Homelessness in Atlanta

Homelessness in Atlanta An Examination of Dwelling and Identity in the Metropolis

A Thesis Presented to The Academic Faculty By Averil Landon Eagle

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Bachelors of Science Technology and Culture

Georgia Institute of Technology December, 2013

Homelessness in Atlanta An Examination of Dwelling and Identity in the Metropolis

Table of Contents List of Tables …………… …………………………………………………………… i List of Figures………………………………………………………………………… ii Section I: Dwelling and Identity ……………………………………………………. ..1 Section II: Homelessness and Dwelling Across Cities ……………………………... 10 New York City ……………………………………………………………… 10 Los Angeles …………………………………….…………………………... 13 Section III: Atlanta’s Historic Homeless Population…………………………………21 1960s and a Call to Arms …………………………………………………….21 1980s and Guerilla Welfare ………………………………………………….24 1990s and the Olympic Games ………………………………………………30 Section IV: Atlanta’s Present Dwelling Identity …………………………………….35 Atlanta’s Immediate Future, The Plans for a New Atlanta Falcons Football Stadium ……………………………………………………………………...42 Section V: Conclusion …………………………………………………………….....51 Works Cited ………………………………………………………………………….54

List of Tables Table 2.1 Common Ground Buildings and Units ……………………………………12 Table 4.1: Sheltered Homeless Individuals by Sleeping Type and Gender ……..…..37 Table 4.2: Unsheltered Count Individuals ………………………………………….. 38 Table 4.3: Sheltered Count Occupancy and Capacity Individuals …………………..39 Table 4.4: Permanent Supportive Housing Occupancy by Jurisdiction ……………..40 for Individuals Table 4.5: Permanent Supportive Housing Occupancy and Capacity ……………….40

by Jurisdiction

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List of Figures

Figure 2.1: Skid Row, Los Angeles Map ………………………………………………………………14

Figures 2.2-­‐2.5 Skid Row, Los Angeles Photographs …………………………………… .17-­‐19

Figures 3.1-­‐3.3 Mad Houser Shelter Designs ………………………………………………………28

Figure 4.1 Continuum of Care Model …………………………………………………………………41

Figure 4.2 Atlanta’s Continuum of Care Model ……………………………………………………43

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Dwelling and Identity Modern man must first and above all find his way back into the full breadth of the space proper to his essence. That essential space of man’s essential being receives the dimension that unites it to something beyond itself…Unless man first establishes himself beforehand in the space proper to his essence and there takes up his dwelling, he will not be capable of anything essential within the destining now holding sway.

- Martin Heidegger Cities exist as both a colorful cross section of humanity as well as a collection built and non-built dwelling places. In considering these aspects of a city, the issue of home and homelessness arises; dwellings become more abstract and more desperate in nature. The crux of a homelessness problem within a city lies not in actual housing but rather in dwelling: what transitions a house to a home. The common use of a phrase such as “home ownership” treats house and home as synonymous. A house is an object, a part of the environment, while home is best conceived of as a kind of relationship between people and their environment. It is an emotionally based and meaningful relationship between dwellers and their dwelling places. Therefore, as Kimberly Dovey makes clear, a “housing problem” is not identical to the issue of “homelessness.”1 A housing problem would simply involve a person who has found his or herself without a place to live but for most of America’s homeless population that is not the case. Many have a place to live, in a shelter or transitional housing but it is not a place in which true dwelling takes place. The problem of dwelling is at the heart of homelessness.

Research Atlanta, a nonprofit corporation that was created to advance the research and educational activities of the staff at the Atlanta Department of Veterans’ Affairs Medical Center, has defined the homelessness as, “The homeless are those whose primary nighttime residence is in publicly or privately operated shelters, the streets,

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doorways, bus stations, public plazas and parks, abandoned buildings, loading docks and other well hidden sites known only to their users.” 2 All mentioned locations are spaces in which people choose to dwell and make a home but are not considered housing. In these instances, the dwelling precedes the housing; it is not a house but still a home. The question is then posed, what makes a space a home and what then makes a person homeless?

Kimberly Dovey provides a way into this question in his studies of home and homelessness. Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Melbourne, Dovey critiques the modern ideal of homelessness and how it relates to a society’s housing problem. In “Home and Homelessness”, he addresses three themes.

First, the various kinds of “order” through which we are oriented in the world. Second, the processes of “identification” through which we connect with our world in a meaningful way. And finally, “dialectic processes” where the process of becoming at home is described. All three require a different notion of space, self, and existence.

Placing homelessness in relation to these ideas of space and human existence requires the consideration of social architecture, the interdisciplinary study of Architecture, social psychology, behaviorism, and environmental psychology. Its fundamental premise is the understanding that “environment” as included in the notion of a human/environment relationship refers not only to the material fact of built forms, but also to the personal and emotional meanings invested in them. This field connects the dialectic relationship between the arrangement of space in architecture and the social, or antisocial, behavior of the people who experience it. It is the study and practice of dwelling.

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Turning to specific examples, the needs of Atlanta’s chronic homeless population for dwellings may be analyzed to reveal the psychological intentions that they represent.

With respect to Victor Maslow’s hierarchy, the population demands two basic needs and one secondary need. The basic needs are privacy and security; the secondary is selfrealization.2 To understand this, more clearly we turn to Anne Troutman, a former professor of architecture at Southern California Institute of Architecture, who has written on spatial culture and history. Although her focus is primarily on the history of the boudoir and modernist spatial erotics, Troutman is a champion for the dwelling ideal particularly as it articulates a sense of self: “The dwelling is intimate, immediate, a resonant chamber, a mirror of the self, opening up in infinite perspectives, depth, and reflection. Soul, body, and dwelling are but expansions and projections of each other. For the house is not merely walls, doors, and windows, but a doorway to things beyond, a ‘capacity’ of the senses and spirit.” She continues, “As a natural extension of the primal need for protection and nurture, the dwelling is also a defense against the primal fear of loss of protection. Occupying the territory between reality and illusion, the dwelling could be considered a creative ‘space’ that defends the individual against the anxiety of being alone.”3 In relation to the homeless population, the loss of this sacred and intimate “space” leaves a person completely alone and without. This lack of dwelling disconnects the self and the surrounding world.

Social architectural perspectives support the human need for dwelling places through the three different properties that Dovey outlined: home as order, home as identity and home as connectedness. The first of these properties, order, is simply meant as “patterning” in environmental experience and behavior. Being at home is mode of

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being whereby we are oriented within a spatial, temporal, and sociocultural order that we understand. 1 This approach to the human environmental experience is one that requires a reinterpretation of the concept of space that juxtaposes the idea of house and the idea of home. At the center of this reinterpretation, are conceptual space and lived space.

Conceptual space is abstract and objectively measured; it is where people and things exist. Lived space, however, is the pre conceptual and meaningful spatial experience of “dwelling.”1 The discernment between these two spaces is the order that comes with existing in a house or dwelling in a home. To be at home is to know where you are; it means to inhabit a secure center and to be oriented in space and, therefore, to have a place in the world.

Home as order calls the home to exist in both space and time. Home is a knowledge of memories and experience that ebb and flow with one’s life. It is the environment we inhabit day after day until it becomes taken for granted and is secure and comfortable. This sense of familiarity is rooted in bodily routines and thus the space becomes a “field of pre-reflective actions grounded in the body.”4 For example, when one wanders through the home at night, the location of light switches and doorframes are known despite sight or sound. We can “feel” them. In this feeling, in this knowing, the home becomes part of us. Home is a repository of the past, family events, meals and childhood adventures. It becomes the home as identity and the relationship of dwelling is established.

In this sense, home as order is primarily a cognitive concept whereas home as identity is chiefly affective and emotional. Dovey writes, “There is an integrity, a connectedness between the dweller and dwelling. Home as order and as identity are

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strongly interrelated; yet whereas order is concerned with “where” we are at home, identity broaches the question of “who” we are, as expressed in the home, and “how” we are at home.” It is not just a matter of self-image but rather entwined with the site itself.

