Wednesday, May 5, 2010
News Peachtree-Pine homeless shelter bought by developer
Posted by Scott Henry @ScottTheHenry on Wed, May 5, 2010 at 10:21 PM
After months of mortgage brinksmanship, the Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless finally lost ownership on Tuesday of the city's largest shelter.
The new owner of the 100,000-square-foot former auto parts warehouse at the corner of Peachtree and Pine streets is Ichthus Community Trust, which appears to be a shell corporation controlled by Norcross-based commercial developer Manny Fialkow. Ichthus had bought two outstanding liens on the property totaling $900,000 for an undisclosed sum in January. Although the firm initiated foreclosure against the Task Force back then, it had granted the non-profit several deferrals.
Anita Beaty, the Task Force’s executive director, says Fialkow had indicated to her on Tuesday that he would not follow through with the foreclosure action, but did so anyway. Neither Fialkow, his attorneys or a representative returned repeated phone calls.
Steven Hall, a partner with the law firm of Baker Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz, which is representing the Task Force on a pro bono basis, says the group plans to include Fialkow and Ichthus as defendants in an ongoing federal lawsuit that accuses the city of Atlanta, Central Atlanta Progress and other institutions of conspiring against the Task Force. Fialkow is a member of CAP.
“We see this foreclosure as part and parcel of a cohesive, improper and illegal effort to shut down the Task Force and drive the community it serves out of Downtown,” says Hall. "Shame on everyone involved and shame on anyone who lets this happen."
Beaty says she hasn't yet heard from Fialkow, but would resist any effort to oust the shelter and its residents — which she says average 700 men a night — from the building.
"We're here and we're going to be here," she says. "These men have nowhere else to go."
(Photo by Joeff Davis)
Comments (31)
Showing 1-31 of 31
Sweet! Maybe they can get rid of the people without and homes and replace them with homes without people.
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well, there are certainly homes w/o people to be had in central Atlanta if you're suggesting a "HOPE VII" (squatter) program. Just wander through 30315. http://www.righttothecity.org/
They should put an empty condo building with empty retail space on the bottom level in that location. We want this town to be consistent afterall.
I have no problem with helping the homeless, but this shelter needs to go or needs to start being run differently. From my understanding they have no drug screening policy, this makes that whole neighborhood a hot bed for drugs and crime. I live in the closest apartment to this shelter, its a great place, but unfortunately I am moving due to the crime in the area, the constant harassment, and open drug use. Drive down courtland at any time of day and tell me this shelter is good for the city? Its a lawless area where people openly use drugs, urinate in view of public roads, and who at the shelter does anything to stop this? Shelters are too help people get back on their feet, not facilitate their bad habits and bring the drug dealers who prey on them into the neighborhood. It makes Atlanta look terrible and dangerous for anyone traveling through this area of town. If Anita wanted to continue running this blight on our city then maybe she should pay her bills.
So now that Anita won't be able to make a living off the backs of the homeless, what will she do? Is there a shelter that will take her in? Could she stand to live at a shelter she doesn't run?
I would first like to say that it seems there are a number of people who are ignorant to the amount of services that are available in and around the Atlanta area to people experiencing homelessness. The fact of the matter is that the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless is the largest men overflow shelter in the South East. They house well over 700 plus men a night in the Summer and in the winter well over 1000 people who are looking for a place to stay. If you think that Atlanta's has enough service providers, half of which close during the summer months, to handle a capacity as large as 700 plus men, then you have a different thing coming. Furthermore if you are ignorant enough to believe that these service providers, some of whom, without the men from the Task Force, are full to capacity during the winter are magically going to have space; IT ISN'T GOING TO HAPPEN! The fact of the matter is that, in this case, what people don't know is going to kill other people. In reply to the comment about the lawless activities around the task-force. It is the CITY OF ATLANTA'S job, not the TASKFORCE's job, to patrol and get rid of the drug dealers that come and sell drugs to people in a desperate situation. Furthermore the "drug deals" and "lawlessness" pay some of your neighbor's rent in the apartment complex that you think would be so great if only the shelter weren't there. The fact of the matter is that there are people of all ranks that buy drugs and use them. No one complains about them being lawless or living next door to them. If the Task Force shuts down, there will be 500 to 1000 men without a home in the summer and the winter. The city trying to put a band-aid over a gaping knife-wound will start making arrest of anyone who is loitering or "looks homeless". ( if you thought things like that only happened in movies try looking around at homeless people who get stopped by police for jay walking and are put in jail) And finally all of the people who knew what it was like before will say "This problem has gotten better the city of Atlanta does such a good job with caring for the homeless!" while the rest of us who are less ignorant sit around and say " We know the Truth!"
