{Photograph} by Audra Melton
In July 2021, William Value had been sleeping on a downtown sidewalk for a number of months. Launched from a three-year stint in jail within the midst of the pandemic, he’d discovered he had nowhere to go: Whereas incarcerated, he’d misplaced his job, his residence, and his mom, who died of Covid-19. “Once I received out, town had modified,” he stated.
An solely little one, Value had no community to show to for assist, and he had little luck with native organizations that assist these searching for shelter; he struggled to navigate varied eligibility necessities and balked at strict home guidelines and curfews. He anxious concerning the sanitary situations: Covid, mattress bugs, dirty group showers. He felt most secure, cleanest, and most at residence in his tent close to the Georgia Capitol, the place he may select his personal neighbors and inhabit his personal house. It got here with trade-offs: He didn’t have an tackle, which might assist his job search. There have been solely three public loos close by, open solely throughout restricted hours. And, on occasion, the police would come by throughout an encampment sweep, taking Value’s tent and what few private belongings he had and discarding them.
So, final July, Value discovered himself standing exterior Metropolis Corridor on the first press convention for the Atlanta Homeless Union, a homeless-led group he based together with his good friend Murdoch, together with allies from the mutual help group Sol Underground. A couple of days earlier than, the Union had camped in a single day on the Metropolis’s property to protest its therapy of unhoused individuals and to articulate their wants: houses, healthcare, water. Atlanta metropolis council and mayoral races have been underway, and the 2 have been hoping whoever received elected could be extra amenable to a dialog.
The homeless union would deliver much more visibility to a difficulty lengthy evident in downtown Atlanta, the place unhoused individuals collect close to the picnic tables in Woodruff Park, alongside the steps on the 5 Factors MARTA station, and in clusters of tents close to the Capitol. As a substitute of being helped, many felt they have been being ostracized and criminalized. “If we have now to go to jail right this moment, we’ll,” Murdoch stated, standing subsequent to a plaque honoring the Atlanta Pupil Motion. The Union laid out its checklist of calls for, which included, prominently, a seat on the desk. “The Metropolis is busy speaking to everybody besides us about what we’d like,” AHU posted to Instagram. “We should be consulted concerning the insurance policies that may impression our lives.”
{Photograph} by Ben Abrams
Chief amongst these was the encampment sweeps, an everyday truth of life for individuals residing on the road in Atlanta. Relying on the place unhoused individuals have pitched their tents, totally different nonprofit or city-related teams can throw their belongings away and power them to go away—generally providing shelter placement, generally threatening to name the police. A part of AHU’s mission was to push again on the general public messaging concerning the sweeps: When APD’s HOPE Crew (Homeless Outreach Proactive Enforcement), as an illustration, posted on Twitter a few profitable day of outreach, the Homeless Union retweeted it, saying, “You name [it] outreach, however we name it what it’s: going into individuals’s residence and destroying their issues.” From the group’s perspective, the sweeps—along with disrupting the day-to-day lives of unhoused individuals—sow mistrust between the unhoused group, their advocates, and the Metropolis, bespeaking a want to easily make individuals experiencing homelessness disappear somewhat than making an attempt to fulfill their long-term wants. (APD spokesperson Steve Avery stated the HOPE group offers discover of encampment closures “a number of weeks upfront,” and tries to ascertain relationships with unhoused individuals in hopes that they’ll voluntarily settle for referrals to service suppliers. Avery continued, “Hopefully, in the long term by means of constructive fixed engagements the person will determine to hunt the companies supplied by town and its companions.”)
“There’s intentionality, to drive the homeless out of town—raiding encampments, placing fences up round parks, placing barricades round areas the place homeless individuals sleep,” stated Marshall Rancifer, who has labored to serve unhoused individuals, totally on his personal, within the metro for the final 24 years. “They conceal them, disappear them.” This manifests, Rancifer stated, in issues like fences across the garden in a park that unhoused individuals used to frequent, “and a brand new signal that reads, ‘We’re letting the grass relaxation.’ White of us have been nonetheless taking their canine within the grass—however no homeless Black individuals have been there anymore.” (Greater than 85 p.c of unhoused individuals in Atlanta are Black.)
