Peachtree-Pine homeless shelter told to vacate building
June 22, 2009 at 7:08 pm by Scott Henry in News
Anita Beaty
UPDATE: Shelter stays open for now.
The water has been turned off again at the city’s largest homeless shelter and this time health officials have given the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless 24 hours to clear out of the building.
Back in December, the city shut off water service to the 100,000-square-foot shelter at the corner of Peachtree and Pine streets because the Task Force had more than $160,000 in unpaid water bills. A judge quickly granted a temporary restraining order to have the water switched back on, but gave the city the power to cut service again if the Task Force failed to keep up with a fairly strict payment schedule.
That’s where we are now. Anita Beaty, executive director of the Task Force, admits the group hadn’t paid its bill.
“We didn’t make the payments the last two months because we didn’t have the money,” she says.
Shortly after the water went off, investigators with the Fulton County Department of Health and Wellness showed up at the shelter and served legal notice that unless water service is restored within 24 hours, the building must be vacated.
“If they don’t vacate, the case will be turned over to law enforcement,” says April Majors, a public information officer with the county health department, who says she doesn’t believe it will come to that. “The management (of the shelter) is being very cooperative.”
Also, she says, if the Task Force doesn’t comply with the county order, it would be required to appear before the county’s environmental court.
The Task Force has until noon Tuesday to clear out of the Peachtree-Pine shelter, Majors says, unless it can restore water service — meaning drinkable water and working toilets.
Beaty says she’s confident her organization can remain in the building, either because its attorneys will succeed in securing another court reprieve or the Task Force will be able to find an alternative water source.
“There are ways to get water in here that are perfectly legal,” she says. “We’re asking people to bring us water in buckets and pans.”
Although Beaty told the AJC that she plans to keep the building open tonight, outreach workers from the city’s Gateway Center spent the afternoon trying to coax Peachtree-Pine residents to come to the Atlanta shelter.
“We are prepared to help the men find other housing,” says Debi Starnes, homeless services advisor to the Franklin administration. “Earlier, the Task Force brought some women over to Gateway in the back of a pickup truck.”
The Peachtree-Pine shelter was put up for sale in March for $10 million and has generated some interest from potential buyers, but no deals have been made. One likely hurdle is Beaty’s desire to relocate the Task Force operations — as well as the shelter’s estimated 350 homeless residents — which would require the city to issue a special-use permit. The chances of that happening are slim and none.
Still, Beaty says that if the Task Force can just hang on to its home for another two or three weeks, something will happen — she won’t say what — that will take care of the group’s financial and legal woes.
“We expect a resolution,” she says. “All our troubles will be over.”
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:01 am
I know it’s a tough, complex problem, but I drive by that place every day on my way home, and I invariably see drugs being openly bought and sold and crack-addled zombies wandering in the middle of Pine St. The parking lot across the street and the sidewalk is always crowded with shuffling, lost souls, most of whom seem to be somewhere between insane and shit-faced drunk. I don’t know what to do with them, and I’m sure many of us wish they would all just “straighten up” or go away…oh and BTW, most of them sure seem to manage to find cigarettes and booze/drugs–one way or another. Two of the major ways being stealing and begging, I’d be willing to wager.
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:24 am
I USED to live around the corner from that shelter. It’s being shamefully run and those people don’t get the services they really need. The spillover into the neighborhoods, grocery stores and such is absolutely intolerable. And crime? They should shut down the Savannah Suites right now!
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:56 am
Your misrepresentation is equally hilarious and outraging. Creative Loafing, in regard to this issue, consistently has served blatantly and singularly the corporate interests which incidentally, pay the way for you to showcase their mindset.
Blood on your hands, to you and the city who would rather see poor people dead than in the streets.
Who’s streets? Our streets.
-Food Not Bombs Atlanta
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:10 am
“Creative Loafing, in regard to this issue, consistently has served blatantly and singularly the corporate interests”
You’ve got to be kidding? CL serving corporate interests? That’s hilarious.
June 23rd, 2009 at 11:33 am
Homeless men and women in Atlanta are well aware of the Gateway Center and other support programs in the city. Many choose to go to the Task Force for the Homeless shelter because they have a live and let live attitude, whereas other shelters are more forceful about putting the people they care for in rehab and other programs. Don’t think that if Peachtree and Pine were to close, you’d suddenly have no homeless living in the surrounding parks and hanging out in Midtown. There are several other shelters in the area, and many would just as well choose to live outside (in your neighborhood) than go to the Gateway Center or find permanent housing.
If you want to see what happens to several hundred homeless men and women, with mental disabilities, with drug and alcohol dependency, who will need to eat, sleep, piss and hang out somewhere without that shelter, roll the dice and take your chances.
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:27 pm
So what are they counting on in two weeks some sort of government bailout or an actual sale?
June 23rd, 2009 at 12:28 pm
The funding drying up for the Task Force is not about lack of results…its about the building that they are in; the 96,000 sf building that, for economically progressive reasons, the city (and the developers that are so closely intertwined with leadership) would rather see redeveloped. But what of ethical progression? Just collateral damage.
Take water to the Task Force.
June 23rd, 2009 at 1:01 pm
This “shelter” is a disgrace. The area for blocks around is polluted by the people poured out of the doors each morning.
By not forcing treatment or sobriety on their patrons, they are simply providing a huge flop house for drunks and crackheads.
The area should be redeveloped and it is not my job (or my taxes) to provide a place to sell drugs for the same 300 bums year after year for all of time.
June 24th, 2009 at 10:54 am
I have lived intown and very near shelters for years and have never seen the problems I see on a daily basis around this shelter. The lack of control is stunning and the attitude of the management is outrageous. They think that they are helping people but in fact they are doing nothing more than enabling drug and alcohol addiction. If you want to see how a responsible shelter is run, look at the Baptist Mission on Peters St. It is orderly and complies with the needs of their neighbors.
The Task Force thinks that if you complain about the drug dealing that occurs on and around its premises you do not care about the homeless… in fact, they do not care about their neighbors for fostering criminal activity on the streets around their building.
If you support this shelter and think that the neighbors are being intolerant, then I invite you to come down to my neighborhood and walk around the shelter any time day or night and see the disfunction for yourself.