I've known folks that worked at Task Force and they all left running in the opposite direction. Anita Beaty has never been an adequate director and the shelter has continued to spiral down because of it. Anita Beaty should step down. The shelter would be better off handed over to people who can properly run it as a facility until other locations can be established as housing for the men who reside there. This battle has gone on long enough simply because the shelter has been run like a shanty town and the city failed to take responsibility in getting people off the Atlanta streets. So much for a 10 year end of homelessness plan...
Apparently in Brittany's world view everyone who disagrees with her is ignorant and only her and her cohorts "know the truth". Give it rest. Plenty of people accurately understand the situation with the Pine Street Shelter. It's not properly run, Anita Beaty is a bad director, the shelter is abused by drug addicts, there's no proper system in place to get them help, it's a hotbed of crime, and on and on. The federal government took away funding because of how poorly it's run, the state government took away funding because how poorly it's run. I have friends and relatives that have lived around other shelters and this is the only shelter that I've experienced that is this bad. Why is that? According to Brittany, Beaty, and their like it's the city that's out to get them. Rather than focus on the problems of the shelter and improve upon them they just try to blame everyone else for their deficiencies.
Task Force created this current problem on their own. Granted, the City did want them gone and have made that publicly known, it was for good reason. Task Force had problems from the get go because of poor management and lack of basic business skills. Anita Beaty had no qualifications to run a shelter other than being an activist- that does not make good business sense. It's a wonder it's lasted this long. If the men who stay there no longer have a place to call home, it is Anita Beaty's fault as director of the shelter. Has she ever told the men there about what's going on to prepare for the worst? I bet she hasn't since she's so busy saying everything is fine & they're not going anywhere. Shame on you, Ms. Beaty.
Yes, there is no doubt that crime in that area is rampant. However, conditions will not be improved by closing the city's largest shelter and leaving 700 - 1,000 men with nowhere to go. If you think the Atlanta looks "terrible and dangerous" now, wait until the city's other shelters, which operate at max capacity as it is, are flooded with the displaced residents of Peachtree and Pine. There are not enough resources for the homeless and poor in this city WITH Peachtree and Pine in operation; to close this shelter would be a huge mistake. In regards to Peachtree and Pine's inability to pay their bills: maybe the City of Atlanta should stop denying federal funding to it's largest service provider and illegally interfering with funding from the shelter's private donors. If you want to see our homeless problem improve, ask the city of Atlanta to give a damn about it's poor and to stop trying to force them out of the city. Ask the city of Atlanta to stop pushing gentrification efforts that leave it's citizens unable to afford to housing. If this continues, yes Atlanta will be beautiful and pristine, but who will be able to afford to live here?
