Atlanta’s largest homeless shelter could soon be shuttered
December 19, 2008 at 6:00 pm by Scott Henry in NewsThe woman approaching is stooped and sunken-eyed, with a weather-ravaged face that hints she might be much younger than she looks. She carries a frayed backpack and when she speaks, it’s in the beaten-down manner of someone accustomed to asking favors.
The Peachtree-Pine shelter houses hundreds of homeless men.
“Thank you, Miss Anita,” she says, as she follows her subject along the sidewalk and through the side door of the Peachtree-Pine homeless shelter. “You’re always good to me, even when I stray.”
Anita Beaty assures the woman she’ll be taken care of and ushers her into a small lobby where other street people occupy chairs along the walls or gaze out windows.
“We’re the first place people can come so they don’t die on the street,” explains Beaty as she sits down for an interview a few minutes later.
As executive director of the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, Beaty has run the city’s largest shelter on the corner of Peachtree and Pine streets for more than a decade. White-haired and grandmotherly, her appearance belies her reputation as a relentless advocate for the homeless, and in conversation, she comes across as so soft-spoken and unhurried that you’d never guess this is someone whose world is unraveling.
Earlier this month, the city turned off the water at Peachtree-Pine, citing unpaid bills totaling more than $160,000. Beaty quickly persuaded a judge to issue a temporary injunction to restore service, but her agency must comply with a daunting payment schedule or the water goes back off.
While water is the most immediate of the problems facing the Task Force, it’s far from the only one. It may not even be the biggest.
Last year, the Task Force lost the bulk of its state and federal grants, a move that has so far cost the agency nearly $1 million in anticipated revenue. And while the Task Force holds the deed on its 100,000-square-foot home four blocks south of the Fox Theatre, the 1920s-era building has been mortgaged at least once – and perhaps several times – over recent years. Then there are the dozens of other expenses associated with operating an enormous homeless shelter, such as electric bills, groceries, transportation, staff salaries and so forth.
Beaty insists her agency’s not in peril – “The Task Force isn’t going out of business or reducing services or doing anything differently,” she says – but she offers little in the way of evidence to back up this claim. For an organization whose reported annual budget has been in the neighborhood of $1.3 million, it seems doubtful that private donations alone, especially with the economy in such dire straits, could close the revenue gap left by the lost grants.
It’s unknown how long the Peachtree-Pine shelter can remain open, but there are some who believe its eventual shuttering would be a boon to the surrounding Midtown neighborhood, to downtown businesses – and to the very homeless people it claims to serve.
Former Task Force supporters, city officials and even fellow homeless service providers seem to be in general agreement that the Task Force’s no-questions-asked approach to providing a sanctuary for street people is outdated and ultimately does more harm than good.
Bruce Gunter is co-founder and president of Progressive Redevelopment Inc., a Decatur-based group that develops and manages affordable housing projects, such as downtown’s Imperial Hotel and the new Hope House, around the corner from City Hall. An early advocate of the Task Force who helped the agency obtain the Peachtree-Pine building, Gunter’s support was short-lived once he reached the conclusion that Beaty was a better bomb-thrower than administrator.
“Anita is admirable in so many ways, but you can’t be a homeless advocate and manage a homeless service center,” Gunter says. “Those two jobs don’t go together because you need public officials on your side; you can’t bite the hand that feeds you.”
Beaty, however, clearly relishes the role of righteous hand-biter. In two separate conversations, she cheerfully recounts a single incident she seems to view as the flash point of her agency’s ongoing conflicts with City Hall and the downtown business community. It was 1994, and then-Mayor Bill Campbell was speaking at the re-opening of Woodruff Park, which had been overhauled in preparation for the Olympics.
To protest a new law aimed at panhandlers, Beaty and other activists arrived at the event with a group of homeless men and women who shouted down the mayor and business leaders.
In attendance at the 1994 event was newly elected City Council member Debi Starnes. She now scoffs at the suggestion that community opposition to the Task Force is somehow payback for disturbing a ribbon-cutting.
“The culture of that agency and its management of that building is not one that helps people escape homelessness,” says Starnes, who retired her Council seat three years ago and now serves as Mayor Shirley Franklin’s homeless czar.
“What’s going on in that building is abysmal and shouldn’t be accepted,” she adds. “The city should be ashamed for having allowed it to go on for so long.”