In order to be a dweller, you must have a dwelling. It is an abstract relationship between human and object but dictates the security of one’s identity.

The final dialectic combines both order and identity into the home as connectedness. A home presents a connection through four avenues1: 1- Connectedness with people- both through the patterns of sociocultural order and through the role of the home place in the representation of identity 2- Connectedness with the place- first, through being oriented in it; and second, through the ways in which we put down roots and draw an indigenous sense of identity from each unique place 3- Connectedness with the past- through having memory anchored in the forms of the home place and from the experience of familiarity and continuity that this creates 4- Connectedness with the future- when power and autonomy hope to inform environmental change In each of these connections, the home presents itself as a necessary element in human existence and being. The linking of order and identity makes the act of dwelling essential to being.

Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his phenomenological explorations of the question of being and developed the notion of dwelling across several essays. His influence has been far reaching, including fields such as philosophy, theology, art, architecture, design and social theory. Much like the difference between a house and a home; a building is distinctly different from a dwelling. Houses and

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buildings are merely the physical structures in which home and dwelling are developed.

Heidegger argues that, “Dwelling is the basic character of Being, in keeping with which mortals exist. Perhaps this attempt to think about dwelling and building will bring out somewhat more clearly that building belongs to dwelling and how it receives its essence from dwelling. Enough will have been gained if dwelling and building have become worthy of questioning and thus have remained worthy of thought.”5 In this statement Heidegger proposes that human identity is completely wrapped up in one’s dwelling place. So how then do we interpret what it means to be homeless in modern society? The homeless most certainly dwell, but yet are considered without a home. Their dwellings, the places that the homeless make a home, are atypical and are often patched together over several places and time. In this sense, being homeless often robs someone of the possibility of truly dwelling and developing that identity. This disconnect lies in how society approaches this population and their circumstance on and individual and group level.

Because identity is wrapped up in the act of dwelling, is important to recognize that homelessness is much more than a single attribute or characteristic; it is an identity and a sense of being. Dovey identifies six aspects of the housing delivery system that contribute to the sense of homelessness1: 1) Rationalism and Technology: The quantification of physical requirements sponsored by modern technological processes has resulted in the disregard of the psychical and emotional parameters of human existence; 2) Commoditization: The use values that these intangible human needs engender have been ignored in favor of the exchange value of private property; 3) Bureaucracy: The increasingly obtuse structure which underwrites the provision of housing has

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dehumanized the experience of all market participants, but has a particularly deleterious effect on the recipients of various public subsidies; 4) Scale and Speed: The scope of the changes in the environment made possible by modern building practices has destroyed the continuity of existing neighborhoods as well as their residents’ social networks; 5) Erosion of Communal Space: The increasing privatization of urban open space has reduced the potential for a community spirit to emerge; 6) Professionalism: The architectural profession has gradually turned inward upon itself seeking only for its own commendations.

In “The Search for Shelter,” the American Institute of Architects’ resource guide for shelter needs, details three populations of homeless people: the chronic, who are homeless for more than 30 continuous days – although many, if not most, have been homeless for months or years; the episodic, who tend to alternate between varying periods of domiciled and homeless, with homeless usually lasting less than thirty days; and the situational, for whom homelessness is the temporary result of an acute life crisis.6 For the purpose of this thesis, the focus will be put on the chronic homeless population, those who are perpetually without a dwelling identity and the attachment to a home.

Dovey concludes that when we do not realize “home”, we increase the sense of homelessness. If we just consider it a “housing problem” then we ignore the underlying identity and major cause of the homelessness. He sees “home” as a dynamic dialectic connection to our physical, social and temporal environments. He explains that, “Home suggests a certain dynamic adaptability. It allows for both the representation and the growth of identity. Growth of identity is more than the search for a form that reflects a static self-image; it is dynamic and may indeed actively resist equilibrium. The growth of

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identity requires a certain freedom of interaction between present and future, between our experiences and dreams. Knowing that we have the power to remain in a place and change it permits us to act upon and build our dreams.” So how then are we to solve homelessness as opposed to just a housing problem?

There is no distinction between outward and inward. We dwell in the home; the home dwells in us. – Anne Troutman

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End Notes 1

Dovey, 1985.

2

Pope, 1989.

3

Ellen, Blakely, 1997.

4

Seamon, 2009.

5

Heidegger, 1971.

6

Greer, 1986.

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Homelessness and Dwelling Across Cities

The issue of homelessness is not something specific to one state or another; it is a national problem. If a state has a city, then it has homeless people. This is not to exclude or omit the homeless population that exists in rural environments but for the purposes of this thesis, we are discussing urban homelessness. In this section we will examine and discuss two major cities: New York City and Los Angeles. Though separated by geography, circumstances and political ties, each has worked with their homeless population in the last thirty years and has produced significant results and valuable data.

New York City New York City not only boasts of some of the most iconic buildings in the United States but also is the home to one the most promising ideas to solving homelessness: Housing First. It seems simple: in order to eliminate a homeless population, homeless people must be provided a (affordable) home. But prior to its official debut in 1990, this idea was novel and daring. At the time most service housing projects required that a homeless person go through various multistep programs, pass multiple drug tests, and present themselves as stable. Each step is emotionally and mentally difficult to achieve without a stable dwelling space. As discussed earlier, being without a home is a state of being rather than a mere characteristic. Until those shelter requirements are consistent and a space becomes a home, the condition of homelessness prevails. There is a connection between the self and the home and in the housing first model, a person’s dwelling space comes first.

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The first group to roll out a true Housing First model is a nonprofit called Common Ground. Their mission is “to strengthen individuals, families and communities by developing and sustaining exceptional supportive and affordable housing as well as programs for homeless and other vulnerable New Yorkers.”

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The Housing First model

targets individuals and families who are chronically homeless or are at risk of becoming chronically homeless. For the chronically homeless, Common Ground seeks to create safe, secure housing with on-site support services. Psychosocial, mental and physical health problems can often be obstacles with independent living. For individuals on the edge of chronic homelessness, Common Ground’s affordable housing provides a safety net. In all situations, community is vital within the buildings and the respective city neighborhoods. The principles of Housing First are: 1) Move people into housing directly from streets and shelters without preconditions of treatment acceptance or compliance; 2) The provider is obligated to bring robust support services to the housing. These services are predicated on assertive engagement, not coercion; 3) Continued tenancy is not dependent on participation in services; 4) Units targeted to most disabled and vulnerable homeless members of the community; 5) Embrace harm-reduction approach to addictions rather than mandating abstinence. At the same time, the provider must be prepared to support resident commitment to recovery; 6) Residents must have leases and tenant protections under the law; 7) Implemented as either a project-based or scattered site model. The “housing first” model is a general consistency across cities in their respective Continuum of Care. 1 Since 1990, Common Ground has created 3,200 units of affordable permanent and transitional housing in New York City and enabled more than 5,000 people to

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overcome homelessness. Within the boroughs, Common Ground operates 13 transitional and permanent housing residences and more than 120 scatter site units. All of their large residential buildings are renovated historic hotels and apartment houses. The initiative did not seek to create more buildings and shelters but rather to recreate and redesign the standing buildings to be a home to people squatting and roaming the boroughs.

Table 2.1: Common Ground Buildings and Units Building Location The Aurora The Christopher The Lee The Prince George The Times Square Montrose Veterans Residence The Schermerhorn The Andrews The Brook Jamaica Safe Haven 1

Midtown Manhattan Chelsea, Manhattan Lower East Side, Manhattan Midtown Manhattan Times Square Manhattan Westchester County, New York Downtown Brooklyn, New York The Bowery, Manhattan, New York South Bronx Queens

Number of Units 178 207 263 416 652 96 217 146 190 60

Common Ground, 2013.

Common Ground’s chronic homeless programs are aimed at achieving two main objectives: 1) to engage individuals who face the most difficult barriers to housing stability and 2) to provide the spectrum of housing and support services these individuals need to end their homelessness permanently. The first objective is initially accomplished with their “Street to Home” initiative. Street to Home sends teams of outreach workers daily to walk alongside and encourage homeless individuals dwelling in public spaces to accept assistance. The goal is to move them into supportive housing. The second objective is realized through the continuous expansion of the city housing development efforts and projects.