The reason funding was pulled wasn't just to shut them down, it was pulled because it is a poorly run shelter. Pumping more money into it with the way it is currently operating is a huge mistake. And Brittany it may not be the TaskForce's job to get rid of the dealers, but if they had adequate drug screening procedures in place then half the addicts that abuse the kindness of the shelter and use it simply as a place to sleep while they panhandle/ use drugs all day (see: not trying to get back on their feet) would not be hanging around there. Yes, the city needs to fight the drug problem, but giving the addicts a free place to stay in the city center is just a bad idea. There are plenty of great people in that neighborhood and this shelter gives it a bad name by the atmosphere it creates. You don't have to look any further than your own words to see that, "Furthermore the “drug deals” and “lawlessness” pay some of your neighbor’s rent in the apartment complex that you think would be so great if only the shelter weren’t there. I'm sure my neighbors, some of which have been in the neighborhood for many years, would greatly appreciate your opinion of them as lawless, homless-exploiting, profiteering drug dealers.
Hey Rebecca, The free labor that your "co-op" has been receiving wouldn't have anything to do with your views, would it? It must be nice to stick it to the independent shops who have to compete against your little hobby staffed with free labor from Peachtree-Pine. The homeless advocacy community has said over and over again that if Peachtree-Pine shuts down that they'll be able to step in and give help to those who want it (many won't). But I doubt they'd run a free labor service for you, so is it really in your best interest for those in Peachtree-Pine to move to shelters that will help them transition into productive lives and away from destructive behavior and those who will exploit them for free labor? How about full disclosure from now on about how this particular shelter benefits you personally before you start ranting on about what others should be doing? Seems that there are quite a few people whose economic and personal interests rely on the homeless at Peachtree-Pine staying that way forever.
Oh snap. @ Rebecca " The Task Force was ranked the lowest of 20 agencies – scoring 56 out of 100 points. The score is based on criteria such as the percentage of an agency's budget that's invested in housing and the percentage of homeless people who were moved to permanent housing. " http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A255205 And now you're blaming gentrification for homelessness? It couldn't be mental illness, no job skills, and/or drug addiction? It's definitely the gentrification.
Jordan, et al. - The general reasons for homelessness and the particular failings of Task Force, as they relate to those of other shelters, strike me as being largely immaterial in this conversation. As I understand it, Task Force is essentially the last stop on the block for Atlanta's homeless population. To expect the city's largest, most under-funded shelter to be anywhere but the bottom of the rankings is, to my mind, absurd. Regardless of how the men in this shelter fare when compared to men in other shelters, the fact remains that they are faring better than they would on the sidewalk in front of your house, under the overpass by your office, or in the city jails that your tax dollars fund. As unpleasant as it may be, living in the middle of a major metropolis entails living alongside people that suffer from mental illness, addiction, poverty and -- frequently as the result -- homelessness. If somebody takes issue with the way Task Force is being run, that somebody would be best served (and would best serve) by raising funds or working to solve any administrative problems. The suggestion that gentrification has little to no bearing on homelessness is, again, absurd. If rents are astronomical, folks living in poverty will be unable to find homes close enough to the service infrastructure upon which they depend. To rally around the shuttering of Task Force because it doesn't have the success rates of smaller shelters with more resources is akin to supporting the closure of Georgia State because it doesn't stack up to Emory. If you ain't down with the hood, move down to Dunwood.
Who let these kind of people get paid to do nothing all day? They should learn to speak english so they can get good jobs and get paid good so they dont live on the streets. i would like to be paid and do nothing but sit around and do drugs all day and rob people and rape. thats all these people do. why dont they just go and live in bankhead? isnt that where the drugs come from right? These people just dont want work. Simpel. They want to sit around all day. Isnt there something we can do to make these people want to work and stuff?