The sweeps are just one mode of hostility that unhoused individuals say they expertise—there’s additionally the hostile structure (concrete boundaries on sidewalks, dividers in the midst of benches) and loitering and public sleeping statutes that may put them liable to arrest. This fixed shooing was one of many union’s frustrations: being compelled out of sight, hidden in shelters. Folks routinely keep away from eye contact with unhoused individuals on the road, name the police after they’re within the park, and request encampment sweeps when their tents are seen from the Interstate.
Rancifer is intimately aware of such indignities. He stated he’s lived three lives: earlier than, throughout, and after his wrestle with substance abuse within the Nineteen Nineties. Rancifer labored as a DeKalb County police officer, in narcotics, from 1979 till 1991. He tried crack cocaine for the primary time after he left the power, and his expertise with dependancy led him to go unsheltered for greater than 4 years. “Once I determined to get assist, I used to be checked out like a chunk of shit,” he stated. “I used to be regarded down upon like I used to be the scourge of the earth. I had destroyed my life and all I used to be asking for was assist to get it again.”
• • •
In 1984, when Dr. Elizabeth Beck started volunteering at a ladies’s shelter in Washington, D.C., there wasn’t but a broadly accepted time period for individuals experiencing homelessness—the general public known as them “road individuals” and “bag girls.” Within the a long time main as much as the ’80s, homelessness tended to be episodic somewhat than power: Folks skilled homelessness throughout financial downturns, however the problem wasn’t as distinguished part of the American panorama, thanks partially to the social security web initially constructed by the Roosevelt administration as a part of the New Deal.
What students consult with as the trendy period of homelessness emerged within the Nineteen Seventies and ’80s, propelled by city renewal, the closing of public psychological establishments, the tens of millions of jobs misplaced to deindustrialization, the early-’80s financial recession, and the austerity budgets embraced by the Carter and Reagan administrations. Below the guise of stopping fraud, as an illustration, and citing the racist trope of the “welfare queen,” President Ronald Reagan drastically reduce federal applications for the poor; within the following decade, the U.S. homeless inhabitants quadrupled, based on some estimates. And simply because the federal authorities reduce funding to the Division of Housing and City Improvement, the U.S. misplaced 1000’s of inexpensive housing models as wealthier residents started shifting again into cities. It was additionally within the ’80s that the problem of “homelessness” exploded into public view—now not characterised by the “tramps” and “hobos” of an earlier period, or by males residing in downtown single-room-occupancy buildings, however by total households residing on the streets.
“We reside in a rustic that produces the situation of homelessness,” stated Beck, a professor within the college of social work at Georgia State College’s Andrew Younger Faculty of Coverage Research and coauthor of The Homelessness Trade: A Critique of U.S. Social Coverage. What arose instead of the social security web was a community of nonprofits, non-public suppliers, and police businesses, based on Beck—primarily, a system that handled the signs of homelessness somewhat than the causes. It additionally tended to shift blame away from coverage mechanisms and towards perceived particular person failures.
With out vital authorities intervention, Beck realized, one of the best she and different advocates may do was spend time one-on-one with the ladies within the D.C. shelter the place she volunteered—serving to them apply for his or her Social Safety checks and treating them as equals. Although she didn’t name it that on the time, Beck was doing mutual help, the time period for a philosophy of collective problem-solving that eschews “charity” in favor of individuals working collectively in solidarity to attain widespread objectives. “Mutual help, by definition, is getting its view of what the issue is from people who find themselves experiencing the issue, not from the consultants,” Beck instructed me. “Its means to assist mass quantities of individuals is proscribed, nevertheless it’s humanizing, and if we are able to begin the method of humanizing, then we are able to begin the method of change.”
