The City of Atlanta has taken a step toward providing quickly built alternatives to traditional shelters as a means of getting the city’s homeless off the streets and on paths toward better lives, officials said today.
The Invest Atlanta Board of Directors has approved a line of credit up to $7.5 million that will fund so-called rapid housing initiatives in Atlanta, as financed through the city’s Housing Opportunity Bond Fund.
According to Mayor Andre Dickens’ office, that funding will enable the city and its partners The Atlanta Continuum of Care to start building flexible communities with 500 “low-cost micro units” that can be quickly built. Those units, according to the city, can serve as temporary, semipermanent, or permanent shelters and housing for Atlanta’s current unhoused population.
Dickens said the housing options will have a small footprint but provide a substantial benefit to intown communities. In August, the city unveiled plans to build temporary homeless housing from former shipping containers on a South Downtown parking lot on Forsyth Street and another on underused property in Mechanicsville—the latter involving a land swap with Atlanta Public Schools.
According to the city’s announcement today, the Partners for HOME program “anticipates introducing the first location of these [rapid housing] communities to the City of Atlanta by December 31” this year. (Partners for HOME works with Atlanta Continuum of Care, a HUD program, to help end homelessness around the city.) We’ve asked city officials if the $7.5 million approved by Invest Atlanta’s board will be used to open housing options on Forsyth Street, in Mechanicsville, or some other location first; we’ll update this article should clarity be provided.
All units will aim to provide low-barrier alternatives to traditional shelters with access to wraparound services such as healthcare and employment, per city officials.
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