Atlanta aims to ‘eliminate’ downtown homelessness by 2026 World Cup

Partners for Home Chief Executive Cathryn Vassell told the AJC it is part of a longer-term goal to provide shelter and housing, and described Downtown Rising as a “coordinated effort” that began in 2024.

“All of the work that we’re doing is geared to sustain well beyond the World Cup. That is the goal,” Vassell said.

Downtown Rising is informed by a multipronged “housing first” approach that includes outreach and rehousing support, a removal of the barriers people face in securing shelter, and wraparound mental health and medical services.

Even so, the city’s plan is sure to stoke controversy and push back, not least because of the aggressive approach to forcing people out of downtown when the city hosted the Summer Olympics in 1996, when 9,000 homeless people were arrested.

Jesse Rabinowitz, a spokesperson for homeless advocacy group the National Homelessness Law Center, said it is possible to house people on a compressed timeline but said “it shouldn’t take a major sports event to have them move with urgency to solve homelessness.”

“I think the proof is in how it’s implemented. It’s great to hear that they want to get folks housing and support that they need,” Rabinowitz said.

As many as 300,000 people are expected to flock to the city for the event.

Some critics regard the plan as unrealistic or a temporary fix to a long-term and chronic issue plaguing metro Atlanta, and other U.S. cities.

Michael Collins, senior director of Color of Change, an organization that promotes racial justice, said he’s concerned that homeless individuals who refuse to leave downtown might end up in the Fulton County jail, where a U.S. Department of Justice investigation found conditions to be abhorrent and unconstitutional.

He added that closing downtown to unsheltered people would be “constitutionally questionable.”

“The city has always had major challenges in housing homeless people,” Collins said Tuesday. “Some people want services, some people don’t want services and so what happens to the people who don’t take the services that are offered? I think the answer to that question is enforcement and arrest.”

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez/AJC

Credit: Miguel Martinez-Jimenez/AJC

According to the Downtown Rising document, city partners and case workers were scheduled to begin outreach in March 2025. Other strategies targeting closures began in the first quarter of this year.

A Partners for Home map shows several “outreach” zones, including at least 10 encampments near Mercedes-Benz Stadium, where the city will host eight matches, including a semifinal game on July 15, 2026.

Partners for Home’s “point-in-time” count of the city’s homeless population, conducted in January and February, found that 2,894 people are homeless, with 1,061 unsheltered, a slight increase over last year, according to a recent AJC report.

John Fischer, president of the Atlanta Downtown Neighborhood Association, has been attending monthly meetings led by Partners for Home on the Downtown Rising plan.

“The main focus obviously is on the rehousing of our homeless population, and I think that really is the true focus, at least in the sessions that I’ve been in,” Fischer said.

Fischer said a firm called Clutch Consulting made a presentation at one of the Downtown Rising meetings on efforts to house people, clear encampments and end homelessness in downtown Dallas, Texas.

“The committee is using the Dallas model as a guide,” Fischer said, referring to a core committee handling Downtown Rising that includes Partners for Home.

Clutch Consulting’s managing partner, Mandy Chapman Semple, confirmed in a statement that Atlanta is pursuing a similar model to the one in Dallas.

“As attention turns to downtown Atlanta ahead of the FIFA World Cup, Downtown Rising is an opportunity for the community to demonstrate that large-scale, sustainable solutions are possible — without relying on criminalization or displacement,” Semple said.

Under the Downtown Rising strategy, Fischer said people who refuse offers of housing will be told they can’t continue to stay at an encampment. If they refuse to leave, he said, they will face removal.

Fischer added some people are concerned that the city is moving too fast and the goal of the effort is “just to tidy up the city for the World Cup.”

“This can’t just be: sweep it under the rug and move on,” he said.

Mayor Andre Dickens’ press secretary, Michael Smith, emphasized that Downtown Rising was part of a sustainable initiative to revitalize downtown.

“This is a long-term project, and just like the mayor’s significant commitment of $60 million for our unsheltered residents, this will last well beyond one single event,” Smith said in a statement.

Vassell said her organization was committed to meeting its objective by next June.

“We are dedicated to offering real housing solutions to our homeless neighbors downtown to avoid the involuntary displacement that too often occurs in preparation for major events like FIFA World Cup,” she said in a statement.

Dickens has long espoused a “compassionate” approach to clearing encampments. Last year, he announced a city investment of $60 million for rapid housing and wraparound services.

The city has opened The Melody, a micro-living community for 40 people in downtown created with shipping containers left over from the state’s emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

More permanent housing has opened. And with more in the works, Dickens said he wants 500 rapid housing units by the end of the year.

However, the mayor has come under fire for what some advocates view as a heavy handed and inhumane approach to clearing and sweeping encampments.

Rabinowitz cautioned that city officials often use large sporting events as an excuse to cite or jail unhoused people, and challenged Atlanta officials not to do the same before the World Cup.

“That keeps people homeless longer. It wastes a ton of resources, and it makes it harder to get people into housing,” he said.

Generally, Partners for Home has a 100-day plan and six steps it follows to close encampments.

Earlier this year, the city faced sharp criticism after a city construction vehicle crushed and killed Cornelius Taylor while he was inside his tent at the Old Wheat Street encampment, just feet away from the Ebenezer Baptist Church where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. led sermons.

After Taylor’s death, the mayor convened a Homelessness Task Force to avoid similar tragedies, make clearings safer and improve the city’s homeless strategy.

The mayor’s office released the task force’s final report Tuesday.

Other cities, including Los Angeles and Seattle, are grappling with how to tackle homelessness as the World Cup draws nearer.

Officials could learn lessons about how Atlanta treated the homeless population during the 1996 Olympics, said Charles Steffen, retired historian and professor, who has written extensively about housing and homelessness in the city of Atlanta.

He suggested the goal of clearing the camps in time for massive sporting events like the World Cup was inherently problematic.

“I think it is just a short-term fix to a structural problem that will not work,” Steffen said. “You’re going to have homeless people as long as you decide not to address the question of housing.”

Staff writer Dylan Jackson contributed to this report.