That’s the spirit wherein Sunny Leon, a 22-year-old who graduated from GSU with a level in anthropology, received concerned within the work. Within the fall of 2020, Leon rented an area in Grove Park for Sol Underground, which they’d envisioned as house for Black liberation for individuals within the neighborhood and folk in their very own activist circles. One evening, strolling to dinner, they handed a number of males sleeping on the sidewalk and determined to deliver them again meals. Leon and their associates began handing out meals and spending time with unhoused individuals downtown, primarily on the nook of Martin Luther King and Central, the place a number of aged individuals and folks with disabilities stayed. Ultimately, a few of them requested for tarps and sleeping luggage. Because the climate began to chill, Sol Underground purchased backpacks and crammed them with snacks and hand heaters.
“We have been doing the little we may do with the little cash we had,” Leon stated. Ultimately, Sol purchased an eight-by-10-foot tent and a few patio heaters and constructed Sol Under, a transportable warming station the place anyone who wished to may heat up with scorching espresso and cider from 8 p.m. to eight a.m. each evening the temperature dipped under 36 levels. In January 2021, Leon contacted “each well-known individual I may consider,” together with one of many founders of Black Lives Matter, to ask if they’d assist get individuals out of the chilly. BLM Los Angeles donated $50,000 to place 90 unhoused individuals in a motel for every week. Leon and a good friend created a GoFundMe and raised one other $36,000 to cowl meals, MARTA playing cards, and laundry. It was the primary time that they had ever coordinated a motel keep. Leon was working as a graphic designer at a nonprofit and had no plans to do mutual help work full-time. “The entire objective was to empower individuals to have the ability to speak for themselves,” Leon stated. “It was simply form of a pure development for the homeless union to kind.”
Sol Underground supported Murdoch and Value as they deliberate their first protest in July 2021, which might finish about 13 hours later with 9 arrests, together with Leon’s (for legal trespassing at Metropolis Corridor). They bailed out and stood for his or her first press convention a number of days later. After the protest and press convention, members of the Union have been notified (through flyer) that their common encampment, on a sidewalk close to Central Presbyterian Church, could be forcibly eliminated so a movie crew may arrange within the space. (The crew denied requesting the encampment sweep.) Two days later, APD displaced the unhoused group, seizing tents and a few belongings. “They despatched social staff from the Atlanta Downtown Enchancment District to supply to take us into shelters,” the union’s press launch recounted afterward. “It is a widespread and completely unacceptable apply in Atlanta. As a substitute of offering actual housing options, they need to conceal us.” (In a press release, the Atlanta Downtown Enchancment District stated it needs its position to be “a supportive one to these experiencing homelessness in that we try to straight join people to instant shelter, in addition to therapy amenities, and care suppliers. ADID’s position isn’t enforcement; we’re group collaborators.”) After a wave of concern on social media, the manufacturing studio provided to work with the union and Sol to supply six nights in a resort, transit playing cards, and alternative tents.
The Metropolis has denied that it conducts sweeps on behalf of personal actors, although accusations have dogged it: In 2019, as an illustration, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms disputed ideas {that a} collection of homeless sweeps was associated to the upcoming Tremendous Bowl. It wouldn’t have been with out precedent: Simply earlier than the 1996 Olympics, Fulton County provided unhoused individuals one-way bus tickets out of city, and town was sued by the Metro Atlanta Job Pressure for the Homeless over police sweeps allegedly focusing on Black males. The Job Pressure stated that law enforcement officials—carrying round arrest papers preprinted to learn “African-American male” and “homeless”—used panhandling and loitering ordinances to arrest some 9,000 individuals. The Metropolis settled, however the hostility some downtown companies held for unhoused individuals by no means fairly dissipated.
{Photograph} by Audra Melton
In November, the New Georgia Venture contacted Leon, providing to sponsor a motel keep—this time, 18 individuals for one month. Primarily related to voting rights, NGP noticed the outreach as a strategy to assist and have interaction voters enthusiastic about financial and housing justice. “The problem of whether or not or not any individual has a home to reside in and meals to eat and a strategy to maintain themselves alive is a matter that you need to [factor into] who you vote for,” stated Eric Robertson, a senior organizer at NGP. “The people who find themselves inflicting these issues are elected.”
