Homeless living along downtown ledge cleared out early this morning

• Joeff Davis
• NOWHERE TO GO Michael, who has been homeless for 10 years, returned to the ledge to find his belongings being packed up by sanitation workers. He recovered his sleeping bag before it was tossed. He doesn’t know where he’ll go next.

State police this morning cleared out the large number of homeless men and women who for months have slept on a wide granite ledge in a downtown plaza directly across the street from the Fulton County Courthouse and across Mitchell Street from Atlanta City Hall.

The 5 a.m. joint effort between the city, the United Way of Metro Atlanta, and the Georgia Building Authority at downtown’s Georgia Plaza Park was necessary because the encampment had become a “public health” issue, said Col. Mark McDonough, the commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Safety, which led the effort.

Since late-October, as many as 50 men and women have congregated and camped along the ledge within view of the Fulton County Courthouse and City Hall just one block from the Gold Dome. The number of people who’d flocked to the area because of its proximity to resource providers and visibility had grown so large it’d even earned a nickname from local homeless advocates: “the ledge people.”

“These are our most disadvantaged citizens that we have,” said Col. Mark McDonough, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Public Safety, which oversaw the effort. “We wanted to try and address this in a systematic compassionate way and help. We weren’t going to just come in here without solutions and move people out. Trying to get these folks the assistance they need is the right thing.”

He added: “The Georgia Building Authority” — the state agency which maintains the state-owned park between Washington and Central avenues — “has had to a have a feces patrol. It’s really become a clean-up issue for everyone’s health and safety. We’re trying to do what’s best with these folks and the general citizenry as a whole.”

When CL arrived at the plaza this morning shortly after 5 a.m., an estimated 40 men and women were picking up their blankets, bags, and clothes off the ledge and directed toward the Central Outreach and Advocacy Center, a nearby nonprofit service provider for the homeless, where United Way of Metro Atlanta workers planned to offer assistance to people who wanted to move into supportive housing. State police oversaw the effort. According to McDonough, the removal was conducted before sunrise so crews could work without worrying about heavy pedestrian activity and traffic.

Many men and women left behind rain-soaked blankets, sleeping bags, cardboard, and other items, which a clean-up crew quickly collected in oversized bags and tossed into four waiting pick-up trucks.