On a scorching July day, Athena Sims lay down for a nap on the ground near the tent where she lives, by an overpass in downtown New Orleans. Sims, 46, fell asleep in the shade. When she woke up hours later, she was in the blazing sun, with a splitting headache and a social service worker standing over her, shaking her, telling her she needed to go to the emergency room.
“You’re going to possibly die of heatstroke,” she recalls the man telling her.
Ultimately, Sims decided not to go to hospital. But as heat records shatter across the south, unhoused residents are suffering acutely.
Summers in New Orleans are always brutal, but as Ben Schott of the National Weather Service stresses: “This is not a typical New Orleans summer. No person alive has ever experienced a summer like this in the city.”
July was the hottest July the city had ever seen, and the second-warmest month ever. Sunday was the hottest day in recorded history for much of south Louisiana: New Orleans hit 105F (40.5C), smashing the old record by three degrees. The New Orleans mayor and the Louisiana governor have declared heat emergencies.
In a city accustomed to flooding, subtropical plants wither in the drought, while marsh fires billow smoke over the highway. New Orleans’s emergency medical services say they are getting quadruple the normal number of heat-related calls.
Meanwhile, unhoused residents, stuck outside without relief, are battling heat illness – fatigue, muscle cramps, chest tightness, headaches and vomiting – and outreach workers are ringing the alarm.
Worse by the day
Mike Infinity, sitting on a bench in Jackson Square, pauses from stitching a piece of blue vinyl into a sandal. “It’s the hottest summer ever,” he says, squinting up while a drop of sweat slides across his temple. “And people are being run out of the shade.”
Every morning, Infinity explains, the New Orleans police wake up unhoused residents in Jackson Square and move them from the shade along the fence, into the sun. It’s exhausting, he says.
“The police are just blindly pushing us around, not taking into consideration the heat, or that people are setting up in certain places for the shade,” he says. “For them to mess with us in the heat every day on the hottest days of the year …” He shakes his head.
Infinity, 45, and other unhoused residents of New Orleans have developed strategies to survive the heat. Infinity has found a vent that blows cool air from a basement; he sleeps near it at night. Sims knows a good alley faucet for taking ad hoc showers; there’s also a broken hydrant near the abandoned power plant that sprays cold water all day long.
Infinity and Sims are half a mile from the nearest cooling center. All but one close overnight.
“I’m witnessing people getting weaker,” Infinity says. “It’s wearing everybody down. I’m looking at people’s faces, and it just gets worse by the day.”
Sims and her neighbors have found their saving grace is a bar around the corner that doesn’t lock its back door; while one person stands lookout, the other will duck in and, as quickly as possible, fill a cooler with ice to tow back to their camp.
But it’s a matter of time, she knows, before the door gets locked. She doesn’t know what they’ll do then.
‘They don’t want you in any shade’
Paula Metzger, 61, from Dallas, worked for over a decade in construction on the Texas Gulf coast. She used to surf, she once worked on a shrimp boat – “I’ve been in the sun all my life,” she stresses.
But nothing compares to this year’s heat. Metzger and her common-law husband of two years, Roger, have been unsheltered since they were evicted from an extended-stay hotel in March. Homelessness in the city has surged 15% since last year, linked to a lack of affordable housing.
In April, Metzger’s troubles worsened.
One day, she looked down to notice her hands turning black. Soon she found that “anything that’s in the sun” would erupt into painful blisters. Doctors eventually diagnosed her with PCT, a rare skin disorder triggered by sunlight.
“I’m getting a blister right there,” she says, pointing to her large toe and then her knee. Her limbs are patched with gauze.
Metzger, who uses a walker, gets some support from her neighbors. Infinity brings her ice, and helps her move her things when the police come.
And Metzger does have two umbrellas to shelter her from the sun – but she fears the police will try to take them.
“The heat will eat you up with this concrete,” she says, gesturing to the flagstones beneath her, “and they don’t want you in any shade.”
A spokesperson for the New Orleans police said the policy is to temporarily clear Jackson Square for power washing, but that “unhoused individuals have the option to go into the park … and sit on the benches or grass”.
‘More houseless deaths than usual’
Tarik Benmarhnia, who researches climate health risks, says that unhoused individuals’ exposure to extreme heat is “a huge, huge problem” that is overlooked.
Most people who die of heat die of cardiac arrest. But it has “indirect and sneaky” effects on many of the body’s vital organs, Benmarhnia says.
When we’re hot, the heart starts working harder, and “doesn’t stop until the body cools down”. The kidneys struggle and fail from dehydration; the gut becomes permeable and risks infection and even sepsis; blood clots break free and cause stroke. Individuals experiencing homelessness are at especially acute risk because heat stress is cumulative – and without shelter, there’s no way to escape it.
Heatstroke is a medical emergency, Benmarhnia stresses. A person experiencing it can die within minutes.
“When you don’t have a break – when you’re consistently exposed to extreme heat – that is why it can be deadly.”
Janick Lewis, captain of New Orleans emergency medical services, said that last summer they responded to three heat-related calls from houseless people.
This year they’ve had 67.
According to the New Orleans coroner’s office, since 1 June, 31 people have died who were marked as “homeless” by investigators, meaning an unhoused New Orleanian has died, on average, every three days this summer. While a lack of historic data makes it hard to compare this with previous years, social workers said it was more than usual.
The “ecological crisis threatens the lives of those without shelter”, confirmed Jasmine Araujo, founder of the direct aid group Southern Solidarity. Several unhoused people the organization works with have died outside during the heat emergency, she added, noting that affordable and supportive housing could have saved those lives.
A different kind of heat
Houseless people themselves are acutely aware that the heat this year is different.
On 10 August, Lettie Vaughn realized she was in trouble. As the day stretched on, Vaughn, 57, began to experience cramps, along with a blinding headache. She started vomiting. Soon, she developed a fever, “extremely high, like I’ve never experienced”.
Though she’d grown weak and confused – she forgot her neighbor’s name – she dipped a towel in her ice chest and wrapped herself in it to cool down.
The headache and pains subsided the next day. But fatigue took its place. She still can’t stand in the sun without getting dizzy.
Benmarhnia says these are textbook symptoms of heat illness.
Like many others, Vaughn is also suffering from heat rash. She’s found some things help the itching and burning: foot powder works okay. Hand sanitizer helps dry up the sores.
Vaughn says she tries to advocate for and protect her houseless neighbors in this heat wave. “But one thing I’ve realized,” she says, “when they think that you’re homeless – you don’t have a voice.”
The city is making some mitigation efforts: staff bring out bottled water and ice in the mornings.
But unhoused people have some suggestions of their own.
Ice packs, says Infinity. Refurbish an old hotel like they did in Dallas, suggests Metzger. A large air-conditioned wedding tent, adds her friend Bob, or a city bus parked every few blocks. Vaughn remembers that at a festival recently, they had outdoor cooling fans for tourists – maybe those could help.
Benmarhnia’s suggestion is simple. “Housing – with air conditioning,” he says. “Housing is the only way to go.”