The Task Force for the Homeless was created in 1981 at the behest of incoming Mayor Andrew Young after 17 homeless Atlanta men died from exposure during a cold snap. Beaty took the reins in 1985 and for the first decade or so, it served as the main referral agency connecting homeless men and women to night shelters and other local service providers. By 1995, when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced $1 billion in new grants to fund coordinated homeless programs in major urban areas across the country, the Task Force was best positioned as the umbrella organization to administer the grant package. Atlanta received a healthy $12.4 million, more than many cities with larger homeless populations.
But problems began almost immediately. One by one, the grant’s sub-recipients – Cobb Family Resources, Legal Clinic for the Homeless, Metro Atlanta Furniture Bank and others – told HUD they couldn’t work with the Task Force and asked the feds to administer the funds directly. A 1998 HUD audit report found the Task Force’s management of the grant program to be a disaster zone of poor record-keeping, tardy reimbursements and lousy inter-agency communication. If the organization couldn’t account for $1.2 million in missing funds, the audit recommended, it should be forced to give the money back to HUD.
Although the Task Force didn’t end up having to repay the funds, Atlanta’s grant package was reduced to $5.3 million in 1998.
By that time, Atlanta civic leaders had decided the city needed a centralized homeless service facility where men and women could come for temporary housing and to have their needs assessed so they could be prescribed medication or assigned to treatment and training programs. Beaty, too, aimed to create a sort of “Grand Central Station” for homeless people, as she termed it — and she wanted to go it alone.
In January 1997, Beaty one-upped the city when Ednabelle Wardlaw, a Coke heiress, bought the block-long, former United Motors Service building for $1.3 million and donated it to the Task Force. The city was forced to abandon its own plans to open a one-stop-shop for the homeless until 2005, when the Franklin-launched Regional Commission on Homelessness finally opened the Gateway Homeless Service Center, in a converted city jail.
Now, with the Gateway Center coordinating a metro-wide network of shelters, drug-treatment centers, supportive housing providers and other social service groups, Starnes says Peachtree-Pine is no longer needed as a shelter of last resort. In fact, she says, its closure is necessary to making the new system work.
“They’re undercutting all the rest of our efforts,” she says, explaining that by providing a refuge where drug addicts, alcoholics and the mentally ill can congregate, the shelter does little to rehabilitate its residents. “They are nurturing and contributing to the problem of homelessness in Atlanta.”
Gunter agrees that, by running a loose ship, the Task Force isn’t helping most of its residents.
“One of the worst things you can do to someone’s dignity is to create dependency, to tell people you don’t expect them to get their lives together,” he says. “It’s been a terrible service to homeless people.”
It’s unclear how many men stay at Peachtree-Pine on any given night. (Although women receive services at the shelter, it only houses men.) Beaty claims the building is home to a “community” of 700 to 800. City officials believe the number is lower.
Beaty concedes that some of the residents have lived there for several years, but insists the rehabilitation and training programs she provides — including GED classes, a computer lab and job referrals — are top-notch.
But the Task Force gets low marks even from fellow agencies. Robert Hunter, director of the Atlanta Union Mission’s shelter programs, says his agency no longer has any working relationship to Beaty’s.
“We used to refer people there,” he says, “but we stopped doing that because all they do is warehouse people.”
All the controversy is troubling to Bill Bolling, director of the Atlanta Food Bank and a co-founder of the Task Force.
“There’s no one who cares more for the homeless than Anita, but she’s burnt bridges with funders and other agencies,” he explains. “Trying to be a thorn in people’s side doesn’t work over the long haul and I don’t think the Task Force in recent years has been good for the movement because they’ve never progressed.”
The favored approach in dealing with homelessness has evolved greatly over the past 20 years, says Starnes. The emphasis is now on providing housing while addressing the reasons someone is on the street.
“Everybody’s reached the same conclusion,” she explains. “You can’t simply give a man a cot and three hots and expect him to reach the next step. You have to delve into addiction, mental illness, family history, etc. It’s hard work, but it’s the only thing that works.”
For her part, Beaty blames Starnes for much of her current woes.
“It’s been her mission for 14 years to kill us,” says Beaty, who also dismisses a state agency that ranked the Task Force dead last among Atlanta homeless service providers, costing the shelter nearly $1 million in federal funding. “The ranking process is totally subjective and the grants are controlled by politics.” She says the Task Force is preparing a lawsuit accusing the city of improperly interfering with its ability to secure grants and private donations.
Beaty likewise discounts critics who point to Peachtree-Pine residents as the source of much of the area’s street crime, including assaults, muggings and car break-ins. Neighbors have loudly complained that the shelter is a magnet for drug sales and related crimes.