Lee, The general reasons for homelessness and the particular failings of the Take Force, as they relate to those of other shelters, is the core of this conversation. To address the prior, the reasoning for a certain individuals homelessness leads to how to treat said homelessness. To address the latter, how else does one judge A from B? If I am looking at a restaurant to judge if it is successful or not there is a set criteria by which to judge by -- quality of the food, service, the ambiance, the cleanliness of the restaurant, etc. To understand how epically the Task Force fails at what they do, one should understand that the era of simply providing housing for homeless has passed. That doesn’t solve the issue and only exacerbates the individual’s dilemma and homelessness in general. The most effective way to combat homelessness is to provide a shelter for the homeless, then through means find out why they are homeless, then send them to places where they can be helped for their specific. If they have mental issues, there’s places for that, if they need job skills, there’s places for that, if they have drug issues, there’s places for that, etc. The homeless are taken care of, their issues are addressed, and they are moved through the system. The Task Force does none of this and this is where, compared to other shelters, they fail by the set criteria of local and national homeless agencies. They don’t drug screen, they don’t address the issues behind the reasoning for their homelessness. The majority of the people there are there because they don’t want to have to abide by the rules of the other homeless shelters (ie. drug screens). The reason the city’s largest shelter is under-funded is because it is so bad at it’s one objective that it has been denied government funding. The shelter was bad when it was funded and it’s bad now. Which leads to another issue; why is a shelter, which obviously lacks the necessary resources to be effect, one of the city’s largest? I could purchase an abandon warehouse and let as many homeless people that can fit in it come and live there, but if I don’t have the resources to adequately provide for them and maintain a decent program, I am not doing any good for anyone. And honestly, I don’t think the men at the Pine-Street Shelter are faring better than they would be at an underpass. The place has become a gathering point for drug dealers & prostitution, no thanks to the gathering of people addicted to crack and other drugs that stay in and around the shelter. Regardless, I think anyone that lives in the city understands the issues that come from the city. It’s not the issues people have a problem with, it’s how poorly the Task-Force runs the shelter that is a problem. The idea that gentrification even comes into play as a reason for homeless is absurd and takes away from the key factors of homelessness: drug addiction and mental illness. It’s hard to take any of your comments or viewpoints seriously when you end your argument comparing the failings of the Task-Force to other homeless shelters to the academic perception of two institutions. A more apt comparison would be supporting the closure of a fictional university because they were graduating people at an elementary education level.
It is not uncommon knowledge that the task-force has management issues. We all would agree on that. It is an issue that should be addressed. However, I really wouldn’t want to split the hairs over the way the task force is managed at this point when clearly there are thousands of lives that are going to be affected by this decision. I don’t have a “like” as you so eloquently put it @ Jordan. I have common knowledge of what I see and hear everyday. What I see is a city that is anxious to get rid of the poor through destroying affordable housing and any visible signs of homelessness, including getting rid of a shelter in the middle of a tourist district. It is an “All business, no human’s and nothing personal so long as it doesn’t effect me” mentality that the city as taken on. However, It isn’t as if Atlanta has not done this before to pretend that the poor do not exist. Consider the events that occurred before the Olympics between the years of 1995 and 1996 when over a 9 month period over 9000 homeless men were locked up. Some with reason, most without, to make the city look pristine. The police had pre-printed arrest warrants with “male, African American, homeless.” (http://mostlywater.org/olympics_came_new_laws_sweep_homeless_news) Then to furthermore justify their actions they used a combination of laws dating back to the late 70’s, that had not been previously put into effect, with new legislation to further criminalize the homeless. There are people at the Task Force with mental health issues. There are people with mental health issues everywhere. But the difference between people with mental health issues at Task Force and people with mental health issues at Ernst and Young is that one person can afford healthcare and the other can’t. Are we now making it illegal to have mental issues and be poor? Well before we do that how about we look and the larger and more prominent issue of health care. Not everyone has it, and if you have looked around medical institutions that used to cater to indigent people, have now become for profit. Grady has moved more and more towards privatization of their services; which includes taking mental health patients in and giving them the medicines that they need and