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It is curious that Common Ground’s first step initiative is called Street to Home and not Street to House. This points back to the idea of dwelling: the transition from house to home. Common Ground seems to believe that there is more to the problem of homelessness than just housing. A Street to Home initiative reinterprets the needs of the homeless to be a holistic service rather than simply a shelter service. In this effort Common Ground is getting at the identity of their clients and the people that they wish to serve. In regards to Dovey’s discussion of how humans exist in a space, Common Ground is a champion for lived space with an appreciation for conceptual space. Conceptual space is abstract and objectively measured; it is where people and things exist. Lived space, however, is the pre conceptual and meaningful spatial experience of “dwelling.”

For Common Ground, conceptual space is the means to their end. With the Street to Home initiative, Common Ground is helping the homeless of New York legally and successfully define their territory with both physical and symbolic boundaries to ensure that their clients can control access and behavior within. Their clients, once housed, are at home and are on the path to knowing who and where they are.

Los Angeles In December of 2010, the New York Times called Los Angeles the homeless capital of the United States.2 There is a rich history of vagabonds and street people who flock to this city for its temperate climate and seemingly generous services. A seedy underbelly lies beneath, however, because it is Los Angeles to which we attribute the term “Skid Row,” a specific area of the city that is nearly dedicated to the homeless.

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In brief, Skid Row was legally defined in the lawsuit Jones v. City of Los Angeles in April 2006 as the area east of Main Street, south of Third Street, west of Alameda Street, and north of Seventh Street. Skid Row contains one of the largest stable populations of homeless people in the United States.3

Figure 2.1 Skid Row, Los Angeles 8

Skid Row Housing Trust, 2013.

The Huffington Post described this downtown area of Los Angeles as, “a tenuous comfort zone for many who hit the rock bottom of their lives in America”4 and it seems to be just that. There is strength in numbers and misery loves company, but the history behind the area is more discouraging than even the grimiest of news articles. The area, originally agricultural until the 1870s when railroads first entered Los Angeles, has maintained a transient population through the years from the influxes of short-term

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workers, migrants fleeing economic hardship during the Great Depression, military personnel during World War II and the Vietnam War and low-skilled workers with limited transportation options who need to remain close to the city's core, according to the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce. Later in the twentieth century, the city of Los Angeles made efforts to “rehabilitate” Skid Row through the clearance and destruction of decaying buildings.5 These buildings had become shelter for squatters and panhandlers.

The Superintendent of Building, Gilbert Morris, said that at that point the provision of free social services for Skid Row cost the city over $5 million per year as opposed to the city average of $110,000 per square mile annually. By July of 1960, the clearance program was said to be 87% complete in Skid Row.6 Since then homelessness and crime have persisted and never been fully addressed.

In September 2005, however, Skid Row was discovered to have an outside source of homeless wanderers: hospitals and law enforcement agencies were discovered to be “dumping” homeless people on Skid Row. Mayor Antonio Vilaraigosa ordered an investigation of Los Angeles Police Department and the major hospitals and care centers.

The Los Angeles City Attorney investigated more than 50 of the 150 reported cases of dumping.7 By early 2007, Kaiser Permanente was the only hospital found with viable charges against it. There were no laws specifically covering the hospital’s actions and therefore much of the legal action and prosecution fell through.7 Today, the Los Angeles’ Continuum of Care is being put into action in Skid Row. In the United States, most major cities have a housing protocol for homeless individuals called the Continuum of Care. The structure varies from city to city and is tailored to meet the needs of their populations. In general a Continuum of Care model enables the

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progression of housing for a formally homeless person, whereby each level moves them closer to "independent housing." For example: from the streets to a public shelter to a transitional housing program, and from the program to their own apartment in the community. One of the major players in Los Angeles’ Continuum of Care is the Skid Row Housing Trust.8 In 1989, the Skid Row Housing Trust came to be because community activists and business leaders of Los Angeles’s downtown collectively responded both to the disappearance of affordable, permanent housing and an increase of homeless people.

Initially, the Trust mobilized private equity through low income tax credits, public finance and conventional debt to reclaim hundreds of housing units that would have been lost. Dilapidated hotels were renovated into safe and affordable permanent housing in which low-income and formerly homeless men and women could live. The Trust works to keep those residents in the neighborhood. Now, the nonprofit currently owns 25 buildings in Skid Row. Most properties are former Single Room Occupancy hotels and rooming houses. The Skid Row Housing Trust is an example of a “Housing First” model of human service programs and social policy regarding the treatment of homeless people.9 Apart from the work in Skid Row, the City of Los Angeles has also pursued other measures to deal with their homeless problem. In the summer of 1987, the City experienced a slow influx of homeless to an urban campground, opened by L.A. in June, but by the time of the closing of the campground in the fall, the facility was operating to capacity of 3000+ occupants. The environment provided for the settlement of the homeless was a parking lot, with shower and bathing tents placed centrally for the use of

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campers. In terms of providing solutions for the homeless, this idea was fairly eccentric.

The proposal illustrated here is a method of using the technology of site and services housing programs and the observed existing homeless landscape and combining them into a newer landscape for L.A.’s homeless. It is a temporary solution for a long-term problem, a Band-Aid per se, and is not unlike that of the Mad Housers in Atlanta.

It is important to note that Los Angeles is not a model city of how to handle a homeless epidemic. Yes, there are working programs in Skid Row, but there is a long way to go due to past mistakes and the cyclical nature of homelessness particularly in a city with a year-round warm climate. The following photographs, published on October 19, 2013 in the Huffington Post, depict the current state of Skid Row.

Figure 2.2 Torrance Moore, 46, right, prepares cardboard for bedding while setting up a tent on the sidewalk. Homeless people are allowed to pitch their tents between 9 p.m. to 6 a.m. in this particular section. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

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Figure 2.3 A 25-year-old homeless drug addict prepares a needle to inject himself with heroin. It’s not a rare scene on Skid Row to spot addicts using drugs in the open even when police patrol the area. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Figure 2.4 Antonio Garcia, 54, left, who introduced himself as a mathematician, peeks through the opening of his makeshift shelter made of cardboard boxes in Skid Row. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

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Figure 2.5 Shawn McGray, a 34-year-old homeless man, looks through a dumpster for anything useful. McGray said his goal is to save enough money to move into a small apartment with his girlfriend. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

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End Notes

1

Common Ground, 2013.

2

Nagourney, 2010.

3

Fuder, 2001.

4

Hong, 2013.

5

Stern, 1956.

6

Wild, 2005.

7

Jansson, 2014.

8

Skid Row Housing Trust, 2013.

9

Finkel, 1988.

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Atlanta’s Historic Homeless Population

The capital of the South, Atlanta, Georgia, has maintained a stable population since the mid 1960s. The City of Atlanta population has not dropped below one million since the late 1968.1 And as we have examined in the previous case studies, Atlanta fits the bill of a populous city and therefore in its very nature, the city of Atlanta is the home of a large homeless population. Historically speaking, Atlanta has always been looking for new ways to work with their homeless population but has also inflicted problems upon itself through new urban projects and economic endeavors. The ultimate results of these self-inflicted wounds are gentrification and displacement of poor populations. The homeless population of Atlanta is long lasting because the problems are imbedded in the landscape, the neighborhoods, and the city’s collective resignation that there will always be homeless. In this section, various historical crisis, causes and attempted solutions to homelessness in Atlanta will be discussed. The primary decades examined are the 1960s with the introduction to the social service industry, the 1980s with a new form of “guerilla welfare” and finally the 1990s and the 1996 Olympic Games. This will lay the groundwork for the current discussion of what it means to dwell in Atlanta, Georgia today.