Plus, he stated, he noticed Leon taking up a system that “wasn’t designed to really resolve the issue of homelessness,” and he wished to assist. “I’ve been organizing for a very long time,” Robertson instructed me. “I’m about to be 48. I do know that we’d like an entire new technology of fighters. Once I see somebody like Sunny come on the scene, I need to throw gasoline on that fireside.”
One of many individuals concerned within the NGP-funded keep was 61-year-old Mary Bowens. Bowens is from Hawaii, which is the place she met her husband of 31 years, who was stationed there within the navy. After they have been married in 1979, his profession took the couple and their two kids throughout the U.S. and all over the world. They lived in six U.S. states, Germany, and Japan. When Mary’s husband was honorably discharged for a coronary heart situation within the Nineteen Nineties, the 2 moved to Mississippi, purchased a trailer, and put it on his stepfather’s land. After Mary’s husband died in 2010, she lived awhile along with her daughter and grandson in Atlanta, however she started to really feel like a burden and determined to maneuver again to Mississippi. In April 2013, Mary packed her luggage and headed to the Greyhound station downtown, the place she waited for her in-laws to ship a bus ticket that by no means got here. The police got here by and requested if she was homeless, and she or he stated sure. She slept in a shelter for the primary time that evening.
Since then, Bowens has been out and in of housing. I met her in November within the convention room at a Motel 6, the place she and Leon have been scrolling by means of Airbnb listings on Leon’s laptop computer. Earlier that day, Bowens stated, her grandson had FaceTimed her from Chicago to examine in on her. “Once I picked up the cellphone, he stated, ‘Aloha, Nana.’ I stated, ‘Pehea ‘oe, how are you?’ He stated, ‘Maika‘i au, doing wonderful.’ Then, he stated, ‘Let me see your face, Nana. You positive you’re okay?’
“I don’t like mendacity to them,” Bowens continued, “however I don’t need them worrying. I don’t speak to them as usually as I ought to. Typically, I received’t even reply the cellphone after they name as a result of it hurts me.” Over time, Bowens has had alternatives to reside along with her kids, however she fears being a burden—each time she accepts assist from them, Bowens stated, she appears like she’s taking away from her grandchildren. “I need to attempt to do issues myself; I need to be the robust girl that I do know I nonetheless am,” Bowens stated. “I’m not weak. I’m gonna backslide generally, however that’s life. I received to do not forget that I can push ahead.”
On the Motel 6, Bowens and Leon have been looking for a spot for Bowens to remain that’s inexpensive and near public transportation, and the place she’ll really feel secure. (Bowens says she’s been sexually assaulted twice since she misplaced entry to regular housing.) Two older resort residents, James and Victor—Leon referred to them and Bowens as “elders”— got here all the way down to the convention room for lunch. Leon was additionally serving to the boys discover someplace to go in a month, when the motel cash from NGP dried up, and was anxious about their well being: “In the event that they return out on the road, and it’s chilly and moist, they might get sick. They may die.” The motel keep was a win for Leon, nevertheless it was bittersweet: “We’re selecting individuals up. However when the tip of this keep comes, we gotta drop them again off. And that’s not an excellent feeling. The trio that you just noticed, the older of us, they’re completely not going again. I’d somewhat put them in my residence.”
However Leon was staying constructive. They requested Bowens what housing regarded like for her: an residence, a home, an extended-stay motel? (“I strive to not assume I do know what individuals need,” Leon stated. “I barely know what I would like.”) They scrolled by means of a number of listings. Bowens picked out a pair choices earlier than she headed again as much as her room to reply a number of texts from her daughter.
