Atlanta advocates push for more housing, pause on encampment clearings
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Darlene Chaney, Cornelius Taylor's cousin, speaks during Thursday's Atlanta City Council meeting. Screenshot: YouTube/City of Atlanta
The family of the Atlanta man who was killed when city crews cleared an Old Fourth Ward encampment has called on city officials to find meaningful solutions to address the city's seemingly intractable homelessness issues.
The big picture: Advocates for Atlanta's unsheltered population are calling on city officials to reconsider the safety, efficacy and humanity of encampment sweeps after the tragic death of Cornelius Taylor over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend.
What they're saying: On Thursday, Darlene Chaney told the Atlanta City Council during public comment that her cousin Cornelius was an artist who played flute as a child.
- Another cousin, Derek Chaney, considered him his "first hero," who was "the light of everything."
Zoom in: Before the meeting and during public comment, advocates called for the city to "stop the sweeps" and pass meaningful reforms.
- Jonathan Holly, a community resident, called for the city to partner with Wheat Street Baptist Church to develop their vacant land near the encampment into housing.
- Matthew Nursey of the Housing Justice League urged council members to be mindful of city policies that allow developers to pay into a trust fund to opt out of building affordable units.
- Activists and Taylor's family were stopped when they attempted to deliver a letter requesting a meeting with Mayor Andre Dickens, the AJC reports. An official offered to deliver the letter.
State of play: The Atlanta Police Department's homicide division is investigating the incident. Partners for HOME, the city's nonprofit services agency, has declined to comment citing the investigation.
- Dickens has called Taylor's death a terrible accident but has not commented further.
Zoom out: The city is building small-scale "rapid rehousing" developments to help people leave homelessness and is converting a Downtown skyscraper into mixed-income housing that will include roughly 300 affordable units.
- According to the city's point-in-time homeless population count, those proposals will address only a small percentage of the city's nearly 2,900-person unhoused population, Holly said.
The bottom line: "Being homeless doesn't mean that nobody cares for you," Darlene Chaney told council members. "It means you fall on bad times."
- "We have to all put ourselves in his place. That could have been us, it might be us if we don't make a change. So please, guys, let's do something different."
What's next: Atlanta City Council member Liliana Bakhtiari is sponsoring a resolution calling for a moratorium on encampment sweeps until the city can conduct a full review of the process.
- She also called for Partners for HOME to brief council members on its programs and spending.