More people show up at homeless shelter

It was dinnertime inside the Gateway Homeless Services Center and the lobby was crowded with women and children dining on baked fish, rice and beans.

There were 166 people on the list to stay there on this cold October evening in downtown Atlanta.

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Mikki K. Harris/mkharris@ajc.com

Teresa Miles came to Atlanta from a Baltimore suburb with her two teenage sons. She has been unable to find work in the three months she’s been here.

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Rich Addicks/raddicks@ajc.com

Director Brandon Frazier leads the Atlanta West Pentecostal Church choir in a new song it is preparing for the How Sweet the Sound national finals on Saturday at Philips Arena.

“This is a little lower for us,” Debi Starnes, homelessness policy adviser to Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, said of the night’s head count as she walked through the noisy lobby and outlined the rising numbers. Earlier this year, Starnes said the center was shelter for about 10 women and children a night. Then, she said, it grew to 20 to 40.

In recent months, Gateway has had at least 200 women and children seeking shelter. Center employees put cots on the lobby floor and ask the women and children to make do.

Across metro Atlanta, homeless advocates say they’ve seen an uptick in the number of women and children seeking shelter as the economy has faltered. Although they have no statistics to back up their conclusions, they point to the Gateway lobby as evidence. Most area counties will conduct a census of their homeless in January.

The Rev. James Milner said the number of people seeking help seems “infinite.” Milner runs Community Concerns Inc., an organization that has an apartment complex in DeKalb County where homeless women get job training, clothes for work and other services.

“I’ve been doing this for 25 years, and I’ve never seen it this bad, particularly with women and children,” he said. “We’re seeing too many grandmothers [without a home].”

Homeless advocates say they’re trying to help, but their coffers are low, and they’re getting little additional financial help.

Ellen Gerstein, executive director of the Gwinnett Coalition for Health and Human Services, said a staffer was in tears in her office one day last week, frustrated by the inability to help the rising number of women and children in need of shelter, food and health care.

Milner said he spends lots of time these days writing local churches for help, but many can’t because their collection plates are lighter. For the first time he can remember, Milner said the group’s annual fund-raiser will be without a financial sponsor.

Homeless advocates say some women lost their homes to foreclosure. Others already teetering on the brink of financial ruin say the current economy pushed them into their predicament.

Another common tale is one of women who came to Atlanta, lured by stories that this is the city to find a job and a better life.

“They hear it’s the home of Martin Luther King, and it’s the city too busy to hate,” Milner said. “They think there’s an advocacy movement that will take care of them.”

Teresa Miles is one of those newcomers. Miles, 47, moved here from a Baltimore suburb three months ago, hoping to keep her two teenage sons away from increasing gang violence there. Unable to find housekeeping work and without a support network in Atlanta, Miles and her children sleep in the Gateway lobby.

DeKalb County resident Tasha Bell, 36, a mother of two girls, moved into a transitional housing facility near Doraville in May after getting evicted a month earlier. She was laid off from her job a year ago and couldn’t find another job where the hours allowed Bell to pick up her daughter, who’s about to turn 3, from day care.

Bell said what troubles her most about her current situation is not being able to buy things for her 14-year-old daughter, who’s in her first year of high school.

“That makes me feel very sad, like I’ve failed,” she said.

Women and children are one-third of Georgia’s homeless population, according to the United Way Regional Commission on Homelessness. Children under 9 are the fastest-growing group of homeless, they say.

In recent years, Atlanta has often ranked among the meanest cities to the homeless, partly due to its law aimed at curbing panhandling. Franklin has tried to change that reputation.

In an interview, the mayor said single women with children typically suffer first when the economy falters.

“They feel it first,” she said. “So we’ve seen in this increase of women and children, many of the women … work for low wages until a child gets sick or they get sick and they lose their job. They don’t have the flexibility of sick time. They don’t have the flexibility of vacation time to support their families.”

Franklin said she and mayors from cities such as Boston and Denver who have worked on homelessness issues believed things were getting better. That was until early 2008, when the mayor noticed an economic downturn in the city.

“All of us thought we understood the problem and thought we were making progress and all of a sudden we see this increase [of homeless women and children],” Franklin said. “We’ve seen the cracks in the economy. Now, it’s like an avalanche and children often suffer the worst.”

Gateway opened in 2005, converted out of the city’s former detention center on Pryor Street.

The building is city-owned and run by a nonprofit. Its fiscal-year budget is about $3 million. Gateway’s funding comes primarily from United Way.

The four-story building provides pre-drug treatment and mental health counseling, along with employment assistance.

Gateway is no nirvana. The center has security, but there aren’t enough eyes to constantly watch everyone and the suitcases stacked in one corner where the women keep their belongings. Miles, a soft-spoken, petite woman, said she’s watched other women walk around the lobby dressed in clothes they’ve stolen from her.

“You can’t say anything, or someone wants to fight you,” Miles said.

Starnes hopes life will be more comfortable for the homeless women and children they serve in December when an assessment center for them opens in northwest Atlanta. Community Concerns Inc., a nonprofit that helps the homeless and mentally ill, is renovating a 30-unit apartment for homeless families in Vine City.

Community Concerns is still able to provide the first month’s rent for their clients. More frequently, the organization is trying to reunite clients with out-of-town relatives who can help them find a place to stay.

However, Milner said, some don’t want to return to their hometowns because they’re trying to avoid situations such as domestic violence.

Miles is still looking for work.

Despite her struggles, Miles doesn’t regret her decision to come to Atlanta. Her sons attend high school in DeKalb County and their grades are better than they were in Maryland.

“It’s slowed my boys down,” Miles said. “They won’t be in trouble anymore.”

Bell, of Doraville, is in a program run by Decatur Cooperative Ministries that teaches women about budgeting and provides support for their long-term goals. Bell is looking for work and wants to take classes to become a pharmacy technician.

“I see a light at the end of the tunnel now, and I’m ready to reach it,” she said.