With Spotlight on New Orleans, Louisiana Moves Homeless Out of Sight

In the frigid early morning darkness on Wednesday, Louisiana State Police officers went tent to tent in an encampment that had sprouted beneath an overpass in the heart of New Orleans. The residents needed to pack, the officers told them. Buses were waiting to carry them to temporary accommodations.

Ronald Lewis listened to the officers’ pitch: three meals a day, a recreation area with a television, round-the-clock security in a cavernous warehouse secluded from everything he knew. He had spent years cycling in and out of prison, he said. The option being offered sounded too much like the existence he wanted to leave behind.

Instead of climbing on a bus, he piled all of his possessions into a shopping cart and pushed it along. He was uncertain where he was headed. But he knew that the Super Bowl was coming to town and that his life and his routine were about to be upended because he had pitched his tent about a block from the Superdome, where the game would be played.

“I don’t like it, period,” Mr. Lewis, 65, said as he stood by his overflowing cart. “You’re kicking me out of my comfort zone.”

Mr. Lewis had to make that choice after the state mounted a costly effort this week to relocate people who were living in camps in the city’s core. With the game coming in February and the revelry leading up to Mardi Gras, officials wanted them out of sight as New Orleans would be inundated with visitors.