Trump’s D.C. homeless crackdown raises stakes for Atlanta’s World Cup plans

The president also threatened to send federal forces to other cities. That’s alarmed advocates already concerned about a goal to clear downtown of 400 homeless people through a plan called Downtown Rising.

“Can you imagine the eviction trauma people would feel with federal troops coming in and coming at them like they are the enemy of the state?” said Atlanta-based homeless advocate Nolan English.

Trump’s federal takeover follows an executive order in March that directed Secretary of the Interior Doug Burgum to use the National Park Service to crack down on homeless people camping on federal land in D.C.

On Monday, Burgum said the U.S. Park Police has cleared more than 70 camps since then.

And in July, Trump signed an executive order calling homelessness a public safety crisis. It prioritizes enforcement and homeless sweeps, and forcing people into mental health treatment through involuntary civil commitment, if necessary.

The order directed the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to end support for housing-first models.

National Homelessness Law Center spokesperson Jesse Rabinowitz said the executive order does nothing to address the root causes of homelessness, including the housing affordability crisis or the lack of permanent housing.

“It’s a sledgehammer to the rights of people who live outside,” Rabinowitz said.

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens’ office declined a request for an interview. The mayor’s press secretary, Michael Smith, did not respond to questions about Trump’s federal takeover on Monday but said of the president’s executive order on homelessness that the “mayor’s mission and initiatives for our unhoused residents will remain.”

Dickens has taken a housing-first approach to homelessness in the city but also stated that people who illegally camp on city streets and refuse to leave could be taken to a pre-arrest detention center and offered treatment or other services.

The Atlanta Police Department declined to comment. Gov. Brian Kemp’s press secretary Garrison Douglas said that his office does “not engage in baseless speculation.”

But Fulton County Board of Commissioners Chair Robb Pitts believes the city and county could be on Trump’s “hit list,” noting how the administration had “disinvited” him from meeting at the White House with local leaders earlier this year.

The Trump administration has also singled out Atlanta as a “sanctuary city” with immigrant-friendly policies.

“Locking people up … putting more people in jail does not solve the problem,” Pitts said of the county’s homeless population.

Even before Trump announced the crackdown, Michael Collins, senior director for government affairs at the racial justice organization Color of Change, said there was already uncertainty about what will happen to people who do not accept housing or other services — and whether they will end up in Fulton County Jail, where a Justice Department investigation revealed brutal and dangerous conditions.

“The Trump executive order (on homelessness) almost gives them cover to do the enforcement that they wanted to do anyway,” Collins said.

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

Fulton County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Natalie Ammons did not respond to a question about how the jail would handle detainees if they were sent there as a result of encampment sweeps. She said her office did “not have concerns of federal intervention as in DC.”

“We work with our partners in Atlanta and other municipalities in the county to address homelessness in many different ways. We will continue with these efforts,” Ammons wrote in an email.

The nonprofit organization Partners for HOME manages the city’s homeless strategy and is leading the Downtown Rising plan, part of a larger city plan called Atlanta Rising. CEO Cathryn Vassell told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution last week that her agency was still committed to the housing-first model, noting that individualized support and treatment are offered to people who are not ready to enter housing yet.

“Arrest and criminalization is really just making our job harder and increasing trauma to people who are homeless,” she said.

Vassell would like to see more investment in the root causes of homelessness, including mental health treatment, as well as housing options for people with severe mental illness.

“The reality is, we know institutionalization doesn’t work,” Vassell said.

But as the World Cup draws closer, the conditions seem ripe for the Trump administration to clash with the city on its homeless policy.

English, the Atlanta-based homeless advocate, worked with Partners for HOME and the city when it cleared the Old Wheat Street encampment in July. He is still not convinced the city was doing the work on the “front end” to make sure people not only get housing but stay there and don’t end up back on the streets.

“Don’t use the World Cup as a broom. Use that as a deadline to do the right thing — permanent leases, mental health care, IDs, recovery, income support — all the things that are needed to actually ameliorate and eradicate homelessness,” he said.