putting them out without the medicines they need. There are people at the Task Force with Drug Issues. There are those people who become homeless because of their drug use. They try to feed the addiction, and end up not paying their rent or other very important bills. However, most homeless people become drug users to cope with the issues of homelessness. Many times the issues of substance abuse are linked to people who have mental issues and don’t have healthcare to go to the hospital. People with mental issues will often time use street drugs as a way to deal with their issues. (http://www.nationalhomeless.org/factsheets/addiction.html) Chris your suggestion that people with addictions should be paying to stay is ludicrous. Is that supposed to help their addiction? It is certainly better for them to find a place to stay rather than spending your tax dollars on a new jail being built. Furthermore, what solutions do you have? Chris, I didn’t say that all of your neighbors were drug dealers. I would not make that generalization. I said that some of them were. Although you may not know them, it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. It is not for lack of education, there are plenty of people who become homeless who have Master’s Degrees and Doctoral Degrees. There are plenty of people at Task Force who hold those degrees. You don’t wake up at 9:00 in the morning and decide to grow a beard down to your chest and put on millions of clothes in hot weather and push a cart. The lifestyle is not glamorous! Many times it is not chosen. @ Jordan 40-60% of people experiencing homelessness at the Task Force are full-time employees of establishments all around Atlanta. These are people who are bell-men at the Ritz Carlton, Valet at the Westin, a server in a McDonalds, you never know. Until we weed through the mundane motions of everyday politics and start to see people as human, instead of what they have been through we would be better off. That was the point I was making. The debate is not whether the Task Force is poorly run. What this debate should be about is where in the hell 1000 men will be in Atlanta if the shelter were to close down. As human’s we are imperfect and everyone deserves a place to stay drug addicts included.
As someone who has lived 4 blocks from the shelter for over 6 years I do know a little of what I speak. Jordan's post could not possibly be any better or more on target. As a recovering adict myself I had contacted the shelter over 2 years ago about volunteering with their 12 step programs. Guess what? They do NOT offer a 12 step program. The sooner that place closes and those men are forced to make a decision between getting themselves on a better track, getting valuable services that are amply available in Atlanta or move on, the better. Mostly better for them. I've been to shelter's and other facilities in several states but this is the first one that openly accepts men who are stoned out of their mind and then refuses to even offer the most basic service.
"If you ain’t down with the hood, move down to Dunwood." A whole hell of a lot of people already have. Seems to me, we shouldn't just acquiesce to this city being a shithole while telling anybody who doesn't like it to leave. Me, I'd rather have a city that's worth living in.
First, to 'Anon.' Thank you for your honesty. I believe you have accurately represented the views of many, and done so without concern for what anybody thinks. Appreciate you. Jordan, My first comment, I think, anticipated and addressed most of the points you just made. It makes no sense, to me, to put 1,000 people into the streets because the shelter in which they reside does not perform as well as it could. So, as far as I can gather, the crux of your response is this: "And honestly, I don’t think the men at the Pine-Street Shelter are faring better than they would be at an underpass. The place has become a gathering point for drug dealers & prostitution, no thanks to the gathering of people addicted to crack and other drugs that stay in and around the shelter." This strikes me as a simple case of "not in my backyard." The problem with this sort of rationale is that removing drug deals and prostitution from your backyard simply puts it in somebody else's. Clearly, more should be done to address the core problems of homelessness, which are: poverty, mental illness, and drug addiction. Nobody here is questioning that. But, until that day -- that glorious day -- that there are no longer any abjectly poor folks, mentally ill folks or addicts, where are they going to go? They've got to go somewhere. "The idea that gentrification even comes into play as a reason for homeless[ness] is absurd and takes away from the key factors of homelessness: drug addiction and mental illness." Why is that absurd? I will await your response. Mental illness and drug addiction are not "the key factors of homelessness." I'd wager that every single one of us knows people who are addicts, alcoholics, or mentally ill. Some of us might be one or all of those things, ourselves. Treatment for all of those conditions, though, are readily accessible unless the sufferer is -- wait for it -- poor. Poverty, unequivocally, is the root cause of homelessness.
Lee, When is the last time you visited the shelter and talked to the men? It's sad that you rant as though you know the answers and everyone who disagrees is evil. There is not one simple cause of this problem. The solution is not a flop house.