1960s and a Call to Arms In the 1960s, the Fulton County Department of Family and Children Services documented yearly reports on the state of poverty in the United States. The 1963 Annual Report is titled “Appalachia in Atlanta, GA” and examines the poor and uneducated

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populations of mining towns and claims that these populations were becoming an underclass in Atlanta. The report defines the term: “Appalachia as used by national publicity media is indeed an evocative word generally associated with a comparatively small area of the United States in which conditions indicative of ‘poverty’ are concentrated. ‘Appalachia’ is also a word fast becoming synonymous and associated with people who have received no education or very little education in the past, have man and various types of physical and mental disabilities, are living in dilapidated and unsanitary housing, are employed or untrained to an extent that they cannot find available jobs, and do not have sufficient income or resources with which to provide themselves with the minimum necessities of life.”2 The description in this 1963 report essentially calls out the homeless, the unemployed and the mentally ill. This was the face of poverty in Atlanta in 1963; one could argue that 50 years later, the only change in this face is age.

In 2009, the National Coalition for the Homeless documented the demographics of the nation’s current homeless population. In their report, persons with severe mental illness represented about 26 percent of all sheltered homeless persons. The two trends that are largely responsible for the rise in homelessness over the past 20-25 years are shortage of affordable rental housing and the simultaneous increase in poverty. The Coalition also cited the U.S. Conference of Mayors’ 2005 survey of 24 American cities where it found that only 13% of the urban homeless were employed.3 And in regards to a formal definition, the “Appalachia” definition does not stray to far from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) definition of homeless: “an individual who lacks housing (without regard to whether the individual is a member of a family) including an individual whose primary residence during the night is a supervised public

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or private facility (e.g. shelters) that provides temporary living accommodations, and an individual who is a resident in transitional housing.”4 The demographic of homelessness has not changed because though certain characteristics (race, class, ethnicity, gender, location, age, job type etc.) can change but the problem does not change because it is truly an identity crisis. As discussed a person’s identity is housed in his or her dwelling place.

In the 1963 Fulton County Department of Family and Child Services report Operation: “Anti-Poverty” was declared on Atlanta, Georgia.2 Its mission follows:

President Lyndon B. Johnson has sounded a clarion call for action in issuing an epoch-making and nationwide official declaration of “war on poverty.” In doing so he said in his State of the Union message “Our aim is not only to relieve the symptoms of poverty but to cure it—and above all to prevent it.”

In order to successfully wage this battle, he has proposed the enactment of Federal legislation introduced in Congress by Georgia’s Congressman Phil Landrum which not only brings together and expands man separate programs—Federal, State and local—in a unified, intensive approach to this complex problem, but establishes some new programs which will require supplementary and concerted efforts by various agencies—public and voluntary—and the available citizens who might volunteer their services in each community where poverty exists.

This constitutes a “call to arms” directed to the citizens of Atlanta- requiring patriotic action and use a of all available manpower and resources- in many respects just as important, in view of prevailing world conditions, as when in the past we were called on to defend our country or the principles of democracy for which we stand.

The aggressive and combative language used in this statement of purpose comes as result of the times: the United States was in the midst of the Vietnam war, the civil rights movement was building with intensity and President John F. Kennedy was recently

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assassinated. The American people were no strangers to a “call to arms” vocabulary. In Operation: Anti-Poverty Atlanta, GA, DFaCS divides Atlanta into four different “battle grounds” and five task force items: Educational Services, Health and Hospital Services, Welfare and Charitable Organizations, Propaganda and Publicity Services, and Present Operational Services.2 The most interesting of the task force items is the Propaganda and Publicity Services branch. In this office, the communication with the homeless and poor was of absolute importance: “Proper communication with both those who are poverty-stricken, often without knowledge of available resources, and a large portion of the general public without knowledge of their unmet needs or displaying an attitude of apathy toward those to be liberated is of utmost importance in this operation.” Thus the dawn of social work and the social service industry in the Atlanta region.

1980s and Guerilla Welfare In the 1980s the United States experienced a rapid increase in the number of homeless people who roamed the streets, lived in the shadows and eventually filled public and church run shelters. In 1989 the numbers of homeless people in the country reached its second highest in history. Only during the Great Depression, when a national economic emergency disrupted the lives of virtually all Americans, was the instance of homelessness greater than in the 1980s. During this time social service providers found changes in the nature of the homeless population. Instead of the well-known but derelict bums of the previous decades, the new homeless population at this time was called the “working poor.”5

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Several pieces of legislature concerning homelessness passed in the 1980s. Jack Kemp, the Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) under President George Bush entered office in 1989. He promised to use his new position to be an advocate for the poor and the homeless. At this time his stance reflected the recent findings that over two-thirds of the American public agreed that our government should spend more on assistance homeless.6 Earlier in 1987, Congress passed the McKinney Homeless Assistance Act, which provided money for emergency shelters and transitional housing. This act also established the framework for the Continuum of Care that is still used today.

Atlanta’s homeless population was no exception to these national changes. In 1989 the Community Design Center of Atlanta reported on the housing needs of the Atlanta metropolitan area. The study surveyed the conditions of the existing housing stock in order to determine the numbers of people living in the sub-standard conditions.

The parameters assessed included the lack of plumbing facilities and conditions of overcrowding, as typical of previous studies, but unfortunately excluded standards of structural dilapidation due to a lack of data. The most interesting indicator they measured was the occurrence of disproportionate housing expense budgets. This ratio compares the household income to the costs of the shelter. The government standard at the time allowed for those costs to be equal to thirty percent of the gross household income. This was the start for sliding scale rent for shelter tenants.5 Sliding scale rent is now formally defined as where the tenant pays rent based on his income. Generally, the lower the income, the lower the rent. A common example is that a tenant may be asked to pay 30% of his income for rent.6

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In response to the housing crisis at the time three Georgia Tech architecture graduate students, Bailey Pope, Brian Finkel and Michael Connor, started to examine the plight of homelessness in Atlanta, and in 1987 they decided to maverick their way into the business of housing homeless people in small plywood huts. They called themselves the Mad Housers and their legacy still lives on today through the official nonprofit, Mad Housers, though their leadership has changed over the years.

In 1987, Connor, Finkle and Pope built the first hut. The original specifications included a small 6’ by 8’ plywood box and a bed and shelves for belongings. They did not have a homeless contact for this original build; instead, they built the house at a particular location and left it there to see what would happen. After only two days, someone had claimed the home and moved it to a more concealed location. The new owner also reassembled it more practically than its original form. The architects learned from this first practice and designed their future huts with the new specifications in mind.7 These particular specifications can only come after a dweller interacts with a dwelling. The changes made the house a home for the first accidental client of the Mad Housers. The policies are different now for the Mad Housers: clients are selected beforehand and usually help with the construction of the hut. The build sites are also based on where the homeless already live. This specific change claims Heidegger philosophy: dwelling precedes building.

In 1992, Bailey Pope wrote about the developing work of the Mad Houser project : 8

“Our work stems from the search for the essential nature of shelter. The word ‘shelter’ is defined as ‘that which covers or defends from injury, exposure, observation, or the like.’ We have found that we must define our goals in the most basic terms because the resources available to us to achieve them are severely limited. This same situation faces any group pursuing affordable housing in

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America today. With our focus on the fundamental requirements for protection from outside agents and our emphasis on the basic human dignity which is the birthright of all people, we have developed the hut as the most essential shelter. As a phenomenon, the hut is comprised of three primary elements: the roof, the wall, and the door… As a combination of these three elemental gestures, the hut becomes the occurrence of individual dwelling. It creates a human place; a human's place. The result of this object is the constitution of social and political being for the individual. The establishment of human dignity engenders certain rights which are the roots of self advocacy. The institution of personal choice founds a field of social encounter which begets self expression. Self advocacy and self expression are the fundamental means of personal development which are the necessary precursors to an escape from homelessness.”