Police Maj. Kirus Williams says one of his first decisions after becoming the Zone 5 commander this summer was to assign a patrol car to Pine Street from 8 a.m. to midnight seven days a week. Although several large shelters are in Zone 5, the Task Force building is the only location to receive such a high level of police resources.
“When you see 100 men hanging out in the street on a daily basis, it warrants police presence,” he says. “It’s very taxing, but I have to weigh the cost with the safety of our citizens.”
Despite her current troubles, Beaty is hopeful about the future. She describes a planned $13 million renovation for the building and is counting on the incoming Obama administration to restore the Task Force’s HUD funding.
As she ends the interview, it’s clear Beaty’s sticking to her us-against-the-world mindset: “Just because we’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get us.”
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
December 20th, 2008 at 10:00 pm
Contrary to popular belief, most homeless did not become so out of choice and not because they are lazy, stupid, or immoral. Many homeless people are victims of abuse in the form of neglect and abandonment by their parents or other caregivers. Like many victims of abuse, a lot of them have chemical dependency problems. Some of them are simply victims of life’s tragedies, such as hurricanes, fires, or other catastrophes from which they simply don’t have the resources to recover. Also, there is a snowball effect that occurs with homelessness. Once a person has fallen to the level of living on the streets it is very difficult for them to get a job even if they are capable of working, because the condition of homelessness creates a low sense of self-esteem which makes it difficult to relate to other people. It is difficult to find, much less keep a job once a person’s self-esteem is so badly damaged. I invite you to my website: http://www.FreetheGods.com. There you will find an article on homelessness and pictures I have taken of homeless people. I always give them a dollar or two for the privilege of photographing them. I am often surprised by their cheerfulness and sense of pride. Often, they will show themselves to have some kind of talent. There is a fine line between genius and insanity.
December 20th, 2008 at 11:58 pm
I would just like to respond to the portion of the article that talks about the “abysmal” things that go on inside the Task Force. Obviously, the person who spoke those words has not spent time in the building. Despite the dire circumstances many of the people seeking the help offered by the shelter, the atmosphere there is not hopeless and despair-filled. There is an optimism and hope that that affects everyone there. There is respect for EVERYONE who walks through the doors–warmth, kindness and community are offered without hesitation.
I would like to challenge Creative Loafing to offer BOTH sides of this situation. This article was myopic in its scope, only presenting the views of those opposing the Task Force. I’m disappointed–I’ve been a reader of Loafing for over 25 years and I’ve always thought the paper to be courageous and willing to be “edgy.” I am sorry to see you towing the party line with this article that espouses the city’s homelessness “talking points.”
December 21st, 2008 at 11:03 am
In response to Tina’s post, if Creative Loafing had described what had happens on the inside at the Pine Street Shelter, it would have justified the word “abysmal.” I have spent a lot of time with folks from the Pine Street Shelter and here is what they tell me about ‘respect for everyone.’
“Graham, can you loan me $10 to get lunch?” My reply: “Did you spend what you made yesterday?” “No, I was robbed last night while sleeping in the [Pine Street] Shelter, (beginning to sob) that place is awful and as soon as I get me some money, I am going to check into a hotel. You can’t sleep in there and anyone who makes a buck during the day is robbed at night. It’s not fair man, it’s just not fair.”
A week later, a long-term resident of the shelter approached the man above while he was working with me. Words were exchanged and I could see my friend’s frustration and anger combined with fear as he handed over $20. I was upset and walked over to get rid of this guy and my friend said “Graham, just let it be, I’ll handle it, just let it be, that is the way things are.” He told me that his bag with all his things had been taken the night before while he was sleeping at the shelter and this one said he ‘found them’ and that he would take care of them for my friend for $20.
Another guy who worked with me and who stayed at the Pine Street shelter told me he just kept to himself, but yeah he saw the drugs sold on the inside and that dealers checked in in order to make sales and not because they need a place to stay. This second guy had gotten lice while staying at the Pine Street Shelter and I bought him some delicing shampoo and let him shower at my house on the day he left Atlanta so that he wouldn’t bring the ills of the Pine Street Shelter literally with him.
We must take care of everyone in our community and not just our neighbor who has a home. I was impressed at this article because it finally makes the issue of the Pine Street Shelter about what is best for helping those who are homeless and not a saviors of the homeless vs. the evil people who oppose homeless people as Beaty at the shelter tries to make it out to be.
