possiLantern Light serves breakfast and ble amid the din of buzz saws and hamlunch daily. It also provides regular mail mers, making sure last-minute glitchservice and helps people secure state ID es — dryers that aren’t heating quite cards — two critically important ser- enough, erratic water pressure — are vices to those living on the streets and resolved. seeking jobs or housing. She also stays busy coordinating with DePaul USA, which joined Rebuild ä See SHELTER, page 3G in 2012, places guests in housing and
The new space is scheduled to be completed in late fall. “This will enable us to really kick things up a notch and do an even better job for those we serve,” said Wain. “We’re hoping to expand our medical services from two days a week to five.”
When asked, “What was the most embarrassing thing you’ve ever experienced?,” I have a clear answer. A bit of background is required: In preparation for the 2009 Congrès Mondial Acadien, which was set to take place in New Brunswick, Canada, organizers invited a group of Louisiana journalists to make the trip up north for a week of festivities in 2008. The goal was for us to tell the people back home about the big event coming up. Hopefully, lots of Broussards, Poches, Landrys, Heberts and all the rest of the people with Acadian in Louisiana would make the trip to connect with long-lost cousins and get in touch with their roots. At the time, I lived in Lafayette and had two daughters who were 11 and 7. It was the week school was starting — an exhausting time for parents with school-age children. The lists of things to buy and send to school with them is long. All in all, life was busy and full. Before we left, I barely had a chance to look at the list of names of people who were going on the trip and realize that I didn’t know a single soul. They had chartered a bus for us to drive from Lafayette through Baton Rouge to pick up more folks and then make our way to the airport in New Orleans. We left extra early on a hot August morning. I am not a morning person and realized as I was running out the door at 5 a.m., with my favorite pillow in hand, that I had forgotten a few things. This was before airlines did their best to force people to do carryon only. We were all checking our bags. After all the traveling I had done, I had a personal policy of things I always took with me on the plane. I ran back in the house and grabbed the short list of mandatory items I had forgotten and stuck them in my pillowcase, which I’ve done on many occasions. We made it to the grocery store parking lot and met the others from Acadiana going on the trip. I boarded the bus and unsuccessfully began to try to take a nap on our way to the airport. As planned, we stopped in Baton Rouge and picked up some television journalists. David D’Aquin, who grew up in Lafayette, was among that crew. By the time we all boarded the plane, I was so tired. I stuck my pillow in the overhead compartment and took my aisle seat, waiting for the time the little bell would ding and I could finally take a long nap. All of the rest of the group, about 20 people, were seated behind me — including various television anchors and a bevy of newspaper reporters. When the little bell dinged, I stood up, grabbed my pillow and promptly began to go to sleep. About 10 minutes later, someone tapped me on my left shoulder, which was to the aisle. I was incredulous. Why would someone deliberately wake me up when I was clearly sleeping? I turned around and could see that the entire group’s eyes were on me. D’Aquin, who worked for NBC33 and Fox 44 in Baton Rouge, had tapped my shoulder. He was sitting across the aisle, a row behind me. When I turned toward him, he leaned forward and pointed toward the center of the aisle between us. He then whispered/ yelled over the engines and said, “You dropped something.” I looked down to the airplane aisle, with a sinking feeling of
ä See RISHER, page 3G