• • •
Regardless of criticisms from advocates, Atlanta has skilled some successes over the previous decade, lowering homelessness in Atlanta and Fulton County by virtually half: At this time, town has about 3,200 unhoused individuals, down from 6,000 a decade in the past. One conspicuous achievement, in actual fact, got here on the peak of the pandemic, when Atlanta was the location of a makeshift experiment in large-scale rehousing: Companions for House, the nonprofit that leads homelessness programming within the metropolis, transformed a derelict Summerhill resort into bridge housing, then used federal pandemic reduction funds and personal philanthropic {dollars} to maneuver a whole lot of beforehand unhoused households into flats. Although the initiative was profitable, some residents of the neighborhood—which, in recent times, has seen some financial revitalization following an extended interval of neglect—opposed having a shelter close by. This system expired in Could 2021.
Companions for House is the lead company for Atlanta’s continuum of care—a bunch of greater than 150 authorities, nonprofit, enterprise, and group organizations working to finish homelessness within the metropolis. The continuum of care mannequin was established by the Housing and City Improvement division in 1994 to arrange communities’ efforts to serve unhoused individuals, and to trace the efficacy of these companies. Beforehand, a number of organizations from the identical metropolis or county may every apply for HUD {dollars} and dole them out on their very own; beneath the CoC framework, one group in a given geographical space performs a coordinating position.
The Atlanta CoC will get a fraction of the HUD funding that different CoCs with comparable homeless populations get—“so we’re already working with one hand behind our again,” stated Companions for House CEO Cathryn Vassell. That’s as a result of the Metropolis of Atlanta was in a trijurisdictional continuum of care partnership with Fulton and DeKalb counties, working with a mixed $14 million a 12 months. In 2014, the three CoCs cut up, taking disproportionate shares of the federal cash with them: In 2020, Fulton had 162 households experiencing homelessness, DeKalb had 221, and Atlanta had 2,917; Fulton acquired $2.5 million, DeKalb acquired $6.1 million, and Atlanta acquired $8.6 million. “When evaluating the variety of households impacted by homelessness with monies awarded to the respective CoC, there may be room to query whether or not the quantity is sufficient to tackle the necessity,” Vassell stated. On prime of that, Vassell stated, different cities even have devoted income streams, like earmarked Airbnb, restaurant, or gross sales taxes (in Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles, respectively).
Companies for unhoused persons are being underfunded on the similar time Atlanta is changing into a more durable place wherein to realize a foothold. Town is at a breaking level, stated Raphael Holloway, the CEO of the Gateway Middle—a homelessness companies middle situated downtown. The common one-bedroom in Atlanta prices roughly $1,600 a month. “At this time, I drove previous a Wendy’s. They’re paying $12 an hour,” Holloway stated. “If I take this place, I can’t reside anyplace close to that Wendy’s.” Atlanta has solely 29 inexpensive rental models for each 100 extraordinarily low-income households who want them. (A lot of the metro’s newly constructed flats are categorized as luxurious.) It’s a compounding downside: Unaffordable rents may end up in evictions, which might forestall somebody from being rehoused.
One case supervisor who has labored at a number of nonprofits within the metropolis, and who requested anonymity, helped unhoused individuals enter the Metropolis’s coordinated entry system and its fast rehousing program for a number of years; they stated it’s a “grueling and humiliating course of,” partially due to the quantity of documentation unhoused persons are compelled to supply. “Some individuals I labored with, it was clear that it was much less tense and alienating to be on the streets,” they stated. Typically, to be accepted right into a congregate shelter, unhoused individuals have to go away behind their solely possessions, pets, even relations and spouses. The service supplier cited transitional housing applications the place purchasers’ days are being documented they usually don’t have management over when or what meals they eat—plus, they’re given chores and made to abide by home guidelines, like strict curfews.
Companions for House doesn’t assist such insurance policies—“Having curfews, requiring sobriety, requiring therapy or psychological well being compliance: We disagree with all that,” Vassell stated—nevertheless it additionally doesn’t have a lot say within the matter. Many shelters in Atlanta are privately funded and operated, which means neither the Metropolis nor Companions for House can management them. One web site calling itself an emergency shelter does consumption solely on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 3 p.m. Different shelters separate households, refusing entry to same-sex spouses and teenage boys. “For an individual experiencing homelessness, it may be very irritating—learn how to navigate the system, all of the totally different eligibility necessities,” Holloway stated. “There could also be a program open to you, however perhaps house is proscribed. Is the online sufficiently big to catch all of the individuals which can be in want? I’d say that reply is not any.”
