City officials joined Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens Wednesday to unveil initiatives to tackle homelessness. Dickens issued an executive order to increase funding for projects aimed at supporting the city’s growing unhoused population.
“Today, I am announcing that I am issuing an executive order to allocate $4.6 million to the appropriate city departments to expand shelter services, warming center operations, and additional shelter sites and provide the wrap-around services and security needed to go along with these additional locations,” Dickens said.
Dickens recently participated with volunteers in the statewide Point in Time Count. The PIT count, a bi-annual nationwide survey of the unhoused, is mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
“Hundreds of volunteers banded together to span across the city to survey people experiencing homelessness,” Dickens said. “The data we collected assists the city to be able to gauge our progress in combating homelessness and also guides federal allocations and resources toward this cause.”
According to the Georgia Department of Community Affairs’ 2022 PIT Count Homeless report, the statewide unhoused population increased by 43% between 2019 and 2022.
“While we have made great progress, there is still a tremendous amount of work to do,” Dickens said. “Last year we launched our rapid rehousing initiative. The acceleration of our rapid rehousing initiative is to at least have 500 less individuals experiencing homelessness by the end of next year.”
According to Dickens, The Melody, the first of these rapid housing initiatives, will debut Friday in South Downtown.
Constructed from shipping containers, The Melody consists of 40 studio units, with each unit featuring a bathroom and kitchenette.
The organization Partners for Home will help people experiencing homelessness transition to The Melody and provide them with wrap-around services.
“It’s super exciting. I think it’s not just that we’re doing housing, but it’s housing that you or I would be proud to call home,” said Cathryn Vassell, Partners for Home CEO.
“There are solutions that are being created that are temporary, that are congregate in nature, where people have to live in dormitory-style environments with shared bathroom and kitchen facilities, and many folks don’t want to live like that.”
Atlanta City Councilman Jason Winston, who chairs the Community Development Human Services Committee, introduced the resolutions that help fund these rapid rehousing initiatives.
“$3.1 million overall, but we had 700,000 that went for Gateway, which is a low-barrier entry housing shelter in the city of Atlanta, and then Partners for Home, got $2.4 million,” Winston said. “They’re specifically going to try to address the situations that we’re having with unhoused individuals under underpasses and underneath some of our bridges.”
According to Winston, the city will continue to collaborate with various organizations and seek sources for ongoing funding to help provide resources to Atlanta’s unhoused population.
“It’s just not Partners for Home; we’ve got other partners that we’re going to continue working with to try to address homelessness,” Winston said. “The council is working collaboratively with the mayor and his administration to find a permanent funding stream to be able to combat homelessness throughout the city of Atlanta.”