Homeless men and women will have one less option for meals and other support when the Open Door Community closes its doors in January.
The program has been a fixture for more than three decades at 910 Ponce de Leon Ave. and a much-needed lifeline to the city’s homeless. It provided a place for the homeless to be fed and to shower and get medical treatment and evaluations. Open Door Community also has a prison ministry.
The area, though, has developed significantly since Open Door Community began. Residents and business owners have complained that it is an eyesore and about the number of homeless who come there for help.
"This is a letter that we never thought we would have to write, and it's breaking our hearts," the leadership team said in an open letter on its website. "We have come to a time that the Open Door Community cannot move forward in the way that we have lived and worked for the past 35 years."
While some parts of the ministry will continue, including its newspaper, Hospitality, the building will close.
The letter was signed by Murphy Davis and Ed Loring, Gladys and Dick Rustay, Nelia and Calvin Kimbrough and David Payne.
A woman who answered the phone said they would not be immediately available for comment because they were working against a death penalty case.
The leadership had always assumed that they would “die doing this work and living the life in place at the Open Door,” the letter continued. “But at this point, there are not enough able-bodied committed community members to continue our regular services and care for the elders as we begin to require more help.”
While they trained a younger generation to take over the primary leadership, many of those people have left, some starting families or working somewhere else and “sadly, sometimes returning to the trap of addiction.”
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