Atlanta homeless shelter another victim of poor economy

The Salvation Army gives intense counseling, education and other help to get families back on their feet and into permanent homes.

“The truth is, we just don’t have the ability to pay for [the staffing and programming],” Seiler said earlier this month as he watched workers painting door jambs and installing ceiling tiles in the addition.

The nonprofit raised $5.9 million when times were flush to renovate its shelter on Luckie Street and build a new wing for 21 families, who are often split up among shelters.

Its board of directors optimistically planned in 2007 to expand fund-raising to pay the $50,000 a month to run the new family wing.

“Little did we know we began construction as the perfect storm was brewing,” Seiler said.

Donations and income for the nonprofit had grown, totaling more than $16 million a year in 2007 and 2008. But not this year.

Donations to their Christmas kettle bell ringers, which brought in $1.5 million in 2007, dropped $20,000 in 2008.

Money sent in from direct-mail appeals, $3.6 million by this time in 2008, is $60,000 less this year.

The $855,000 the United Way gave to the Salvation Army in 2008 dropped to $845,000 in 2009.

It also gets money from sales at thrift stores, government grants, fees it charges and in-kind gifts, such as food. That income has been flat, leading to a projected $1.5 million total shortfall in income this year, about 10 percent.

Seiler said he is talking to other agencies about cooperative efforts to open the shelter. He will not consider opening the shelter unless they have about six months’ operating costs in hand, about $300,000, he said.

“We are willing to talk to anyone,” Seiler said, “but everyone is feeling the same pressures.”

The value of donations to human service organizations dropped 15.9 percent in 2008, according to the Giving USA Foundation’s annual report.

Atlanta agencies have reported similar pressures.

The Midtown Assistance Center provides emergency rent money to people in need as part of its programs.

Dorothy Chandler, its executive director, said the monthly budget for rent assistance is $24,000.

“In June, we spent $38,000, and in July, $43,000,” Chandler said.

The United Way of Metro Atlanta is getting about one-third more calls for help this year and made an appeal for extra donations, said Protip Biswas, the agency’s executive director for the Regional Commission on Homelessness. The appeal brought in $3.7 million, and it gave $81,000 of that to the Salvation Army.

“It’s pretty clear we are going to have some tough times ahead,” Biswas said.

Competition has heated up for entry-level jobs, which often put homeless people on their way to self-sufficiency, as they are being filled by those further up the economic scale who have lost jobs, Biswas said.

That means it can take longer, and cost agencies more, for the homeless to re-establish themselves, said Malika White, a United Way spokeswoman.

Natasha Dykes of Gwinnett County served in the Air Force and the reserves, and worked for the Salvation Army with young people in Syracuse, N.Y.

In 2006, “everybody was talking about Atlanta was a land of opportunity, so I figured I wanted to get a little taste of that,” she said.

She lined up a job as an airport screener in Atlanta and moved to Gwinnett County with her three teenage daughters. The airport job fell through.

She exhausted her savings in six months and was evicted.

“It was devastating,” she said. “I was humiliated. After that, it was like a domino effect. I couldn’t get back on my feet.”

She reached out this year to the Salvation Army, which started a new homeless program in Gwinnett that helps families rent apartments — one more example of the Salvation Army’s increased spending to help the meeting the “tidal wave” of need, Seiler said.

The nonprofit would not have brought Dykes downtown to the shelter because it tries to keep people in the communities they are from.

Dykes works part time as a waitress while looking for a full-time job. “I figure with my background in working with juvenile, and criminal justice and my military experience, I am bound to get something,” she said. “But it’s a slow process.”

Seiler also remains optimistic in the face of the growing need downtown and in metro Atlanta.

“We are a faith-based organization,” Seiler said. “We think God is going to care for us so we can care for others.”