Albert Greenleaf says the worst part of his day is the waiting. He waits for work. He waits for a chance at food. He waits for an opportunity to do anything for money.

“I sure need something to come through,” he said. “I used to get a lot of work done.”

Greenleaf, a day laborer , stood in the blazing sun in the parking lot of the Lowe’s store in Elysian Fields on Friday, hoping a passing car will stop and ask him to work.

On a busy day, more than 150 day laborers – or “subcontractors” – like Greenleaf gather in home-store parking lots and on street corners around New Orleans, waving at moving cars. The gatherings developed after Hurricane Katrina, when a steep increase in building created work for hundreds of day laborers.

The scene is played out across the city, not just at Lowe’s, but at places like the Home Depot on Carrollton Avenue, where on Friday a couple of dozen men lined the fences outside the store parking lot.

At each corner and lot, construction bosses and private homeowners cross paths with the day laborers, who stand out with their tanned skin, paint-stained clothes and baseball caps. Loud hums from cars, buses and trucks combine with the faint smell of gasoline and alcohol. With every car comes the possibility of a meal, with every driver the possibility of a day’s work.

Greenleaf said he sleeps less than blocks away from where he waits for work. He makes his bed under the I-10 overpass near the Elysian Fields exit. He said he drove commercial trucks for 30 years, until 2006. Greenleaf, who is originally from Bayou Lafourche, in Lafourche, La., said he stopped driving trucks after his license expired.

Shortly after Katrina hit, he turned to the street corners for day work, averaging about $100 a day. The work is usually manual labor, digging, painting, and landscaping. Prices vary: Painting a medium sized room is usually $75, digging, $100 to $200, and plumbing, $200 to $300.

Sometimes, drivers have other requests. “I don’t turn nothing down,” said Greenleaf, who said he has, at times, been offered money for sex.

At Lowe’s, every hour or so cars pull up to the corner. A hand motion by the driver denotes how many workers are needed. At one point on Friday, despite the hand signal – three fingers for three workers – at least seven workers run up to each stopped car begging for work. Chaos quickly ensued, but eventually the driver made his choice and speed off.

Greenleaf said the majority of people who hire him and others are kind, often providing workers food and water. “The majority treat you well,” he said.

However, some employers take advantage of workers by refusing to pay them after the work. To address these concerns, outreach workers visit the day laborers’ sites. Six days a week at 8 a.m., Jacinta Gonzalez picks up fellow outreach worker Dennis Soriano. The two work for the New Orleans Worker’s Center for Racial Justice in a department known as the “Congress of Day Laborers.” Gonzalez and Soriano work on educating laborers about their rights and organizing them into grassroots movements. “The members decide what they want to work on,” Soriano said. Education can mean training in people’s homes as well as workshops on worker’s rights.

Getting legislation passed that will make it illegal to withhold payment from laborers is currently his organization’s primary goal, Soriano said.

Meanwhile at Lowe’s, some of the workers find rest in the cool shadows under trees, solemnly looking at the ground. Others laugh the wait away, smiling at passing cars. If they don’t find work, most will not eat. Sometimes they will find places giving away food, such as churches. Other times, they must nap the hunger away.

Work used to be steady, Greenleaf said. But these days, people seemed to have stopped building and renovating their homes as much.

“I used to be on this lot for less than5 minutes before I found work,” Greenleaf said.

And so, he waits.

At the time of his interview, he had been outside for almost three hours without work.