Earlier than she ended up on the road the latest time, Mary Bowens was staying at a shelter run by nuns, the place, she stated, she spent daily on her knees—cleansing, praying, extra cleansing. This was in 2020. She cooked breakfast, lunch, and dinner for everybody. “They labored us like slaves,” Bowens instructed me. Then, there have been the guilt journeys: She was pleased with the progress she was making—she’d lastly stop smoking—however she all the time appeared to be doing one thing God didn’t like. One evening, Bowens forgot to finish a minor chore, incomes her a lecture from one of many nuns. “I lastly stated, You recognize what? I received to go,” Bowens recalled saying. “As a result of if I don’t, I’m gonna kick your ass. I ain’t by no means been to jail, ain’t planning on going to jail, ain’t planning on going for you.” She packed her luggage and headed downtown to a small encampment on the nook of Martin Luther King and Central, the place her good friend Uncle Vic stays.
• • •
In early March, I met Sunny Leon and Mary Bowens exterior Finest Finish Brewing Co. for drinks. After the motel keep, Leon raised sufficient cash to deal with the elders in an Airbnb in Stone Mountain for 3 months. Bowens later moved in along with her boyfriend, and Leon discovered rooms for James and Victor to hire. Bowens’s main care physician related her to a psychiatrist, a behavioral well being skilled, and a caseworker, who positioned her on a ready checklist to maneuver right into a ladies’s boarding home. She’s speaking to her grandkids extra usually lately.
Because the final motel keep, Leon and different activists from Sol created a spreadsheet monitoring rooms out there throughout town. Sol Underground’s social media presence is continuous to develop, and folks have reached out to supply a room right here or a basement there, generally for hire, generally only a place for somebody to crash for a few days in an emergency. The piecemeal method is working for now, however what Leon needs is everlasting housing on a bigger scale. They’ve not too long ago been taking a look at previous buildings that may very well be transformed into coliving areas. (The work of the mutual help activists additionally speaks to a persistent distrust, and lack of communication, between unaffiliated advocates and their counterparts in Atlanta’s official channels of homeless programming.)
Leon, alongside 10 members of Sol Underground, is now appearing as a kind of caseworker for round 20 individuals—serving to them entry the types of paperwork and types of ID that they should profit from social companies, offering provides and meals and occasional shelter, supporting their autonomy and empowering them to talk for themselves. The work could be draining—and costly. Each Leon and Marshall Rancifer spend their very own cash when donated funds come up brief. Rancifer stated he lives month to month: “I’ve been housing insecure since I’ve been doing this work.” One mutual help employee Leon is aware of is at present being evicted for nonpayment of hire.
Leon, in the meantime, is considering what’s subsequent. “I’m 22,” they stated. “I went to high school for anthropology, and I need to be an artist. There are different issues that I’d prefer to dedicate extra of my time to. Some individuals do that work as a result of it makes them be ok with themselves. As a lot as I recognize doing this work, it doesn’t make me really feel higher. It makes me really feel worse and worse the longer I do it.”
The Atlanta metro noticed the very best inflation among the many nation’s most populous cities throughout 2021—almost 10 p.c, thanks, largely, to housing. At this time, about 28,000 renters within the metropolis of Atlanta—and virtually 150,000 within the metro—spend at the least half of their revenue on shelter. And rents proceed to climb: The common value of a two-bedroom residence has elevated 27 p.c in 5 years. Newly elected Mayor Andre Dickens has introduced plans to construct or retain 20,000 inexpensive housing models over the subsequent eight years, and the Metropolis Council promised to contribute $15 million to the group inexpensive housing belief fund.
