I looked at your site thoroughly after the AJC article regarding your boycott of Whole Foods due to their benefit for the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless.

I would like to add the criminal offense of slander to your watchdog agenda. The 43 pages of letters sent to City Council provoked by your tactics and the utter immature move of threatening a business(Whole Foods) that is bringing in revenue for the city and increasing our property value by simply existing in our neighborhood of Midtown is not only detrimental to an already vulnerable population, but is detrimental to the reputation of this community.

It is websites and language from organizations such as yours that gives well respected neighborhoods, such as OURS the not in my back yard stigma. I applaud the continued support that this organization has for the Gateway Center and Atlanta Union Mission for they are doing such good work. But, I whole heartedly believe that if the Mission or the Gateway was located in the district of Midtown this organization would have the same response. Let me remind you that there are a slew of other homeless service providers that attract “vagrants and street cats” to the Midtown area. None of which are mentioned in your safety reports? Why the utter avoidance of Crossroads Ministries or Midtown Assistance Center? Many people experiencing Homelessness receive Social Security Benefits. There is a SSI office in Midtown. Most churches in the area offer some sort of service including some that just “feed” the individuals experiencing homelessness and let them go on their way. Why not viciously slander the churches for not being accountable for the actions of these individuals once they leave the doors of the place of worship?

The vicious and rabid attacks on the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless not only have a not in my back yard aura about them. They are lined with personal gain that your organization’s members stand to receive as a result of the development of the neighborhood. This is not an attempt to return the dignity to those who(as you all so gracefully put it) are “warehoused” by the Task Force. So spare me the forced compassion. It is a complete and tactful attack on their dignity of fellow brothers and sisters for personal gain.

Is it not enough to be the catalyst of the stripping of almost $300,000 dollars from an organization that houses women and children, picks people up from under bridges and takes them in from the freezing street, and advocates from the basic human dignity that all of us deserve? Obviously not.

You call for the CLOSING of the Task Force!! Friends, this would be the beginning of the downfall of our beloved community. If we forced 600 to 1,000 brothers and sisters in humanity into the streets of Midtown the sense of desperation would be greater than most this city has seen. When people are thrust into a desperate situation, people act desperately. I cannot fathom what 600-1,000 acts of desperation entail.

So I tell your organization to STOP misrepresenting the good nature of the citizens of Midtown. We are not the victim of a broken system as you are leading people to believe. We are the beneficiaries!! We are not hurting as the people experiencing homelessness are hurting because someone loudly asked us for money. We are not living in fear of the vagrants of the night. That claim is outrageous. We have one of the most beautiful neighborhoods in the Southeast with a park comparable to Central Park in NYC! We have a thriving business and entertainment community. We enjoy a classy nightlife and have well respected organizations of faith. Our community is blessed with this and so much more. If we continue to forget our good fortune we are potentially jeopardizing it along with our good nature. Let us use our good fortune as a model for other districts and not call for the closing of Task Force. If the Task Force’s operations are not adequately serving the homeless as you say, then let us FUND them adequately so they can maximize their efforts and become the vision that they have on their website(www.homelesstaskforce.org)! Let us build up our neighbor not shun them from existence.

However, I am in strong opposition to the Pine Street Shelter. I know many guys who have stayed there such as David, an eight year Navy veteran who was working with me. Each night in the Pine Street shelter he would be robbed of his money or his shoes or something. Another guy who worked with me got lice there. The United Mission Shelter over on Mills St. sends men to the Pine Street Shelter as punishment for not behaving well. Every man at other shelters know not to go to the Pine Street Shelter if you are trying to get back on your feet because the Pine Street Shelter is a place for drug deals and hanging out and not escaping homelessness.

So, let’s have a homeless shelter in Midtown. But, let’s have one that is well run and actually helps people get off the streets. The pine street shelter as currently run in no way provides this service. Because of this, I support the MPSA in leading a drive against this fundraiser because a donation to the Pine Street shelter enables bad things just as much as giving money to panhandlers.

Many of the prostitutes, drug dealers and prostitutes who are arrested in our neighborhood give this shelter as their address. This is because this shelter, as opposed to legitimate shelters, has no policies as to who can stay there. As a result, it is the home base for the dangerous criminals who roam through our streets. If any of the above posters really gave a crap about the homeless, they would know how groups like the “Task Force” harm the cause of the homeless and wee work with several legitimate homeless groups that agree with us.

Bob Cramer, one of the executives of this group had the audacity to label the Midtown community racist for daring to oppose their programs that have proven to be destructive to the neighborhood and counter-productive to the needs of the homeless. Of course, Bob doesn’t mention that he lives in a lily white neighborhood far from Midtown and that the company of which he is the CEO is in a sterile and expensive office complex with private security. Like the rest of the “Task Force”, Bob wants to use our neighborhood as the petri dish for his social experiments, yet doesn’t want to live or have his business near it. Neither do we. I won’t sink to his level and call him a racist for sequestering yourself from minorities except for an occasional visit to your warehouse for criminals.