With this Mad Houser project and subsequent nonprofit, Connor, Finkle and Pope addressed Atlanta’s homeless problem from an offbeat but oddly sustainable approach. In the early 1990s the group gained statewide and national attention for their unconventional style. News articles often depicted them as humanitarian scoundrels that worked on their “guerilla welfare” in secret. Their tactics worked to house the homeless which has always been their aim, and several key advocates took up their cause. Mayor Andrew Young in a 20/20 interview said that the Mad Housers perform “the kind of civil disobedience I can get behind,” a reference to Henry David Thoreau.9 Years later an article in the Atlanta Journal Constitution highlighted the Mad Housers’ ongoing work. One volunteer, Peter Richards, sums up the questionable ethics of the nonprofit in this way: “In America, you have two choices if you’re homeless: charity or trespass.” In both scenarios the homeless person is given the opportunity to choose his home. Charity may bring immediate surface benefits but trespass brings identity in that trespassing, one can find a home and a dwelling place despite the legality of the situation.

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Figure 3.1: 3D Modeling of Mad Houser Structure 7

Finkel, 1988.

Figure 3.2 A shelter put to use.

7

Â

Finkel, 1988.

Figure 3.3 Original Sketch by Brian Finkel 7

Finkel, 1988.

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In 1981 Beth Shapiro, an Emory University-trained sociologist, was hired by Research Atlanta to serve a three-year term as executive director, a move intended to burnish the organization's scholarly image. And in 1984 Research Atlanta released a report entitled The Impact of Homelessness on Atlanta. This was the first attempt by a private or public entity to undertake a systematic analysis of the city’s homelessness crisis. In its report, Research Atlanta estimated that mental health services and incarceration consumed three out of every four dollars spent on homeless people in Atlanta. At the time, this amounted to $15 million a year. Based on a questionnaire administered to seventy-five men in four night shelters in March 1983, the research team claimed that 40-60 percent of interviewees were mentally ill, 40-60 percent were drug addicts and alcoholics, and 30-50 percent were ex-convicts. The authors reported that only 33 percent of those surveyed said they were “unemployed due to short-term economic conditions or lack of job skills.” Upon release to the public, the report received a negative response and was accused of serving a separate agenda. The Atlanta JournalConstitution criticized Research Atlanta, the report and its authors: “For the community as a whole, the presence of homeless people on the streets and in buildings downtown is at best disquieting, harming the city’s image among local residents and conventioneers and hindering downtown revitalization.”10 In this comment, the AJC addresses Atlanta’s obsession to present itself in a better light.

Less than a year later Beth Shapiro released another study titled, Homelessness in Atlanta: A Five-Year Plan. Having completed her tenure as Research Atlanta’s executive director in late 1984, Shapiro launched a private consulting firm in hopes of tapping the valuable connections she had made in the business community. She was contracted by

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Alliance for Human Services Planning to produce a set of recommendations for ending homelessness. Shapiro’s five-year plan built upon the displacement strategy that had been outlined by Research Atlanta, recommending that homeless people be brought into multipurpose service centers, and that these centers be relocated outside of the central business district. Getting homeless people off the street and out of the central city was matter of great urgency because the growing concentration of homelessness was testing the patience and goodwill of the nonhomeless population. The report also called for the simultaneous expansion and dispersal of facilities serving the unhoused population. The other policies outlined called for the relocation of the homeless to different parts or outside the city. In addition to funneling homeless people out of the central city, the five year plan address the need to reduce the “disquieting” visibility of homeless people who remained on the streets, in the parks, and under the viaducts of downtown Atlanta. The second thrust of the five-year plan was to bring homeless people inside downtown shelters by offering them an expanded menu of social services. But for all its promise, this five-year plan flopped due to lack of corporate by-in and distrust by the homeless population.10 It was a blueprint of a service delivery system that would start the process of evacuating homeless people from the central business district, the exact opposite of the Housing First strategy of Common Ground in New York City. It seems that in order to eliminate homelessness, you must house them in their home, the environment where they dwell.

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1990s and the 1996 Olympic Games Atlanta was put on the world stage during the Summer Olympic Games in 1996.

With this high-pressure attention, city, state and national leaders sought to present the Capitol of the South as a global and diverse metropolis. This metropolis, however, did not have room for any homeless people or those of the low socioeconomic status and thus began Atlanta’s homeless purge.

On April 3, 1991, Atlanta City Council President Marvin S. Arrington publicly announced a plan that called for the demolition of Techwood Homes, the United States’ oldest federally subsidized housing project. On May 12, 1995, after four years of politic contentions and the displacement of Techwood’s residents, the Atlanta Housing Authority officials began the demolition of Techwood Homes. In addition to Techwood, city leaders during these years targeted several other areas near the city’s center for a dramatic overhaul in preparation for the Olympic Games.11 This meant the destruction of other large public housing projects to make room for Olympic venues, to “clean up” the city’s neighborhoods around venue sites, and to remove the city’s homeless population from the emerging Olympic landscape. This “clean up” was made possible in part by unlawful arrests and one-way bus rides to locations outside the city limits. According to Anita Beaty, the executive director, Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless since 1985, roughly 30,000 Atlantans were evicted or displace by other means between 1990 and 1996, and approximately 9,000 illegal arrests of homeless people occurred in 1995 and 1996.12 The goal of the Olympic projects, however, was not simply to upgrade old infrastructure with new, as it is commonly stated in the Olympic city goals. Instead, it

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appears that Olympic-related displacement worked to create a particular demographic image of the city, one without the homeless, public housing residents, and other lowincome Atlantans who were also predominantly racial minorities. It was only by strategically displacing these residents from the Olympic areas downtown, that Atlanta could create the image of a prosperous, authentically global city.11 The most flagrant method for the displacement of homeless people was to bus them out of the city. According to Beaty, local government officials use thousands of public dollars in collaboration with Project Homeward Bound, a Fulton County-funded non-profit organization, to provide one-way tickets for the homeless out of the city.13 He notes, “Calls came to the [Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless] from Birmingham, Alabama, and towns in Florida asking why homeless people were arriving in those places asking for help and saying they had to leave Atlanta.”13 The formal description of Project Homeward Bound from HUD on February 20, 1991 states15: This is in response to your memorandum of December 3, 1990, requesting an eligibility determination on the “Project Homeward Bound" (PHB) proposal submitted by the City of Atlanta, Georgia. In this program, Travelers Aid of Metropolitan Atlanta, Inc. will provide transportation assistance to individuals who are homeless or threatened with homelessness. This assistance will help them return to their home communities or to employment opportunities elsewhere. PHB will target individuals living in shelters who have recently come to Atlanta and who have been unsuccessful in their efforts to resettle in Atlanta. PHB will evaluate these homeless individuals to determine who will be appropriate for travel assistance because of a desire to relocate to a stable environment.

Though steeped in “goodwill” and “assistance,” the seedy underbelly of Project Homeward Bound was an effort to get the undesirable populations out of Atlanta without any regard to the roots the individuals may have placed. This displacement destroyed any

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sense of dwelling or place identity and replacing it with the new but familiar life of a refugee. This is a dark moment in Atlanta’s past.

Aside from the destruction of Techwood Homes and the relocation of those families, immediately south of the former Techwood Homes was a seventy-acre commercial area known as Techwood Park which also fell to the powers of the Olympic reconstruction. Though viewed and referred to as a “slum” by many corporate interests and local officials, the district was actually an economically and culturally vibrant location. It also contained more than ten percent of Atlanta’s homeless shelter capacity along with low-income housing.11 Removing Techwood Park and its economic functionality and necessary support services for some of Atlanta’s most vulnerable and least welcomed residents resulted not only in the removal of these residents from a central location, but also the creation of an Olympic space catering to an entirely different demographic. After Techwood Park was razed, the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games (ACOG), a public-private partnership established to manage the Olympics for the City, constructed Centennial Olympic Park, which consisted of numerous corporate sponsored spaces, an 8,500-seat amphitheater, a television studio, and other various entertainment and advertising features. The well trafficked place where some of the estimated 20,000 homeless Atlantans found shelter prior to Olympic development had been transformed into a private, commercialized landscape with inadequate compensation for the previous users.11 With the 1996 Olympics and its desire to give the city a facelift, the homeless, who already faced an identity crisis due to their lack of dwelling space and place ownership, were thus thrust into another identity that of a displaced people. Until shelter

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requirements are consistent and a space becomes a home, the identity and condition of homelessness prevails. There is a connection between the self and the home and in order to save face on the world stage, Atlanta sacrificed this essential connection for the homeless of Atlanta.