However, statewide, efforts to additional marginalize unhoused of us are underway—equivalent to Senate Invoice 535, launched within the earlier legislative session by state Senator Carden Summers of Cordele, which might’ve required communities in Georgia to actively implement anticamping legal guidelines or threat dropping state funding, a part of which might usually be spent on housing applications for the unhoused. Companions for House opposed the invoice, Vassell stated: “This notion that we have now to power individuals, by arresting them, to not be homeless is ludicrous.”
Eric Tars of the Nationwide Homelessness Regulation Middle, a company based mostly in Washington, D.C., says that, for politicians, criminalizing homelessness is a better promote than the options. “You may go a fast legislation that claims it’s unlawful to be on that nook after which use the police division to shoo these individuals away,” he stated. Investing in different options, equivalent to constructing extra supportive housing, takes time, even when it could be cheaper in the long term to supply individuals with everlasting houses.
Although SB 535 didn’t make it by means of the Meeting this 12 months, it was a part of a wave of antihomeless sentiment rising nationwide. A assume tank known as the Cicero Institute advocated for Georgia’s invoice and comparable ones in Texas and Arizona. In New York, Mayor Eric Adams inspired law enforcement officials to undertake a “zero tolerance” coverage concerning individuals sleeping or lingering for greater than an hour in practice stations, and ordered the fast clearing of encampments citywide. The violence hasn’t simply been policy-based: Assaults focusing on unhoused individuals spiked final 12 months. Somebody was beheaded in Colorado. Somebody was set on hearth in New York. In December 2021, Miami police arrested a person who allegedly had murdered three unhoused individuals. In downtown Atlanta, Leon stated, they’ve heard of individuals throwing cash on the bottom for unhoused individuals to struggle over, and capturing them with frozen paintballs.
• • •
In Woodruff Park, not removed from the place Mary Bowens stayed and the place William Value launched the Atlanta Homeless Union, a bronze statue commemorates the centennial of Wealthy’s Division Retailer—whose president, James M. Zimmerman, was amongst a bunch of businessmen within the Eighties, affiliated with the event group Central Atlanta Progress, who advocated for a “sterile zone” downtown, “completely freed from crime, homeless, and road individuals.” The statue is known as Atlanta from the Ashes and depicts a phoenix lifting a lady because it rises. Below the gazebo, just some yards away from the sculpture, Deaundrea Stephens runs a cellular kitchen known as Soup or One thing, which stands for Share Typically Utilizing Prayer—So Others May Eat, Tasting and Therapeutic In Want of God. Each first Saturday for the previous 5 years, Stephens has served 200 homecooked meals to unhoused of us within the park.
I met Stephens there one morning earlier this 12 months. The gazebo, the place she often units up, was cordoned off, and the realm surrounding it was occupied by newcomers: a meals cart promoting scorching espresso with freshly baked breakfast pastries lining its home windows, a few ice cream and scorching canine stands, and a transformed camper trailer promoting regionally brewed kombucha. She’d moved her tables to the park’s periphery, the place round two dozen individuals have been lined up on the sidewalk to seize lunch. The identify of her kitchen however, Stephens hates soup; right this moment’s providing was ham, inexperienced beans, broccoli, rice, apples, and lemonade—all ready within the kitchen of her Douglasville residence. Stephens says a lot of her paycheck from UPS, the place she works part-time, goes to Soup or One thing. Behind the serving tables have been dozens of containers of bread and oatmeal, water bottles, garments, ladies’s bras, and stacks of non-public hygiene kits that Marshall Rancifer had supplied.
“You recognize if you go to grandma’s home, you open up the fridge door and also you simply stand there and waste her mild invoice? I would like you to be the identical approach right here: Get no matter you need,” Stephens stated. A person walked up and requested if he may have one other slice of bread; she handed him the entire loaf.
After some time, one other man—this one sporting a headset—walked over and requested Stephens if she may transfer her setup a bit farther down the sidewalk. “We’d like somewhat extra space,” he stated. Hastily, the exercise across the gazebo made sense: It was a film set. I stated one thing to Stephens about how actual it regarded, and the way nice it could be if it have been.
“Seems good,” she agreed, laughing. “However no, that’s not for us.”
This text seems in our Could 2022 problem.
