Almost a month after moving into the city of Atlanta’s first cargo container village, Wanda Sutton still hasn’t fully acclimated to life under a real roof. 

She’d spent some three years taking shelter beneath a bridge near the Georgia State University MARTA station, and she sometimes wakes up these days surprised to be warm under the covers in a real bed, protected by four sturdy walls and a door that locks.

“Am I really in my own place?” she’ll ask herself. “It’s unbelievable in a way.”

It’s not lost on Sutton just how lucky she is to have gained residency at The Melody. The city debuted the 40-unit shipping container apartment complex, located at 184 Forsyth St. SW in downtown Atlanta, at the beginning of February to rapidly rehouse people living on the street. The rent at Sutton’s new one-bedroom container home is free for her, defrayed by the city and, likely soon, by Atlanta Housing vouchers.

But she worries for the hundreds of other Atlantans locked out of a prohibitively expensive housing market, who must continue to weather the elements to survive.

“No human should have to sleep in the cold,” Sutton said.

As Georgia State University sociology professor Deirdre Oakley put it, “The city of Atlanta is no longer affordable,” especially for people on the lowest rungs of the income ladder.

Oakley, a housing expert, said the city’s new “rapid housing” program is part of an important push to place people experiencing homelessness in safe, stable, and affordable apartments — but it’s also a stopgap measure to facilitate the city’s effort to get rid of tent cities.

Clearing out encampments

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens’ office is preparing to sweep out a number of encampments under intown bridges — like the one where Sutton once lived — and it recently announced a plan to use part of the Old Fourth Ward’s now-vacant Atlanta Medical Center site for temporary housing for unhoused people,…