Mayor Andre Dickens broke ground Friday on additional housing constructed for homeless people, part of an initiative called Downtown Rising that Atlanta is racing to complete before hosting games during the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Dickens and other city officials were at the site of a former homeless encampment on Cooper Street in the Mechanicsville neighborhood to announce the plan to rapidly house dozens of people in the community this year. The development will include mixed-income housing and wraparound services, including mental health care and a workforce development program to help people stay housed.
“This will give families opportunities to stay, invest and build generational wealth in this neighborhood, and so we’re using high-quality, modular units to move quickly and to get families housed as quickly as possible,” Dickens said.
The move comes after the nonprofit leading Dickens’ homeless strategy revealed more details of a controversial plan to close camps and rehouse people in advance of the international spotlight that will arrive with the World Cup next year.
Earlier this week, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported that nonprofit Partners for HOME was leading the Downtown Rising strategy to “eliminate” homelessness in the city’s downtown core and house 400 unsheltered people.
The plan has already drawn scrutiny from advocates concerned that the city is moving too fast, and that the initiative is more about keeping homeless people out of sight and out of mind ahead of one of the largest sporting events in the world.
Partners for HOME, which coordinates the city’s homeless response, wants people housed by the end of the year. But critics fear the downtown plan fails to adequately address the structural issues that lead to homelessness, including the city’s housing crisis.
Jesse Rabinowitz, a spokesperson for the National Homelessness Law Center, said it was possible to house people on a narrow timeline but added, “It shouldn’t take a major sports event to have them move with urgency to solve homelessness.”
He hadn’t seen the plan and said he would reserve judgment until the city had implemented it but noted that Atlanta, like much of the country, is in the midst of a housing crisis, where high rents were pushing people out of homes and onto the streets.
Partners for HOME CEO Cathryn Vassell said that the World Cup was a guiding event but that ultimately the focus was on housing people, and that the goals and timelines were malleable.
The number of people housed could change depending on the homeless population in the downtown area by the end of the year, she said.
“There is no location zone [or] encampment … that will close until we have the requisite number of housing solutions for every single person in that location,” she told the AJC at the event.
Credit: Courtesy of Darion Dunn
Credit: Courtesy of Darion Dunn
Officials on Friday broke ground on the first phase of the Atlantica Properties development, which will include 100 modular apartments. The planned development also includes dozens of townhomes, with some at market rates, that will be added at a later date.
Partners for HOME told the AJC in May the Cooper Street encampment was closed this past October and that 44 people who had been living at the camp had received rapid housing and rental assistance.
The nonprofit’s officials said the opening was one more step in Downtown Rising, part of a longer term $212 million plan called Atlanta Rising.
In an interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Dickens framed the initiative to house homeless people as an urgent goal of his administration.
“I want homelessness to end today,” Dickens said. “You can call it World Cup. You can call it Super Bowl. You can call it whatever. I’m talking about today.”
He added: “We’re standing out here in the sun, moving dirt the fastest way possible to help people get off the streets of Atlanta, where they can be hurt, where they have sanitary challenges, where their mental health is every day being jeopardized.”
Downtown Rising concentrates on a core downtown area, with many of the camps in the area close to Mercedes-Benz Stadium, which will host eight games, including a coveted semifinal match.
Partners for HOME released more details about the plan this week, and said Downtown Rising’s goal was to produce about 500 units by the end of 2025.
To date, 428 units have been delivered, the nonprofit said.
Documents the AJC reviewed suggest there was a $50 million shortfall for Atlanta Rising. Partners for HOME said in a statement it would work with public and private partners to close that funding gap.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to clarify that the city and Partners for HOME are not aiming to finish the entire Atlanta Rising campaign by the World Cup.
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