The city of Atlanta has just opened its pilot shipping container village downtown to rapidly rehouse 40 people who were previously homeless—and Mayor Andre Dickens says that’s just the beginning.

Before the end of 2025, Dickens said last week during a ribbon-cutting ceremony for The Melody rental complex, his administration intends to create 500 new residences for unhoused people out of converted cargo containers. Atlanta Housing, the city’s public housing authority, is expected to subsidize their rents.

But that’s all much easier said than done.

The city constructed The Melody, its first shipping container apartment project, at 184 Forsyth Street, just north of the Greyhound bus station, the Garnett MARTA station, and Magic City strip club on a stretch lined with bail bonds shops. It’s located just a few blocks from the Atlanta City Detention Center and Gateway Center homeless shelter.

The complex replaced a city-owned parking lot with 40 small apartments resembling college dorm rooms. Residents will have access to a number of supportive services, including job training and help with mental health and substance use issues.

“We’re not adding new residents to your neighborhood,” Dickens said of the downtown development. “They’re actually already there: They’re just living in tents, or in cars, or in extended-stay hotels. They’re staying with friends or family, or under underpasses, desperately looking for permanent homes.”

While most of Atlanta’s homeless population is concentrated in the city’s urban core, many also live in more residential neighborhoods, where homeowners are more likely to take issue with the development of cargo container communities to rehouse homeless Atlantans.

Already, residents of Mechanicsville, located about a mile south of The Melody, have pushed back against…