With rain dousing the city early Friday, many New Orleanians were worried about the plight of 82-year-old gardener Fred Sipp. For years, Sipp had tended a few rows of vegetables on a small plot of land near the running track on the Lafitte Greenway. He lived in a ramshackle hand-built shack at the back of the same small parcel.
Sipp’s homestead was a landmark along the Greenway, an unexpected rural throwback in the middle of the city. It was common to see him there, tending his rows of okra, tomatoes and mustard greens, or relaxing near an open fire.
But on Wednesday morning, representatives of various city agencies arrived with a bulldozer to demolish Sipp’s shelter and haul it away.
The plywood shack Fred Sipp lived in, seen here in November 2024, was removed by city authorities for safety reasons on June 11, 2025
(Photo by Doug MacCash,NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune)
The destruction ended an impasse between the city and Sipp. Health and safety officials had long warned Sipp that his hand-made shelter was a hazard and had to be done away with. The octogenarian was offered the option to move to public-supported housing, but until then, he’d declined. Now he’s changed his mind and taken them up on their offer.
Standing in the drizzling rain on Wednesday afternoon near the empty patch of ground where his home once stood, Sipp acknowledged that he’d been regularly warned that his rambling shack needed to go. “Every month,” he said, “they sent somebody out to look at my building, but I guess they didn’t like it.”
Sipp said that officials put notices in his mailbox, which is nailed to a post at the edge of his garden, though he couldn’t immediately find any of the documents he’d received.
Fred Sipp analyzes passages from the Holy Bible in the shade of a tent along the Lafitte Greenway after the home he made was torn down due to safety concerns in New Orleans, Thursday, June 12, 2025. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
Sipp said he thought he was required to tear down the house himself. So, in a way, he was relieved that authorities had shown up with the manpower and machinery to raze it and haul it away. He pointed out that part of his wire mesh fence had been taken down in order to remove the dwelling, but he said it had been replaced it with orange plastic webbing. His garden was intact and he said he was allowed to keep his possessions.
Sipp said he came to New Orleans from Pascagoula in 1972 to work at the Avondale shipyard. He used to live in one of the shotgun houses along Lafitte Avenue near his homestead. He’s kept a garden on the spot since before the park was built. He’d certainly begun growing vegetables there before Katrina, according to a neighbor.
There was a time when no one paid much attention to what went on along the old railroad corridor. Long ago, Sipp said, a man was mowing the grass along the strip. When his lawnmower broke down, Sipp helped him fix it. That man, Sipp said, granted him permission to garden on the spot.
Asked Wednesday what he planned to do after his shelter was gone, Sipp said he had options. There was a nearby porch where he could escape the rain, he said, and he had access to a house somewhere on Painters Street where he planned to sleep – Sipp gets around town on a thoroughly rusted Huffy bicycle. Also, he said, he still had a brother and other family in Pascagoula, Mississippi.
He did not mention the option of moving into an assisted living facility or publicly-supported housing.
But by Friday morning, he’d come around.
Fred Sipp points to where his hand-made house was before it was removed along the Lafitte Greenway in New Orleans, Thursday, June 12, 2025. (Photo by Sophia Germer, The Times-Picayune)
STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER
Opened in 2015, the Lafitte Greenway is a popular public park, built along a former railroad corridor, from Mid-City to the Treme. The grassy strip includes a lengthy bike path, playground, soccer field, exercise pavilion and groves of young cypress trees. To many, Sipp’s parcel seemed a precious part of the space, and there was a social media outcry over the removal of his house.
According to City Councilmember Eugene Green, whose district includes the Greenway, Sipp originally rejected the offer to move into a safer, more comfortable circumstance. But the people at the city’s Office of Homeless Services and Strategy had his best interest at heart, and “wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
Green said Sipp was swayed when the agency promised to place him somewhere near his garden. His new apartment is within walking distance.
Fred Sipp, accompanied by representatives of New Orleans office of Homeless Services and Strategies, displays the key to the furnished apartment that was proved to him after his hand-built house on the Lafitte Greenway was torn down by city agencies for safety reasons.
(Photo courtesy the city of New Orleans)
Green said the way Sipp was living was hazardous for several reasons and that city agencies acted with compassion in resettling him.
“It’s a win for them and a win for him,” he said.
Though Green said he appreciated the outpouring of sympathy for Sipp after his shelter was razed, he hopes residents’ understand that conditions there were not ideal. The shack lacked the basics, such as water, heat and proper sanitation. “There are too many situations where people have died in tents and other makeshift shelters,” Green said.
There was also the particular concern that Sipp routinely “burned trash near his dwelling made of wood,” Green added in a text message.
“Inside the dwelling were found both a propane and oxygen tank, and gasoline,” he wrote.