He said two hotels have been rented to isolate homeless individuals who are COVID positive and reduce the strain of homeless people sleeping on MARTA and at the airport. Several hundred more have been tested since. Hardin said the shelters tested almost all occupants for COVID-19 in April and May and found a low rate. It’s like a storm gathering in the distance but no one knows how badly it will hit. “We’re living in fear of what’s going to happen with evictions,” he said. (A census said there were 5,500 homeless people in Atlanta in 2013, although the number has plateaued.) He has volunteered on homeless issues since the 1980s and has seen a drop in recent years. I called Jack Hardin, chairman of the Gateway Center, which was set up to be the city’s official homeless agency. “People have nowhere to go people lost their jobs,” he said. He had lived with his mother-in-law but “got tired of her fussing.” He’s been on the streets for three months. Simpson, meanwhile, sat quietly by his tent. Maybe 25 people stay there.Ī man named Abraham let out a 15-minute stream of consciousness about Social Security, racism, corporate neglect and South Africa. When I visited, the encampment had perhaps a dozen tents, bedrolls, couches, chairs, bikes and clothing on hangers dangling from bridge tiles. Authorities stopped that last year with fencing, so the campers trudge around the corner to settle under a bridge on a Downtown Connector off-ramp. The tension is raw.įor years, dozens of homeless people slept under the bridge near Grady Memorial Hospital. It got loud, and I worried the dispute might get physical. Hoffman started yelling at him for interrupting our discussion. Besides, many homeless people don’t like the concentrated desperation.Īs I spoke with Hoffman, a man who sleeps in a tent rode up on a bike and started complaining about the mayor. You don’t need to when the weather is warm. Patton got a temp job last time he came here, but no such gigs are forthcoming now. Hoffman was up in Bartow County then, and Patton was in Tennessee. Neither were counted in January’s census. On a ledge across from City Hall, Richard Hoffman and Jerome Patton whiled away the afternoon. Their closures have shooed the homeless onto the sidewalks. Centennial Olympic Park is closed because of COVID-19, and the grassy area of Woodruff Park is fenced off. The office workers, shoppers and convention-goers are largely gone, leaving Atlanta’s underbelly out in plain sight. Perhaps there are more out there or maybe it’s an illusion. People squatting in doorways or sitting around Woodruff Park, the Five Points MARTA station, or near City Hall. I drove Doyle’s mile-plus route and found the same thing: Men and women dragging belongings. There are several reasons for more people on the streets, he said, including the large Peachtree-Pine shelter closing in 2017, the coronavirus pandemic, and “mental health issues going through the roof.” “I’ve gotten roughly 386 calls from people looking for shelter,” he said, “not just singles but couples and even families since we closed in March.” He gets nowhere near that during a normal off-season. That was a route roughly from Emory University Hospital Midtown down to the shelter.
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