The view from Devon Holloway’s porch in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of intown Atlanta is not pretty.
The two houses to his left are dusty and boarded up, as are three structures directly across the street. Two ramshackle stores are in the same block.
Now the city wants to put a homeless shelter right in the middle of a community already plagued by crime, drugs and prostitution.
Atlanta officials are considering – nothing is definite – converting the 16,000-square-foot facility at 836 Metropolitan Parkway into short-term transitional housing for 75 families. Mayor Kasim Reed believes several smaller shelters around the city would do a better job addressing homelessness than the massive Peachtree-Pine shelter, which sleeps on average 400 people a night.
“The best model for helping homeless people is working with them in smaller groups of between 30-90 people,” said Reed, who describes Peachtree-Pine as a public nuisance. “I don’t believe Peachtree and Pine does a good job serving homeless people and decreasing homelessness. So we have to look at other options.”
Holloway and others in Pittsburgh say it’s the last thing they need. Residents are working hard to clean up the area, which has little political clout and is one of the most depressed sections of the city.
“We don’t want the shelter,” Holloway said. “The community is not stable. We can’t support it in Pittsburgh.”
‘We mean no’
Two weeks ago, Atlanta City Councilwoman Joyce Shepherd, whose district includes Pittsburgh, convened two meetings. She and city officials attempted to quell the community’s concerns, saying renovating a long-abandoned building and turning it into a shelter would be good for the community over the long term.
It didn’t work.
“She is out of touch,” said Douglas Dean, who represented the area for 20 years in the Georgia House of Representatives. “When we say no, we mean no. Don’t bring those people down here. So at the meetings they tried to convince us that the shelter would not be so bad. If they really believed that, why don’t they put it in their neighborhood?”
Midtown and downtown residents, businesses and civic organizations have long-complained about the number of people who loiter outside of Peachtree and Pine, which has also had at least three tuberculosis outbreaks over the last two years.
Dean and several Pittsburgh residents argue that, while the proposed shelter has been discussed for several months, the recent meetings were the first time anyone in the city had engaged them directly.
Shepherd stresses that no decisions have been made, and that she’s advised the administration of the neighborhood’s concerns.
Still sitting on his porch, Holloway flags down Greg Hightower, who is driving by.
Hightower is the man around Pittsburgh. A resident of the area since 2009, he has owned 15 properties in the neighborhood and renovated and sold eight of them, including Holloway’s, which was once boarded up.
“We are trying to bring the value of Pittsburgh up,” Hightower said. “And they trying to bring it back down.”
Earlier this month, Reed and Georgia State University officials announced that a deal was in place to sell Turner Field and convert the area into an extension of the school that would have athletic fields, dorms and shops. They named Mechanicsville, Summerhill and Peoplestown as neighborhoods that would be direct beneficiaries of the development. Though it's nearby,Pittsburgh was never mentioned.
“Politically, this community is not turning out to vote, so politicians believe they can continue to overlook this neighborhood,” Dean said.
It’s an area that could use much help, residents say. Pittsburgh is struggling with crime. It’s in the middle of Atlanta’s Zone 3 police district, which, in the first half of the year, had 21 homicides. That’s a 133 percent increase over last year, and nearly half of the city’s homicides at the time. There were eight in June alone.
Residents of Pittsburgh say that is just part of the problem. Fewer than 20 percent of the houses in Pittsburgh are occupied by the owner. More than 60 percent are lived by renters, and the rest, it seems, are boarded up.
On the block where the city wants to put the shelter, there are at least four boarded up houses. The Rev. Clay Davis, executive director of the Andrew P. Stewart Center, said there are at least two houses frequented by drug users.
“I don’t think this neighborhood can sustain this at all,” said Davis, who has been one of the vocal organizers against the shelter. His group also tried to buy the facility from the city. “Homelessness is a citywide problem, but that responsibility should be proportionate to your ability to sustain it. The mayor keeps saying that he wants to build smaller shelters, but we can’t seem to figure out where the others are.”
‘Not fair’
Sitting on his truck outside of the proposed shelter with Dean and Holloway, Davis is approached by Juanita Florence Greene. She bounds out of her home — less than 10 feet away from the proposed shelter — demanding to know if they were part of the group the supports the measure.
“I am a senior citizen, and I oppose this,” she yelled. She calms down a bit when she see’s her old friend Dean.
But she makes it clear that she doesn’t want a shelter. Greene was born in her little white house 73 years ago. She is the only homeowner on the block filled with renters or boarded-up houses.
“This is not fair to me because the city never said a word to me about this. I heard about it on television,” Greene said. “I am telling everybody, if something happens to me when that shelter opens, that they need to hold the city responsible.”
Back on Holloway’s porch, he takes a seat on the steps and watches the neighborhood pass by.
Young men and teenagers hang out on the corners, and shirtless men walk up and down the street, while other’s ride by on shabby bikes.
A stray dog stops in front of Holloway’s house and stares at him. Panting, the dog is thirsty and hungry.
“Poor fellow,” said Holloway, who grew up on a farm in Vidalia, where his family would give their bounty to less fortunate families. “But I can’t feed him, because he will come back.”
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