I look forward to the day that the Pine Street Shelter is closed (or run by more progressive and responsible management) because it is doing nothing to help the homeless as my stories above and many more I could share show. I believe in having homeless shelters in our community because we bear responsibility for our whole community. However, the Pine Street Shelter is not a homeless shelter, it is a homeless warehouse as the article said. Getting rid of or reforming the Pine Street Shelter will be a good thing for homeless people in Atlanta and residents. But, we also need to make sure that when the shelter closes or is reformed that we have a plan to provide support for those who currently are at the Pine Street Shelter – support that includes helping them transition out of homelessness and towards a life they want to live.
A big thank you to Scott Henry for writing a well researched and thoughtful article on the Pine Street Shelter. I hope it helps more people understand the importance of seriously addressing homelessness – something the Pine Street Shelter is not doing.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:33 am
Graham, you clearly have issues beyond even those you’re aware of. Take a good hard look, Graham.
You state that if the writer had described what goes on inside the shelter he would have justified his use of the word “abysmal,” yet you have never bothered to visit the place yourself? You could take a guided tour of the facility and extensive services, any time you choose.
So you could not possibly know of what you speak. You do not know how many miracles happen to people from within the ranks of the place. You do not know that a man two months ago left that place to go live in his own home, which he was able to purchase on his own, even in this economic climate, after living at Peachtree Pine and recovering from addiction, thanks to the services provided by that place.
You don’t know about the Cameroon-born French Sorbonne student who was able to finish his philosophy degree at Georgia State and earn a scholarship to Stanford University. He had been homeless and living at Peachtree Pine until he left for Stanford.
You don’t know about the men who have had their electrician training funded and even their union dues paid and tool belts provided, who went on to leave Peachtree Pine with well paying jobs and full, healthy lives.
You don’t know how many men return to the building just long enough to tell Anita Beaty their success stories, give and get a hug, and thank her for everything she and her staff did for them.
You don’t know what you’re talking about, Graham. You clearly don’t even realize that even schoolchildren regularly come home with lice and that it is not some exotic plague.
You do not realize how many rules are kept firmly in place there. You have not seem the miraculous amount of cooperation especially in hard times is achieved there. You certainly have no idea how much love and care and deep commitment flows through that place, starting with Anita Beaty, but all the way through the ranks.
Certainly you do not realize how the city conveniently refused the shelter’s pleas for help with the “outside element” that sold drugs in the area. Just a reasonable amount of law enforcement was all that was asked or needed. Instead, that “element” was allowed by the city to continue doing business, fomenting the problem, exactly so that people like you would get up in arms. Problem-reaction-solution. Oldest trick in the book.
You obviously don’t know that the city’s darling organizations like the “Gateway” repeatedly refuse referrals from the Task Force at Peachtree Pine, so that women and children are daily refused bed spaces–spaces which Debi Stearns disingenuously implies are there, ready and waiting. Debi Stearns and her kind will obviously put a woman and child out into 20-degree weather and onto the street, if it will help them play politics against the Task Force.
It is painfully clear that you cannot understand the second-oldest trick in the book, which is to starve a disobedient organization of its funding (illegally, as it may soon be proved) and then point the finger at that agency, claiming that it can’t pay its bills due to mismanagement of some sort. It is utter hogwash, and I know this for a fact. We’re seeing the attempted assassination of an entire organization. And “articles” like this are a clear part of it.
You (and the so-called writer of this piece) have not mentioned that HUD’s most recent audit of the Task Force/Peachtree Pine, which took place only a couple of months ago, was so stellar that the HUD auditors’ only comment (a consensus among all 3 or 4 auditors) was that the Task Force/Peachtree Pine was so spotlessly run from an administrative and fiscal standpoint that “you guys (Anita Beaty and the Task Force) should be running HUD.”
Clearly also you do not realize how a formerly independent and progressive magazine like Creative Loafing could become co-opted and corrupted from the top down, so that morally bankrupt and ambitious so-called writers like Mr. Henry can join in on an orchestrated smear campaign and practice his puns while beating up on a selfless, tireless advocate like Anita Beaty.
There can be no other explanation for it. Because Henry’s “article” was a bald, tacky advertisement for the city government/corporate complex (one seamless creature), and its draconian stance on poverty, homelessness, neediness, service providing and housing. How perfect that the “Gateway” occupies a former jail. One has to wonder just where that “Gateway” is meant to lead.
Way to get played, Graham. It is you and Henry and most of all Stearns who should be ashamed.
I suggest you take a tour of the place and its services. I suggest you get to know just one of its success stories (As just a casual volunteer I know many more first-hand stories on that side than you do on yours, I would bet).
Now that I have your attention, I am proud to provide the following full disclosure: I am Anita Beaty’s son. Thank you for reading.
