03-05-2025
Atlanta's Largest Homeless Encampment Is About to Be Cleared
Atlanta's largest homeless encampment is scheduled to be 'decommissioned' on Monday as city officials continue working to clear potentially hazardous tent cities in the wake of the January tragedy that resulted in Cornelius Taylor's death.
Up until recently, the encampment located downtown beneath Interstate 20 on Pryor Street was home to as many as 80 unhoused people living in about 100 tents, according to nonprofit homeless aid workers affiliated with Atlanta's continuum of care network.
The site's scheduled clearing at 7:30 a.m. Monday comes amid the city's ongoing efforts to combat a gentrification-fueled rise in homelessness that has caused more primarily Black, low-income residents to end up on the streets, in shelters, and in extended stay hotels.
The office of Mayor Andre Dickens confirmed the Pryor Street tent city closing via email Friday night.
'This closure will follow the recommendations of the 2025 Task Force on Homelessness Response, which established new procedures for how the City safely manages encampment closures,' the mayor's office said in an emailed statement.
'The City and [the Georgia Department of Transportation] remain committed to conducting all closures humanely, safely, and transparently, in full consideration of the rights and needs of the unhoused community.'
Some unhoused residents are eager to get off the streets and see the tent city's closure as a push to get back on their feet.
David Grant, a disabled 63-year-old former warehouse worker, told Capital B Atlanta on Friday that he's been living at the Pryor Street encampment for two years after losing his apartment due in part to rising rental rates and his struggle with drug addiction.
'I'm going wherever y'all house me,' Grant said on Friday. 'I'm good inside. I'm good outside. I'm an indoor-outdoor person, [but] I'd rather be inside.'
J-avon Montgomery, 31, said he'd rather stay on the street than live in a shelter, fearing thieves and other dangerous people. The fast-food worker said he maintains full custody of his 14-year-old daughter, who occasionally stays with him on Pryor Street in the tent he's been inhabiting for nearly two years. He said he recently relocated to an outdoor area in southern Fulton County that he feels is safer than the city's housing program.
'That doesn't make sense for me to move somewhere that's still not gonna be a safe location,' Montgomery said. 'There's gonna be more people over there that do drugs and steal than it is in this free area [where] I can move around.'
Homeless encampments have grown larger around the city amid its affordable housing crisis. Officials have struggled at times to balance compassionate care for the homeless with the need to remove potentially dangerous tent cities, where shootings, drug use, and other crimes are recurring problems.
'People might not know the dangers that go on within an encampment,' Chatiqua Ellison, leader of the city's homelessness task force, told Capital B Atlanta on Tuesday. 'It's just important that we as a city make sure that people aren't in such a dangerous environment as it continues to grow and become a predatory area for anybody who wants to go potentially prey on the individuals who are there.'
Aid workers said the Pryor Street tent city has been around since 2020 but has grown rapidly over the past year due to the city's higher cost of living, causing more low-income Atlanta residents to lose their homes.
'We've had lots of people who have said their rent has gone up $300 a month,' Amanda Van Dalen, director of coordinate entry at the Gateway Center, a homeless services center, told Capital B Atlanta on Friday.
'There's not enough affordable housing,' she continued. 'We also need some protections around raising the rent so high. If rents weren't being raised at an astronomical level during re-leasing, there wouldn't be a surge in new homelessness.'
Officials say the city originally intended to clear the Pryor Street encampment in February, but those plans were put on hold due to a 45-day moratorium on tent city demolitions that the Atlanta City Council approved after Taylor's death on Jan. 16.
Witnesses said he was killed by a construction vehicle used to clear a tent city on Old Wheat Street near the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. once served as pastor.
An investigation into Taylor's official cause of death is still ongoing.
The city's moratorium on encampment clearings ended in March. Homeless aid staffers with the Gateway Center and Partners for HOME say they have spent weeks urging unhoused residents at the Pryor Street encampment to seek shelter with the city's temporary Rapid Housing Initiative and the more-permanent supportive housing provided by the recently opened Ralph David House, among other aid programs.
Their sense of urgency increased on April 18 after a fire at the Pryor Street site destroyed several people's tents. No fatalities were reported. Similar fires in recent years have damaged bridges and resulted in major throughways being temporarily shut down.
Ellison's homelessness task force was created in February following Taylor's death to determine ways to improve the city's homeless services and ensure what allegedly happened to Taylor never happens again.
Ellison presented the task force's 45-day preliminary findings at a City Council Community Development/Human Services Committee meeting on Tuesday. The task force is scheduled to deliver its final report in June.
The coalition of aid workers, Atlanta officials, and community leaders determined that the city's current homeless strategy 'lacks wholistic oversight and coordination,' according to the report.
The group also concluded Atlanta's shelter system and emergency temporary housing options are 'inadequate,' due in part to 'insufficient resources throughout the ecosystem.'
Recommended changes to standard operating procedures on the day encampments are scheduled to be cleared include taking a 'multi-step approach' to ensuring the 'vacancy of structures.'
That approach includes outreach teams performing 'knock checks' after encouraging resident to leave, the use of thermal sensors to ensure the area is vacant, 'minimizing' use of heavy machinery, a final visual check conducted by Department of Public Works staffers or assigned contractors, and a final 'sign-off' by the mayor's office before clearing takes place.
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