Could shelter showdown spell end for Peachtree-Pine?
December 3, 2008 at 2:35 pm by Scott Henry in NewsAnita Beaty is right about one thing: City officials would love to shut down her enormous shelter at the corner of Peachtree and Pine streets.
Yesterday morning, the city cut off the water service to the former warehouse building occupied by Beaty’s Task Force for the Homeless. By evening, however, a judge had ordered the water turned back on. But unless Beaty is able to pay off a $160,000 water bill, the shelter may soon be forced to close down for good.
Anita Beaty
“It’s very serious right now,” says former Atlanta Councilwoman Myrtle Davis, who serves on the Task Force’s board of directors. “This is part of a concerted effort by the city to shut us down.”
Arguably so, but that doesn’t change the apparent fact that the Task Force owes $160,000 in outstanding water bills. Fulton County Superior Court Judge T. Jackson Bedford ordered the shelter to come up with $6,000 by Friday and another $3,000 or so by next Wednesday, and to develop a reasonable plan for paying off the rest of the bill.
“If they miss either payment, the water goes back off,” says Debi Starnes, another former councilwoman who now serves as Mayor Franklin’s Homeless Czarina.
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
According to Starnes, the water bill was in dispute for some time until earlier this year, when the city’s water bill appeals board ruled that the Task Force owed the entire amount. Since then, she says, the shelter “has defaulted on every payment plan they’ve agreed to.”
Davis, on the other hand, says city officials have been unwilling to come to the table to develop a workable plan. “It’s really criminal what the city is doing,” she says.
The adversarial situation goes back long before the water bill dispute. For years now, area business owners and residents have complained about panhandling, drug deals, public urination and petty crime in the blocks surrounding the shelter. The city’s knock against the Task Force has been that it merely gives homeless men a place to sleep, but doesn’t provide the social services to get them back on their feet.
And in the two years since opening its own Gateway Center shelter, the city has turned up the heat on the Task Force. Last year, the city dropped the Peachtree-Pine shelter from the list of recommended grantees it submits annually to HUD – a move that has cost the Task Force close to $1 million in federal and state grants, says Davis.
The financial crunch has hurt the shelter in many ways, but the water bill could be the nail in its coffin.
If the Task Force is forced to close its doors, Starnes says, the Gateway Center is prepared to pick up the slack by helping find beds for the nearly 700 men who stay there regularly.
“We’re not interested in making it easier for people to remain homeless,” says Starnes. “We want to enable them to get off the street.”
December 3rd, 2008 at 9:49 pm
This week, the City of Atlanta turned off the water for the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, colloquially known as Peachtree Pine. According to City officials, Peachtree Pine owes $145,000 for a meter shut off this past September, and another $16,000 for a second meter shut off this week. As we understand it, Peachtree Pine representatives sought an emergency injunction against the city. Judge Jackson Bedford ordered the city to turn the water back on, provided that Peachtree Pine pays $6,000 no later than Friday and another $2000 next week. They must also submit a plan to Judge Bedford for paying off the remaining water bill.
We find this outcome to be far too lenient considering the severe level of community crime and public disorder generated and perpetuated by that horrendous operation, but one has to take into consideration that the Judge did not get to hear how negatively that “shelter” impacts the surrounding residential and business community. By egregiously amassing years of unpaid water bills, the leadership of Peachtree Pine prominently underscores their fundamental disrespect to the greater community.
Throughout the 11 years of their presence, numerous community meetings have centered around the crime and disorder coming from that place. And each time Peachtree Pine gives the same response: what goes on outside their walls is of no concern to them. Peachtree Pine has put much effort in advancing the visibility of street people rather than undertaking any serious effort to steer those in need into rehabilitative services and onward to a productive life. As a result, the individuals using Peachtree Pine feel free to pursue their lives of street crime with utter impunity.
Peachtree Pine’s ongoing recklessness not only works against community improvement efforts, but endangers the community and the homeless individuals they pretend to be helping. By allowing a safe haven for a large number of street criminals, members of the greater community have had their homes burglarized, their cars broken into, have been robbed, and had their property destroyed. How many more people will have to be victimized by these crimes before the leadership of Peachtree Pine will even acknowledge that very serious public safety and security problems emanate from their operations?
Peachtree Pine has had years of time to demonstrate their willingness to operate with consideration toward the community at large. Because Peachtree Pine has failed in this crucial point, we hope the City and courts will immediately cease all leniency with that dysfunctional organization.
For more insights on how the community feels about Peachtree Pine see our Peachtree Pine digest
http://www.midtownponce.org/news/PPineDigest.pdf
Atlanta Journal-Constitution article:
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2008/12/02/water_homeless_shelter.html?cxntlid=homepage_tab_newstab