December 22nd, 2008 at 9:09 am
You know Frank, until you can write without resorting to personal insults, nobody cares what you say. I read the first paragraph, the first sentence of a few others and quit. Somebody who cannot express themselves and form arguments without resorting to personal insults may be the person who “ha[s] issues beyond even those you’re aware of.” Not a good way to persuade people.
December 22nd, 2008 at 9:32 am
The State of Georgia does not do enough for homeless, period. Until the state steps up, Atlanta has no hope of improving homelessness. For some reason, the state has been able to ignore the needs of its cities for so long and many cities suffer because of it. Most large cities get a substantial amount of financial support from their states. Atlanta doesn’t, even when Democrats controlled state politics. It’s always been an us vs. them relationship between the city and state. Homelessness and transportation are just two of the major issues that the state has dropped the ball on.
I don’t know enough about Peachtree-Pine to make an informed decision, but I’m sure it does some good. However, they need to pay their bills to have any credibility.
December 22nd, 2008 at 9:51 am
I would appreciate it if they would park that big ass bus in the parking lot across from the building, rather than blocking the only lane that allows you to cross Juniper.
I have already decided it is impossible for them to keep their clients from loitering in the middle of the street.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:09 pm
In response to Graham’s article– I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that there is some truth to what you are saying–that people who are in dire circumstances sometimes do rob one another and take advantage of situations.(But I suspect that if you were to ask residents of any other homeless shelter in the city if they had been robbed while there, you would hear the same stories.)But for everyone of those negative stories you shared, there are dozens of positive, hopeful stories to counter each one of them. I invite–no, I strongly encourage you–to visit the Task Force yourself and to listen to some of the stories of the men who call that building “home” and the people there “family.” Listen to the struggles of the staff members there who work tirelessly to help people rebuild their lives and move into sustainable housing–all with little or no resources.
As I said earlier, there is another side to this story. I just wish there were journalists in Atlanta who would be courageous enough to give the Task Force a voice that is as loud as the one that has been given to the city of Atlanta’s power structure.
December 22nd, 2008 at 12:22 pm
Frank,
You seem to know a lot about my views without having asked me what I think and you make assumptions that are far-fetched.
Yes, I have been in the Pine Street Shelter (but felt the problems were better expressed with stories of others than my own). Yes, I have spent the night at other shelters as a homeless person and I can compare what I saw among shelters. Yes, I know that lice occurs among school children. And yes, I think the Pine Street Shelter does nothing to eliminate the problem of homelessness and needs to go.
I would encourage you (as another poster did above) to refrain from personal attacks and assumptions. It is okay for people to disagree with you without being evil and in fact that is part of what makes our nation the free democracy that it is. I would encourage you to realize that disagreement can occur without insults and without belittling or mocking someone with differing views.
I respect the fact that you disagree with me and I respect you for your views. I also thank you for sharing the story of the student going to Stanford. I am surprised that any audit could find an organization that owes $150K in water bills financially responsible and all of the evidence I have seen clearly shows that the Pine Street Shelter needs different management as the aggregate impact of the shelter is to (as the article says) do more harm than good for the homeless of Atlanta. The writer says this not because he is controlled by powerful interests who smoke cigars in a backroom and make decisions, but because Scott, with open eyes, sees the problems and chose to write about them in a fair and accurate manner.
There are many in Atlanta who care about helping those who are homeless who want to see change occur at the Pine Street Shelter. This change is critical to helping Atlanta be one community that works to help those who are homeless.
December 22nd, 2008 at 1:54 pm
As the recession continues, I watch as millions are being pumped into bail-outs to mega corporations, high priced consultants for Grady and big parties for AIG executives. The number of ridiculous examples of how resources are squandered increase every day.
Why should the Task Force for the Homeless, sleeping approximately 700 men a night, in the dead of winter, have to struggle for the money to do this kind of work?
Please read the rest of my comment on the front page of the website of the Task Force @ http://www.homelesstaskforce.org.
December 22nd, 2008 at 2:00 pm
Apologies for the double post. It disappeared the first time.
It didn’t show up on the page so I posted it again and voilà there it is twice.
Be well,
Lynne
December 22nd, 2008 at 2:05 pm
but should the director of the shelter and her husband be pulling down a six figure salary?
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/atlanta/stories/2008/12/22/shelter_owes_money.html
(sorry CL for posting to a competitors site)
This whole place just doesn’t add up.
December 22nd, 2008 at 9:57 pm
The problem with Scott Henry’s report is that it focuses narrowly on the Task Force’s financial situation and Anita Beaty’s administrative failings rather than addressing larger questions of policy that should be a matter of public concern and debate.