End Notes

1

Demographia.com, 2013.

2

Fulton County Department of Family and Children Services, 1963.

3

National Coalition for the Homeless, 2013.

4

National Health Care for the Homeless, 2013.

5

Pope, 1989.

6

Social Serve Index, 2013.

7

Finkel, 1988.

8

Pope, 1992.

9

Hess, 2013.

10

Steffen, 2012.

11

Gustafson, 2013.

12

Smothers, 1996.

13

Lenskyj, 2000.

14

Project Homeward Bound – www.portal.hud.gov, 2013.

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Atlanta’s Present Dwelling Identity

Though not facing a multinational event or a global debut, the City of Atlanta finds itself in a curious but familiar situation with the plans for a new Atlanta Falcons Football Stadium and the closing of Turner Field and the relocation of the Atlanta Braves to Cobb County. Displacement and reverse gentrification threaten the same neglected populations of the past.

Atlanta has an eclectic past with problems and promises made to the homeless population. Government and advocacy groups have worked to create infrastructure to aid the homeless but also built physical structures to devastate their lives. In 2013, Atlanta stands to repeat history with the building of a new Atlanta Falcons Professional Football Stadium. The city is once again disrupting multiple underserved populations with the “need” to impress the public eye.

The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) adopted the Federal definition which defines a chronically homeless person as “either (1) an unaccompanied homeless individual with a disabling condition who has been continuously homeless for a year or more, OR (2) an unaccompanied individual with a disabling condition who has had at least four episodes of homelessness in the past three years.”1 This definition is adopted by HUD from a federal standard that was arrived upon through collective decision making by a team of federal agencies including HUD, the U.S. Department of Labor, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

These homeless, the chronically homeless, are important not only because their basic

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unmet human needs challenge the larger society but also because they use increasingly scarce community resources and directly affect the community’s public image. The homeless phenomena stems from changes taking place in the housing market as well as the labor market, and general economic decline along with changes in household demographics.

In early 2013, the Metro Atlanta Tri-Jurisdictional Collaborative (Tri-J) on Homelessness (a collaboration between the City of Atlanta, Fulton County and DeKalb County) and Pathways Community Network Institute sought to conduct the 2013Tri-J homeless census.2 The Tri-Jurisdictional Collaborative was a working partnership of government representatives, service providers within the City of Atlanta, Fulton County and DeKalb County. The collaborative had its genesis in local coordination of the 1994 McKinney Act funding competition for homeless grants. It has evolved into an ongoing collaborative body to address homelessness through planning, policy development, facilitation or partnerships, and resource allocation. The Tri-J has since separated into individual county and city jurisdictions. Regardless of its current state, Tri-J’s work to complete the 2013 homeless census is helpful in discussing Atlanta at a macro level.

On the night of January 28, 2013, the Metro Atlanta Tri-J and Pathways Community Network Institute, along with over 400 community volunteers, conducted the sixth point-in-time count of homeless persons in the community. The homeless census consisted of two types of enumerations, an unsheltered count and a sheltered count, which together result in a comprehensive picture of homelessness in the Tri-J. The census included all homeless populations: unsheltered, sheltered and those in permanent supportive housing. Overall, a total of 6,664 homeless people were counted in the Tri-J

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area on count night. The largest number (2,736 people) was counted sleeping in emergency shelters, with persons found in unsheltered locations still remained high (2,077 people) and those in transitional housing was the third greatest (1,851 people).2 Though homeless families were counted on the census night, that population will be excluded from this thesis. The primary focus will be on individual and chronic homelessness. The following tables detail the demographics of these populations.

Table 4.1: Sheltered Homeless Individuals by Sleeping Type and Gender Sleeping Adult Male Adult Youth Youth Location Female Male Female Emergency 1,707 481 0 0 Shelter Unsheltered 1,710 277 34 7 Transitional 1,127 221 0 0 Housing Totals 4,544 979 34 7 Percent 82% 18% 2

Total Individual 2,188 2,028 1,348 5,564

Pathways Communities Network Institute, 2013.

The 2013 Tri-J homeless census composition of individuals is similar to the 2009 and 2011 homeless counts. Unaccompanied adult males comprised the largest group of individuals. Almost the same number (38 percent) of adult males were sleeping in unsheltered locations as in emergency shelters. Only a quarter of adult males were staying in transitional housing programs. The next largest group of individuals was unaccompanied female adults. This was the only group with the majority (49 percent) sleeping in emergency shelters. Over a quarter (28 percent) of the women were found in unsheltered locations with less than a quarter (23 percent) in transitional housing programs.2

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37 Â

The smallest group of individuals identified was unaccompanied females under the age of eighteen. Only seven youth females were identified as sleeping unsheltered with none staying at emergency shelters or in transitional housing programs. Historically, the count numbers for unaccompanied youth have been low. Homeless youth are hard to locate because they tend to sleep in either abandoned buildings or on people’s sofas (called “couch surfing”). In addition, unaccompanied youth (under age 18) who show up at shelters are either reunited with their parents or, if there are no parents, the police are called and the youth are taken into the Department of Family and Children’s custody to become wards of the state.2 Table 4.2: Unsheltered Count Individuals Unsheltered Adult Male Adult Female Totals 1,710 277 Percent 84% 14% 2

Youth Male 34 2%

Youth Female 7 0%

Total Individuals 2,028

Pathways Communities Network Institute, 2013.

As with the previous Tri-J homeless counts, the highest concentration (458 people, 23 percent) of unsheltered homeless people were counted in downtown Atlanta. A likely cause of the large number is the high concentration of emergency shelters and transitional housing programs in the area. The downtown area measures approximately four square miles and is roughly bound by North Avenue to the north, Northside Drive to the west, Boulevard to the east and Interstate 20to the south. A high concentration of unsheltered homeless people (55 people, 3 percent) was also found at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. Typically, people who are homeless arrive at the Airport on the last MARTA train of the night and leave out the next morning on the first train. Homeless people are usually left alone by the Hartsfield-Jackson

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Atlanta International Airport Police to sleep overnight. The lowest number of unsheltered homeless people (16 people, less than 1 percent) was counted in north Fulton County above the City of Atlanta.2 A key element to consider is the capacity that the various shelters meet.

Bed capacity on census night was 5,217. The bed capacity was higher for emergency shelters (2,989 beds) than transitional housing programs (2,228 beds). Overall, the occupancy rate for individual emergency beds was the highest (95 percent). There were 359emergency shelter and transitional housing individual beds not occupied for the count. Even if all these beds had been filled, there still would have been 1,669 individuals who were sleeping outside on count night. Beds may go vacant for a number of reasons including eligibility standards that exclude some unsheltered people with sobriety regulations and contract agreements.2 Table 4.3: Sheltered Count Occupancy and Capacity Individuals Sheltered Count Emergency Shelters Transitional Housing Occupancy # 2,188 1,348 Capacity 2,302 1,593 Occupancy Percent 95% 85% 2

Total Individual 3,536 3,895 92%

Pathways Communities Network Institute, 2013.

On count night, there were two groups of unsheltered homeless people that were not counted. Out of concern for safety, enumerators did not enter abandoned buildings to count the number of people sleeping. These buildings were dark, often in disrepair and could have had drug activity occurring. Also, enumerators were asked not to get out of their cars to walk around unless escorted by police officers or as part of special teams.

Because community volunteers were unable to approach parked cars and look inside it

Â

39 Â

was difficult to count people sleeping in cars. Another issue with counting people sleeping in cars is that car owners, business owners and police officers do not appreciate people looking in cars and may suspect the enumerators of theft. So, there is no current estimation formula for calculating the numbers for this hidden homeless population.2 The third homeless population to consider in this count is the one that lives in permanent supportive housing. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) began requiring an enumeration of permanent supportive housing (PSH) programs for each Continuum of Care system starting in 2009. The Tri-J community first collected PSH numbers in 2003 and then again in 2009, 2011 and for the latest count in 2013.2 The PSH figures are not included in the homeless count totals but are detailed below as they were also collected on the same night as the Tri-J homeless count.