Sir, I, like everybody else in this life, am struggling to find answers. From what I've learned, the best way to do that is to engage in discussion. I don't think anybody here is evil, and choose to believe that everybody here has one goal in mind: to ease human suffering. Forgive me, but I do not understand how having 1,000 people in the streets is better than having them under a roof and within four walls. Explain it to me. Lee
Brittany: where at any point did I propose that the homeless pay to stay anywhere? That is not what I was saying at all, however, I did mention that if Anita plans on this whole, "I'm not going anywhere" plan to work she might want to get current on her bills and get the financial backing she needs. And I understand Atlanta has done things in the past that might not have been very helpful or humane to the homeless, but there is no point in trying to teach a history lesson on that here, it doesn't change the fact that the shelter doesn't accomplish the goals a shelter is supposed to. I'm not saying we just abandon the mentally ill either bc they don't have healthcare, actually I am proposing the EXACT opposite. As Jordan mentioned if the shelter were doing its job it'd find out why these people were homeless and deal with it accordingly, yet they do not do this. You can blame that on being underfunded, but when they were funded they didn't do this either. The Task Force's ineffectiveness at being anything other than a bed to sleep in is why they lost their funding. Lee: "They've got to go somewhere" Really? This more than anything is a "not in my backyard" tactic. Just give them one big shithole to sleep in and confine all the homeless to this one part of the city so they disturb our suburbs. If the shelter simply quit giving shelter to people who were openly stoned then said person would be forced to make that decision to have a place to sleep or to continue using. Obviously many would choose the latter, but continuing to offer shelter to people with no will to change their lives is wasteful and will continue to grow the drugged masses that gather in the neighborhood And to both of you that say mental illness and drug abuse are not the key factors are wrong. Sure I can see it in some cases, but many people who are homeless are so because of their addictions and mental illness, not just because the were poor before hand. Either way I feel that chicken/egg scenario can go either way but you cannot say they aren't the key factors. As you said some of these people are gainfully employeed, but its hard to not be poor when you spend all your money on drugs. Get these people to shelters or organizations that will help them, not abuse a shelter that is too lax to even drug screen them. Anon: Thanks for your opinion, I see why you chose to comment anonymously
Jordan, Well, I guess when you assume that all homeless people are drunks, drug addicts, shiftless derelicts and loons then it is easy to place blame on the individual instead of on the social and economic conditions created by poor public policies and unhealthy urban development. However, when one considers that the leading causes of homelessness are not mental illness, drug addiction or the lack of job skills, but are, actually, the lack of affordable housing, livable wages and access to healthcare then a person has to stop looking at homeless people as deserving of their misfortunes and start asking what is really going wrong. In regards to the link between gentrification and homelessness, in Atlanta, as well as in every city in the country, a person working full-time at a minimum wage job cannot afford an apartment at what HUD considers a fair market rate (30% of one’s income). This contributes to the problem of homelessness by creating a situation where individuals and families barely get by while being force to paying 80 to 90% of their income to housing. Maintaining housing under these conditions is, needless to say, difficult and precarious often resulting in individuals as well as entire families (who are not drug addicts, alcoholics or good-for-nothings) becoming homeless. In my eyes, the proof of Atlanta’s poor urban development and failed gentrification plans is in the beautiful, new and EMPTY apartment and condo buildings lining Peachtree from Midtown to Buckhead, in the declining number of public, section 8 and low-income housing, and in the rising numbers of newly homeless people flooding our shelters.
Anita Beatty is a self-aggrandizing fool who has used the homeless issue to promote her wacky political views, and more importantly, to make money. If Beatty and the rest of her political cronies had not been overtly hostile to their neighbors, they would not be in this predicament. Even her allies in the neighborhood have tired of her arrogance and intolerance. Good riddance!