Here is the big policy issue. The Task Force offers shelter to any man who needs it, provided he abides by the rules of the facility. Critics argue that this open-door approach does not hold homeless persons accountable for their self-destructive behavior. They say that the prospect of “a cot and three hots” only reinforces the vicious cyle of poverty and dependence that perpetuates homelessness.
But what is the alternative advanced by the Task Force’s critics? This is a crucial question but Scott Henry does his readers a disservice by never bothering to ask it.
The Task Force’s critics argue that the most effective way of addressing the problem of homelessness is to target the “chronically homeless.” This group is defined as single individuals (overwhelmingly African-American men) who suffer a disabling condition and who have been on the street for a prolonged period of time. The Task Force’s critics maintain that the “chronically homeless” consume a disproportionate amount of support services that would otherwise be available to other needy groups (children, families, individuals without disabling conditions).
What the Task Force’s critics carefully avoid mentioning is that many of the individuals defined as “chronically homeless” either decline to enter treatment programs or fail to complete the treatment programs that are provided for them. The high failure rate is not peculiar to the homeless population. It’s not easy for people with addiction problems or other disabling conditions to conquer their demons, whether their homeless or not.
So what should we as a community do with the “chronically homeless” who don’t respond positively to treatment programs?
The Task Force says that everyone can find shelter at Peachtree-Pine. It bases this policy on the premise that a person who failed treatment the first time might succeed the second or third or twentieth time.
By contrast, the Task Force’s critics insist on a policy of “one strike and you’re out.” Anyone who fails the first time through forfeits his eligibility for future services, including “a cot and three hots.” The proponents of this position conclude that service providers that give someone a second, third, or twentieth chance are “enablers.”
Those who criticize the Task Force and its policies should think hard about the alternative that is being offered by the City, Central Atlanta Progress, and the Gateway Center. The approach favored by these powerful groups would create a new homeless population whose only shelter would be a cathole or a prison cell.
In his piece on the Task Force, Scott Henry had a wonderful opportunity to invite a serious public discussion of these policy issues. He missed it.
December 23rd, 2008 at 8:59 am
Wow
Frank attacks Graham
Chuck attacks Scott Henry
Anita Beaty attacks everyone
Your not going to build a lot of support like that. This article didn’t make a case for shutting you guys down it just laid out some facts. Anyone want to castrate DaleC, he actually wanted you to do something, like move a bus out of the street.
December 23rd, 2008 at 9:21 am
There were many parts of the this article and some of the subsequent comments are comeplete misrepresentations or merely off the mark. There is a very simple way to clear these things up: visit the Task Force. I would like to adress a few items…
-Bruce Gunter was quoted as saying that one cannot be a homeless advocate and run a service center…That type of mentality is one that treats the symtoms of a illness while allowing the causes of the illness to go unadressed. Bruce tells us how “you need public officials on your side; you can’t bite the hand that feeds you.” It seems that he is saying that when public officials do wrong by the very population that service providers are serving, the providers must look the other way and keep thier mouths shut…
-Debi Starnes, who has spearheaded many of the efforts against the Task Force, was listed yesterday in the AJC as the Mayor’s homelessness advisor… despite the fact that her $96,000 was dropped from the City’s payroll in July. So who pays Debi? I would like to know. Maybe she was able to find some private homeless advocates that believed so much in the quality of her advisment to the mayor that they picked up her salary…
http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/freshloaf/2008/07/24/atlanta-homeless-wont-lose-advocate/
December 23rd, 2008 at 9:48 am
I mean, if you’re offering to castrate DaleC, I’m not gonna say no.
@Chuck: You seem to be advocating that societally we have an obligation to help the homeless (which I agree with) but that we shouldn’t expect any effort on the part of the person who gets the services. No one is saying there aren’t tough cases of addiction or mental illness that require patience on behalf of the service provider. What the critics’ are saying is the Task Force’s approach swings too far to the side of simply providing bed, food and shelter and does not place enough emphasis on responsibility and treatment.
Your argument seems to be, “Well, they gotta go somewhere,” and at its core, the argument has merit. But the Task Force’s belligerent stance toward criticism and outrageous approach to activism has as much or more to do with its current state than the admittedly powerful people who criticize it.
The bottom line is if the Task Force would pay its bills and operate within guidelines, there’s very very little the gov’t can do to affect it. Perhaps Anita’s supporters should concentrate first on helping her get the Task Force in order, eventually giving the critics less ammunition to fire at them.
