NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Struggling to deal with one of the nation’s largest homeless populations, New Orleans and federal officials say they’ll work aggressively over the next decade to end homelessness by getting more people on the streets into homes.
 
On Monday, Mayor Mitch Landrieu laid out a 10-year plan the city and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development hope will end the homeless problem that has become chronic since 2005’s Hurricane Katrina. Social workers estimate about 6,500 people are on the streets in the city. The plan calls for building more housing for homeless and creating a 24-hour center in a downtown Veterans Affairs Department hospital building.
 
The problem has grabbed new attention in the past three months as the park in front of City Hall, known as Duncan Plaza, has become part Occupy Wall Street demonstration and part homeless tent camp.
 
Melvin Powe, a 53-year-old unemployed laborer from New Orleans, is among the homeless who call Duncan Plaza home now. He was living near the public library before the Occupy movement started in the park. He was hopeful that the city would get serious about combatting the problem and said the majority of people in Duncan Plaza were homeless people who just need help finding work and getting inside.
“They’re saying they will try to help the people who really need help,” he said of the plan he read about in the newspaper. “I think it’s good. Give them a job. Most people like me would