"In my eyes, the proof of Atlanta’s poor urban development and failed gentrification plans is in the beautiful, new and EMPTY apartment and condo buildings lining Peachtree from Midtown to Buckhead, in the declining number of public, section 8 and low-income housing, and in the rising numbers of newly homeless people flooding our shelters." Your ignorance is as broad as it is deep. The current circumstances that you describe are all related to the recession, and have nothing to do with "poor urban development". I don't know if the news has filtered down to the dorm rooms, but there is a terrible recession going on and the adults are having a bit of a rough time. Don't worry, sweetie. Those condos will be sold as soon as the economic cycle swing back the other way. (You will probably learn about the economic cycle in your sophomore year.)
This thread has devolved into a Slap Fest between the pro-shelter crowd, who fear and loathe a "gentrified" Atlanta, and those who live and work in the neighborhood. If you think the area is all about high rise condos and elites, you don't know jack. P/P is a magnate for troublemakers and vagrants, affecting anyone who passes by - GT students, medical center staff and visitors, tourists, office workers, theater goers, and all of us - from low to high income - who live in the area. P/P does not get a free pass for the negative impact it has on quality of life here! It is an eyesore and a public nuisance. Intown residents and business owners have a vested interest in the district becoming a livable, diverse urban neighborhood. Simply put, P/P is the wrong facility in the wrong place. Apparently the pro-shelter crowd doesn't give a rat's ass about how their operation is a total blight on the city. MOVE IT.
I'd like to know if anyone has ever requested Task Force's financial records over the last two years... how is the money they're currently surviving on being spent? The building reeks of urine outside and in, and has pigeons and roaches living inside where the men sleep. What kind of unsanitary environment is that for people- they may as well be sleeping outside! Get rid of everyone who currently manages that building and let capable, and professional, people come in and run it.
So Brittany, we;re just supposed to allow the homes less to break laws because they are homeless?! Give it a rest. Fools like you get walked all over because of your bleeding heart. We are supposed to obey the laws so why not the homeless? And YES it IS the responsibility of the shelters to police their tenants to ensure they are not dealing drugs and selling their bodies on the shelters. You are a naive and annoying citizen and you obviously own NO property in this city.
The City of Atlanta traditionally doesn't have a good track record when it comes to actual solutions to homelessness besides, 'out of sight out of mind.' However, the City had every right to approach Chick-fil-A to withdraw their $700,000 pledge because that money was used to pay Task Force bills and NOT to upgrade the locations' kitchen- Chick-fil-A had every right to know their money wasn't being used as agreed upon. Cathedral of St. Philip patron's regularly came to Task Force to volunteer and donate as have now stopped completely because of the political battle Anita Beaty has put Task Force in, and because they probably caught on that the shelter has no infrastructure and has continued to crumble under Anita Beaty's watch. And perhaps most important, the City was in the right in recommending Task Force no longer receive HUD funding given Task Force had poor record keeping, no staff to ensure grant reports, deadlines and requirements were being met that justified the money they were receiving, and the building itself is in SHAMBLES. Leaks, roaches, mice, pigeons that live where the men sleep, no heating or air, hot water in one small section only and no professional and paid staff. Task Force for the homeless reminds me of that old kids movie, Camp Nowhere. It runs without supervision, safety or accountability, and has done so long enough, and with a politically-charged tone that's enough to run anyone with money away, that it has burned nearly every bridge it ever built in the community and City of Atlanta. What we are witnessing is the end of a poorly managed attempt to help a very vulnerable part of our society. And in the end, if Anita Beaty asks those men to step into this battle over the property, and doesn't allow the City to attempt to find more suitable shelter and services, she is the greatest obstacle to the men she claims to help. The men who have resided at Task Force for years, and many more of them have than she will admit, are not getting the help they need. Not working with the City to help those men is creating a situation where she truly is the only person who can help them, because she makes it that way by cradling those men and pointing the finger of blame at everyone but her own mismanaged organization.
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