December 23rd, 2008 at 11:26 am
Mr T – hey, hey HEY!!! Nooooo!
I saw something at Peachtree Pine this morning that made me scratch my head. A guy was “camped” on the north wall of the building, next to the sidewalk in the dialysis center parking lot.
Was he late? Couldn’t get past the velvet rope?
It was just weird that a guy was wrapped up in blankets outside a shelter with a policy of not turning men away.
A a portion of the homeless won’t accept help, so what to do about them?
December 24th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
We’ve completely lost sight of what our city is doing to us. This blatant attack against the Task Force for the Homeless is not only biased, it arguably borderlines the breaching of a court order, and is being shrouding the bigger issues. One thing that has been conveniently looked over by the press is the other half of the Court Order. The order was for Starnes and the city to back away from operations of the Task Force for the Homeless and stop interfering with the funders of the Task Force for the Homeless. It also granted subpoena power to the attorneys of the Task Force regarding any memos, e mails, etc. from Starnes, the Mayor, and three others. I would like to personally thank the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Central Atlanta Progress, and Creative Loafing for allowing Ms. Starnes (WHO IS NOT A CITY EMPLOYEE) and Mayor Franklin to not implicate themselves in this blatant side- swiping of the public perception of the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless. But not to worry, you won’t have to work hard to cover for them much longer for the subpoenaed documents will tell the story as it should be told. What we saw here was a perfect example of when the fair and balanced press takes a shot at an organization, it is not a political move, it is news.
Well, when members of Central Atlanta Progress, the AJC and Bruce Gunter, take a shot of this nature in Monday’s paper it is a political move. The Creative Loafing had the chance to be exactly what they claim to be: an alternative news source. Instead, it sounds as if they called Colin Campbell and Rhonda Cook for advice of how to best slander Anita Beaty and the Task Force and still sound credible once again. This story, at best, editorialized and narrowly summed up a 27 year long battle between a local government and a homeless service provider. How many times are we as citizens of this city going to allow our press to cover this story so unfairly?
I have recently moved from Macon, GA to Atlanta. I was offered a position as an AmeriCorps member in Atlanta to serve at the Task Force for the Homeless. In order to afford to LIVE on an AmeriCorps stipend (less than minimum wage), I was allowed to move into the Task Force. I lived there for one year serving in one of the most respected and renowned domestic service program in the nation. My team served in New Orleans for a week among 200-300 other AmeriCorps members, most of which had heard of the AmeriCorps Force (The Task Force for the Homeless AmeriCorps Program) program.
During one of my 10 month terms of service at the Task Force I served under a Senegalese born American citizen that served our country in the first gulf war. After his service he suffered from PTSD and he became homeless. He was embraced by the Task Force, went through their transitional program and used their Photography Therapy program as a way out of depression and eventually came on as staff to run the program and become my supervisor.
I saw a man come from the place where we apparently “warehouse” people and move onto to drive our bus, taking women and children to their shelter placements that were made but a JOINT effort of service providers. I saw him work 16 hour days while he himself was experiencing homelessness to serve these women and children. He eventually moved on, and some would argue that he still is, to become the best caseworker women and children had in the city of Atlanta.
I saw men break down their macho shell and serve their fellow brothers and sister even during their most dire times because the people they were serving simply needed a hand up.
I answered calls on the city’s ONLY 24 hour crisis hotline for placement and place hundreds of people in shelter. I also sat beside people that knew the shelter system because they were living in it while placing people at these lifelines of organizations.
To refute the charges that the Task Force staff is doing NOTHING to transition people out of homelessness I shall give you the numbers that JUST the AmeriCorps Force produced between 2007 and 2008. We served 16,472 hours. We served 31,181 people directly. We placed 1,955 people in temporary or permanent housing. We wrote 11,402 referrals for service. All of which was in a 10 month span. The AmeriCorps Force program has existed for 15 years every year producing similar numbers. The AmeriCorps Force members at Task Force serve under and with the Task Force staff and only make up a third of the Task Force caseworkers. Visit our website see the VAST amounts of services we provide, I beg you.
The yearly numbers of Task Force’s success rate are significantly higher. Do not EVER claim that we are simply warehousing people when some of the staff is serving just under 80 hours a week some times in order to obtain fair and adequate housing for their fellow brothers and sisters because there is no other place for them to turn. You must visit our facility before such slanderous accusations are thrown about. By making such accusation you are not just attacking the idea of poor African American men on Peachtree Street in a classist and racist manner, you are attacking the very dignity of those who have given their lives to serve an unmet need and you are dehumanizing those which are being served by implying that they would allow themselves to be warehoused.
