Olivia Baker and Bre Hicks used to fill the community fridge in Fightinville with vegetables, canned foods and home cooked meals every Wednesday and Thursday. As of late January, they stopped. The sticker-bombed fridge is gone.

“We had that little space. That’s ours,” Hicks says, pointing and squinting her eyes at the colorful shelter that housed the fridge. Baker interjects, “We’re still trying to figure out what to do with all that stuff.”

The property’s ownership group asked the fridge, one of three operated by Lafayette Community Fridge, to leave, citing problems associated with those who patronized it, many of whom were homeless.

Read more: Celebrating the people, places, history and heritage of Lafayette Parish.

So the community fridge’s organizers moved out. The episode points to a larger problem facing the Fightinville neighborhood and Lafayette in general: a lack of shelter space and an increase in the number of people without housing.

Complaints had mounted from neighbors and businesses about public urination, drug use and trash, says property co-owner Pat Trahan. He tried to make accommodations, but it didn’t work out.

“We wanted to have that pantry there; we were happy to have it there. Then a second neighbor complained, [then a] third neighbor complained,” Trahan says. “Something in that neighborhood has changed; everyone who’s there and who cares [is] trying to figure it out.”

Fightinville, also called LaPlace, hugs Downtown Lafayette and is home to St. Joseph Diner, only a few blocks from where the fridge used to be, and Catholic Charities’ shelter, which is temporarily closed for renovations.

Homelessness has been apparent in this neighborhood for years, but it’s become more visible as shelters closed. Empty lots in the area house tent camps and makeshift shelters.

Lafayette is in dire need of more shelter space, say organizations like Catholic Charities and the Acadiana Regional Coalition on Homelessness and Housing.

Shelters in Lafayette closed at the onset of the pandemic in early 2020. Housing support agencies moved people into hotels around Lafayette using emergency federal and state government funds. Those funds have long since dried up, and some shelters in Lafayette, like the Salvation Army on 6th Street, shuttered permanently, ARCH Executive Director Elsa Dimitriadis says, leaving Lafayette with less space than it had before the pandemic.

“[Lafayette Consolidated Government] has not adequately prioritized funding for a non-congregate shelter,” says Dimitriadis. “The number of people who are living outside of shelter is going up because we’ve seen nearly a 40% decrease in available beds since before COVID.”

Shelters are at capacity daily. Those who don’t get a spot stay on the street. In 2022, 351 people were recorded experiencing some kind of homelessness in Lafayette, according to an annual count performed by service agencies; 255 were in emergency shelters and 53 were unsheltered.

Lafayette shelters reported 227 emergency shelter beds available during the 2022 annual count. But 37 were reserved for people fleeing domestic violence, and 108 were temporary emergency shelter beds funded with Covid relief money.

Capacity is going to decline further as those temporary emergency shelters roll off.

Compounding that problem is rising housing instability. ARCH reported housing 1,700 people in 2022, a dramatic increase across its programming. Ben Broussard of Catholic Charities says his organization’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing since the pandemic, averaging 9,400 calls a month.

“That’s across all our programs — St. Joseph people looking for food, people at risk of losing their homes, people who have suffered at the hands of natural disaster,” says Broussard.

Funding hasn’t kept up. Catholic Charities relies heavily on donations from residents and philanthropy. But it’s still not enough, according to Broussard, because the organization runs in the red year to year.

“You see people who for lack of available resources in the community are not having their essential human needs met,” Broussard says. “We’re doing the best we can with the limited resources we have.”

Read the full story at thecurrentla.com.