Table 4.4: Permanent Supportive Housing Occupancy by Jurisdiction for Individuals Jurisdiction Adult Male Adult Female Total Individuals Atlanta 678 373 1,051 DeKalb 542 380 822 Fulton 82 58 140 Totals 1,302 711 2,013 Percent 65% 35% 2

Pathways Communities Network Institute, 2013.

Table 4.5: Permanent Supportive Housing Occupancy and Capacity by Jurisdiction PSH Atlanta DeKalb County Fulton County Total Occupancy 1,590 1,387 342 3,319 Capacity 1,695 1,435 376 3,506 Occupancy 94% 97% 91% 95% Percent 2

Pathways Communities Network Institute, 2013.

The Tri-J census reveals to us basic population of Atlanta’s homeless and the inherent needs of the people. For the purposes of this thesis, we must consider what the

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report calls “shelter” and what we have defined as a “home.” A “shelter” is merely a place to stay on a temporary basis. It is not a place a person can dwell for an extended period of time and thus an identity relationship is cannot be formed. The home is not established. From this perspective, a shelter can never satisfy the requirements for a home. In this sense, the numbers acquired in the census data show that the majority of the homeless population is truly that: home-less.

Most major cities have an established Continuum of Care infrastructure which enables the progression of housing for a formally homeless person, where each level moves the formally homeless person closer to "independent housing."

Figure 4.1 3

Heacock, 2013.

The diagrams above detail the four different stages of the Continuum of Care.

Emergency shelters are the point of entry into the homeless assistance system for many, assisting those confronted with an immediate loss of housing or those who are already

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homeless. Most emergency shelters are congregate buildings, but can also include hotel or motel vouchers and short-stay apartments. Emergency shelters generally have an official length of stay ranging from 1 to 90 days, depending on the program (however, it is also true that many chronically homeless people manage to live in the emergency shelter environment for years). Most emergency shelters operate on a night-to-night basis with no formal contract. Transitional housing programs are designed to provide persons with housing and services for a pre-determined period of time, and provide interim placement for persons who are not ready for or do not have access to permanent housing.

Residents have access to intensive services, often provided on-site or through community partners. These range from alcohol and drug abuse treatment to financial counseling and employment services. As residents become stabilized, providers are expected to help them find permanent housing. Permanent supportive housing combines housing assistance and supportive services for homeless persons with disabilities, primarily serving individuals and their families who have serious mental illnesses, chronic substance abuse problems, physical disabilities, or AIDS and related diseases. Permanent supportive housing can be provided through tenant- project-, or sponsor-based assistance in multi-family structures or scattered site apartments. Supportive services are also provided on site or through partnering agencies, depending on the individual and community needs. Permanent housing is simply an apartment or a home that a person maintains without outside support. A case manager or social worker may check in with the individual every few months, but there is no formal oversight in this situation.4 Atlanta is currently suffering from a dilemma within their Continuum of Care.

When looking at the Tri-J census data, one first sees that there are not enough beds or

Â

42 Â

resources available to house or shelter Atlanta’s current homeless population. Emergency shelters and transitional housing currently exist at 92% capacity and permanent housing at 95% capacity. And yet, 36% of the entire homeless population (2,028 people) exists outside of any of these services.2 It is clear that in order to end homelessness, Atlanta needs to first establish more permanent supportive housing services in order to move those consistently using emergency and transitional housing services into a permanent supportive housing situation. (See Figure 4.1 and 4.2) In permanent supportive housing, an individual can remain in that environment and community for years and therefore establish a home, a true dwelling place. In order to solve Atlanta’s homeless problem, we must not look where the current population is (the streets, shelters, transitional housing) but look to the future and where this population would eventually live (permanent supportive housing and permanent housing). To eliminate a home-less population we must provide homes, not shelters.

Figure 4.2 3 Heacock, 2013.

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Atlanta’s Immediate Future, The Plans for a New Atlanta Falcons Football Stadium As with the progression of time, change is inevitable. Cities are no exception to this inescapable reality: populations, landscapes and general functionality change as a city grows and progresses. The building of the new Atlanta Falcons’ profession football stadium is an eminent change that causes us to examine at how Atlanta chooses to function as dwelling place and therefore, where its priorities lie.

On September 30, 2013, the Atlanta Falcons notified the City of Atlanta that the team had chosen a site at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Northside Drive for construction of the new stadium.5 Though the general public has only recently taken significant notice, this deal has been in process since 2010. A timeline of events is helpful to understand this strategic endeavor and the different stakeholders at play.

May 2010 - Reports by multiple news outlets that the Atlanta Falcons were interested in demolishing the Georgia Dome and replacing it with a newly constructed open-air stadium. The Falcons were pursuing a new stadium because of both the team’s desire to play outdoors, and owner, Arthur Blank’s interest in hosting another Super Bowl. 6,7,8 2011 - Populous, an architecture firm in Kansas City, released comprehensive plans for the proposed stadium. The estimated cost of the project was $700 million. 7,9,10

2012 - April: Populous released a new price estimate of $947.7 million. The Atlanta JournalConstitution (AJC) reported that if a deal is reached, the new stadium’s construction would be expected to begin in 2014, with the Falcons to begin regular-season play in 2017. The proposed location at this time was a large parking lot in Atlanta’s Vine City neighborhood. After construction of the new stadium, the Georgia Dome would be demolished.11

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- December: The Georgia World Congress Center Authority (physically connected to the Georgia Dome) unanimously approved the blueprint and most of the agreement terms for the new stadium plans. Stadium location was still not decided. The two sites at this time were one located one-half mile north of the Georgia Dome and the other one block south.12 2013 - March 7, 2013: The Atlanta Falcons and the city of Atlanta agreed to build the new downtown stadium. The maximum public contribution for this project is $200 million coming from the hotel-motel tax in Atlanta. The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation committed to investing $15 million in private funds in the English Avenue, Vine City and Castleberry Hill and other neighborhoods contiguous to the new stadium. Invest Atlanta, the city’s economic development agency, agreed commit $15 million in tax allocation district dollars for development projects that would leverage private sector and philanthropic investment in the English Avenue, Vine City and Castleberry Hill communities, pending the approval by its board. No property taxes or new taxes of any kind would be paid by or levied on City of Atlanta residents or businesses to fund construction of the new stadium. 5 - March 19, 2013: The Atlanta City Council officially approved the stadium. 12 - May 21, 2013: The National Football League approved a $200 million loan to the Falcons organization for the purpose of building the stadium. 13 - September 19, 2013: The Mount Vernon Baptist Church congregation approved a $14.5 million deal to move, making way for the new Atlanta Falcons stadium to be built on land just south of the Georgia Dome, church leaders announced.14 - September 22, 2013: The Friendship Baptist Church congregation overwhelmingly approved the city of Atlanta's $19.5 million offer to sell the church's property to make room for the new Atlanta Falcons stadium.15 - September 30, 2013: The Atlanta Falcons notified the City of Atlanta today that the team has chosen the south site, at the intersection of Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and Northside Drive.16, 17

The three major neighborhoods geographically tied to the future site of the stadium are Vine City, English Avenue and Castleberry Hill. All three have made

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appearances on the list of Atlanta’s most dangerous neighborhoods in the last five years.18 As of 2010, About 9,000 people live in Vine City and English Avenue, 41 percent of them below the poverty line. Roughly half the households make less than $22,366, compared to a citywide median of $35,057 and a national median of about $50,000. The crime rate is twice the city’s average.19 The assigned public schools for the residents of Vine City, English Avenue and Castleberry Hill, Bethune Elementary School and Brown Middle School, met the national standard of Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) in 2011. However, the district high school, Washington High School, did not meet AYP in 2011. More current data from the schools is not available.20 In July 2013, Raj Chetty, Nathaniel Hendren, Patrick Kline, and Emmanuel Saez reported their findings of their Equality of Opportunity Project research.21 The Equality of Opportunity Project sought to build on their previous research on the Earned Income Tax Credit, and set out to study the impact of tax expenditures on intergenerational mobility. The project found substantial variation in the economic outcomes of children from low-income families across areas of the United States. Some areas had rates of upward mobility comparable to the most mobile countries in the world while others have lower rates of mobility than any developed country for which data are currently available.