After so many startling and life changing experiences within those walls, I was asked to stay on as an employee as the director of their legal protection program. I started researching the organization for which I was going to work in order to better understand the politics of the organization.
I found editorials by Debi Starnes claiming the homeless to be as pigeons and street rats. I heard stories from former city officials about the closed door meetings regarding out facility. I found letters from public officials to the funders of the Task Force requesting that they no longer be funded, or threatening them if they do fund the Task Force. I interviewed the only two housing commissioners of the city of Atlanta and asked them why they chose to work for the Task Force if this organization was such a burden on the system for which they worked. I found by looking at the history of this building that every time Task Force dared to question the motives of the City or of Central Atlanta Progress they were slapped with articles and funding cuts such as these. I found Ms. Beaty and Co. not to be “righteous hand-biters” but justified whistle blowers that would not stand for injustice if that injustice would result in the frozen bodies of Atlanta citizens. Ms. Beaty is not biting the hand the feeds her. She is demanding the other hand to stop displacing poor people.
I have sat in meetings listening to City Officials claim that homelessness is not a City of Atlanta problem, that it is regional problem implying that people who are homeless in Atlanta are the problem of the greater Metro Area, not the City’s. Because if we can throw the problem on the region and move our shelter facilities outside the city limits, you can effectively decrease the homeless count inside the city limits and tout the ten year plan to end homelessness as working. I’ve heard them say they have decreased homelessness by 16% in the worst recession we’ve seen since the great depression and the highest unemployment rate in Georgia in 20 something years!
I’ve seen the Gateway stop taking referrals of women and children from us because of politics which results in people sleeping outside and sleeping shoulder to shoulder in our lobby. I have picked men up off the steps of Gateway at 9:30 at night in 21 degree weather. When asked why they would not let him in during such conditions, re replied, “I’m not in a program.” He came back to the Task Force with us. I’ve talked to people turned away from city facilities FOREVER because they do not have the means to WALK 2 HOURS from the new Ellis Street Location to the Atlanta Day Shelter from women and children. I’ve seen the list of WOMEN that aren’t allowed to EVER receive service again because they “have already been placed.”
I saw Ms. Starnes and Co. plan the closing of Task Force and sell it by LYING to everyone saying they had the capacity to take 700-800 men on the COLDEST night Atlanta had seen so far. I took the call from the Gateway saying they only had the capacity to take 250 and heard Ms. Starnes say she could take 500. When questioned about the other 200-300 people, she stated she could produce those beds in less than a day. This would have and will be if our doors are shut the equivalent of a natural disaster. All of this implying that on the coldest night Atlanta had seen so far, the city’s plan consisted of leaving 200-300 brothers and sisters in the cold. Veterans. Women. Children. Mentally Ill. Sick. Disabled. All in order to “shut her down.”
I found out the following day that their plan consisted of emergency natural disaster cots from the Red Cross in the halls of other service providers for only a short time and that if someone refused to be put into the system at Gateway, they would be put out into the cold. I learned that officials from NUMEROUS city departments met with United Way, the Regional Commission on Homelessness telling them that it was time to shut us down.
I also learned in that time frame, that if the courts stand behind us, as they have at our loudest points in history and seem to do now, we are doing something right. If we are protecting the dignity and the civil rights of our brothers and sisters, the courts will be required to order the City and Ms. Starnes to cease and desist this attack for it is unconstitutional.
I am ready for the day our city will stand up and say, “No more of this!” It is time that we tell the developers that want this town so badly that it is ours and they cannot have it. They can have their suburbs that they created in order to flee from integration in the 70s, but they cannot have our whole city. This is not too much to ask.
I beg you all to read Larry Keating’s Study on the city’s urban expansion: Race, Class, and Urban Expansion. Read Anita Beaty’s paper on the Olympics: Atlanta’s Olympic Legacy. Go to the library and see the MANY studies about this 40 year long effort. Read these studies and look up old articles to see that this is so much bigger than the politics between the Task Force and the City. Examine the relationship between the City Government, Central Atlanta Progress, and the major developers. This is an implementation of the “sanitized corridor”, the “vagrant free zone”, and the “safe-guard zone”(All Central Atlanta Progress’s usage regarding Peachtree Street). Before you make blanket assumptions. Read read read. Take a break, and read read read some more. Without the historical context, your arguments are built on sand.
Merry Christmas.
Seth C. Clark, Legal Protection Program Director of the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless
(apologies for the typos and errors)