These geographical differences are modestly correlated with variation in tax expenditure policies across areas. But much variation in children's success across areas remains to be explained, potentially by factors such as income segregation, school quality, or social capital. New York Times reported these studies and highlighted Atlanta’s destitute state: “researchers looked at children born between 1980 and 1981 and examined how their parents' salaries related to their salaries at the age of 30. Only 4 percent of metro Atlanta

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children born in the poorest fifth of families achieved relative wealth, becoming a topfifth earner by adulthood. By comparison, 10 percent of relatively poor children in the Los Angeles and New York metro areas became top earners.”22 The median household income in the Vine City, English Avenue and Castleberry Hill is less than $25,000.

Therefore the lowest population that the Equality of Opportunity is reporting on exists in many areas of Atlanta but the neighborhoods surrounding the proposed stadium are some of the most significant and historically low scoring.23 Atlanta Magazine writer, Rebecca Burns, reported on Vine City and English Avenue on March 13, 2013 in response to the news of the new Falcons stadium: “If you’ve never driven the full stretch of Sunset, you should. It provides an instant snapshot of how impoverished Vine City and English Avenue truly are. The block of neat-and-tidy bungalows and ranches near the [Martin Luther] King home quickly gives way to overgrown yards and sagging fences. By the time you cross Boone, the road narrows and is pitted with potholes…There are vacant lots, decaying apartment buildings, yards piled with debris. A couple of infill homes, optimistically erected last decade, are abandoned and boarded up. Scrawny dogs guard sprawling junkyards on the final block. Bleak doesn’t begin to describe it; Third-World is too cheap and easy a label but comes closer.”

Vine City and English Avenue are in a desperate state of affairs and have been for quite some time. The Vine City and English Avenue communities are not new to outreach programs. Programs and promises have been made to each in the past but they have not helped in the long-term improvement of the neighborhoods. The executive director of the Vine City Heath and Housing Ministry, Greg Hawthorne comments on what the community needs, “It’s a good start that there’s a recognition that there should be

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community enhancement measures. But it really needs to translate into what the community needs: Jobs. Not just minimum wage jobs, but living wage jobs and an intentional focus on developing a workforce.”24 With the new stadium the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation ("Foundation") “seeks to invest in catalytic projects that will ignite positive change and improve the quality of life in the neighborhoods on the Westside of Atlanta.” The Foundation claims that for more than a decade, the it has been committed to these neighborhoods, and has supported human services, education, youth development and parks and green space projects and initiatives in those communities. Now the Foundation is poised to join with the City of Atlanta and other partners to escalate that investment with the goal of creating long-term, transformational change and vital, healthy neighborhoods.25 The Trustees of the Foundation will create a discrete fund within the Foundation known as the Westside Neighborhood Prosperity Fund. The sole purpose of the Fund will be to make charitable investments in Vine City, English Avenue, Castleberry Hill and other contiguous neighborhoods. Other donors, partners and agencies will be encouraged to co-invest in Fund projects or to contribute to the Fund for the benefit of the targeted neighborhoods. Fifteen million dollars will be transferred to the Fund in installments beginning in 2013. The $15 million will be transferred no later than December 2017, and the Fund will be invested in projects for the communities by December 2020.25 On November 12, 2013 the Foundation released a promotional video titled, “Blank Committed to Lasting Change in Downtown Atlanta.” In the video Penny McPhee, President of the Foundation, stated that the goal for the surrounding

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communities would be, “…vibrant neighborhoods that you would want to live in with good schools, with retail, with good healthcare opportunities and good transit opportunities.” She later states that the work that the Foundation and its partners do in the communities will, “…allow the market to work, allow retail to come in and allow developers to come in.”25 Though these promises and plans appeal to investors and the press surrounding the new Falcons stadium, they do not address the seedy aftermath of what they could do: gentrification.

McPhee’s statement of what a “vibrant neighborhood” is with “good schools and retail” and a place for the “market to work” and “developers to come in” ultimately mean that housing costs, income taxes and rent will increase. Their idea of success is a new community, not an improved one. Remember, this an area where the median household income is less than $25,000 and the chances to get out of the poorest fifth of society are 4%. This population cannot afford increased rental rates or income taxes, the community is barely scraping by as is. The argument here is not that the Falcons stadium is not hurting the homeless population but rather that through gentrification and eventual displacement, they could create a new one. And simply put: displacement and gentrification of these communities disrupts the dwelling of the city. In the plans to build a new Falcons stadium and to “revitalize” the communities around the site, Atlanta publically demonstrates its lack of regard for the act of dwelling and therefore forsakes its identity.

49

End Notes

1

Homeless Assistance – www.portal.hud.gov, 2013.

2

Pathways Communities Network Institute, 2013.

3

Heacock, 2013.

4

Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Policy Development and

Research, 2002.

5

Mayor’s Office, 3/7/2013.

6

ESPN.com, 2013.

7

Ledbetter, 2013.

8

Trubey, 2010.

9

Stafford, 2010.

10

Stafford, Tucker, 2010.

11

Stafford, 2012.

12

Suggs, Tucker, 2013.

13

Kuriloff, 2013.

14

Leslie, Tucker, 2013.

15

WSBTV, 2013.

16

Mayor’s Office, 9/30/2013.

17

Stafford, Tucker, 2013.

18

Stevens, 2010.

19

Kanell, 2010.

20

Georgia Department of Education, 2013.

21

Chetty, Hendren, Saiz, 2013.

22

Leonhardt, 2013.

23

30318 Zip Code, www.city-data.com, 2013.

24

Burns, 2013.

25

www.newstadium.atlantafalcons.com/community

50

Conclusion

Homelessness prevails because rather than promoting the act of dwelling and living, society seeks to fix the inessential human needs and advocate for the novel but inherently selfish desires of the man. We know that the human identity is cultivated within one’s dwelling and that one’s home is completely separate from one’s house. The housing problem in the United States is simply a byproduct of homelessness. New York City and Los Angeles provide case studies of promising methods and absolute failures.

The central city considered, Atlanta, has a colorful past of relocation and revitalization of the dwelling places of homeless people. Today, it stands to do just the same with the new Falcons stadium. The neighborhoods surrounding the site for the new stadium are a community of people who do not make much money, do not possess the social capital to move up in upper level society and are not invested in the greater agenda of Atlanta. But yet, they dwell within the city.

In another work, Poetically Man Dwells, Heidegger addresses the German housing shortage in the early 1950s: “Our dwelling is harassed by the housing shortage.

Even if that were not so, our dwelling today is harassed by work, made insecure by the hunt for gain and success, bewitched by the entertainment and recreation industry. But when there is still room left in today’s dwelling for the poetic, and time is still set aside, what comes to pass is at best a preoccupation with aestheticizing, whether in writing or on the air.”1 Atlanta is no exception to these various harassments and our dwelling, our identity, is secondary to the worldly desires of recreation and entertainment. Society’s want for pleasure and diversion drives the plans for “revitalization” and “community

51

empowerment� but those plans rarely come to true fruition and if they do the results are not ultimate or lasting. Society will continue to thirst for something better, something newer and it will never come. Entertainment and pleasure are nonessential to our being; dwelling is. Not one group is immune to the consequences of putting our folly before our fundamentals. The rich will be in want of something new and the poor will be in need of something better. The place in which one dwells evens this score and brings a person back to his very essence. Homelessness is not a housing crisis; rather, it is an identity crisis.

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End Note

1

Heidegger, 1971.

53

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