Latest news with #CorneliusTaylor
Yahoo
05-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Advocates upset as city restarts homeless sweeps following man's death earlier this year
Homeless advocates shouted, 'Shame on the mayor' and the city of Atlanta for restarting the clearing of homeless encampments. Mayor Andre Dickens pushed back, saying the city and its partners are working to safely remove the unhoused after a tragedy earlier this year. Dickens said plenty of notice was given, and officers were on hand to safely remove the unhoused. That's after heavy equipment killed Cornelius Taylor while he was still in his tent on Old Wheat Street near Ebenezer Baptist Church in January. Homeless advocates blasted the city for rebooting the sweeps during a news conference on Old Wheat Street. 'Shame on you Mr. Mayor,' Gus Hendricks said, who is unhoused and was a friend of Taylor's shouted. 'Shame,' those gathered at the news conference said in unison. RELATED STORIES: Volunteers cleaning up homeless camp where man killed by city vehicle Funeral for Cornelius Taylor held at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta Protestors want sweeps of homeless camps stopped after man killed by City of Atlanta bulldozer Other speakers said the city shouldn't restart the sweeps without ensuring the city can put those removed in permanent housing. 'It does not need to be this way,' Alison Johnson with the Housing Justice League said. Others also condemned the city's actions. 'It is violent to come and remove people,' Mawuli Davis, the attorney for Taylor's family said. People at the news conference said we should never forget Taylor's name, 'Let us say his name. Cornelius Taylor,' Pastor Nolan English with Traveling Grace Ministries said to the crowd. The crowd responded: 'Cornelius Taylor.' In a news release, Dickens says the city restarted the encampment closures based on the 2025 Task Force on Homelessness Response. It urged safely removing encampments because they are a health and safety hazard. The mayor also pointed out the encampments are unlawful when located under highways and bridges. Police removed those living under I-20 on Pryor Street on Monday morning. Officers blocked off Pryor Street while they cleared the area. Dickens said the unhoused will be relocated to safe and secure housing. English didn't put much trust in the mayor's words. 'Safe and secure housing that is, one, temporary. And two, highly conditional,' English said. Tim Franzen with the Coalition for Justice for Cornelius Taylor said the city will put up those removed in temporary shelters, and that's not the answer. 'These shelters that they end up in, oftentimes they're kicked out the next morning at 7,' Franzen said. He said they will lose all their belongings in the sweeps and will have to start over. The advocates want permanent housing with wrap-around services. The advocates told people in the encampments on Old Wheat Street they would be removed on Tuesday. 'I don't have nowhere to go,' Cecilia Chandler said as she moved her tent. She said she is 65 and doesn't want to move. She was asked what she would tell the mayor. 'Please find us somewhere to stay.' The mayor says the city and its partners are working to provide shelter referrals and transitions to permanent and supportive housing. The mayor's office says it is not clearing the Old Wheat encampment on Tuesday.
Yahoo
03-05-2025
- Yahoo
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. The post Atlanta's Largest Homeless Encampment Is About to Be Cleared appeared first on Capital B News - Atlanta.
New York Times
29-03-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
In Cities' Rush to Clear Homeless Camps, People Have Been Crushed to Death
Cornelius Taylor's promise to visit his family this past Christmas was one of many he had broken in his decades living on the streets. But Darlene Chaney could not stay mad at the troubled cousin raised as her brother. When he called soon after the holiday from the ragged encampment he called home, she made plans to take him to a movie. They never spoke again. A few weeks later, a clearance crew descended on the Atlanta site, a block from the historic Ebenezer Baptist Church, and their heavy equipment crushed his tent as he lay undetected inside. With homelessness at a modern peak, leaders as ideologically different as President Trump and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California are demanding the destruction of more encampments, arguing they spread fire and crime, block traffic, impede business and commandeer whole city blocks, covering sidewalks with needles and waste. The Supreme Court bolstered their efforts last year by ruling that authorities could ban public sleeping. After an encampment fire closed a major Atlanta highway, Mayor Andre Dickens, a progressive Democrat, began a campaign last year to remove encampments under bridges, saying the people living in them posed threat to themselves, their companions and the city. 'It impacts schools, it impacts commerce, and it impacts people's lives,' he said of the road closure. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times. Thank you for your patience while we verify access. Already a subscriber? Log in. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
23-02-2025
- Yahoo
Volunteers cleaning up homeless camp where man killed by city vehicle
Dozens of volunteers gathered on Saturday to clean up a homeless encampment where a man was killed last month. Cornelius Taylor died when a City of Atlanta vehicle ran over this tent while clearing the encampment on Auburn Ave. Advocates for Atlanta's homeless population have called on the city to end these sweeps and find real solutions. Channel 2′s Bryan Mims was among those from volunteer organization Hosea Helps cleaning the camp who used Taylor's name as a rallying cry. [DOWNLOAD: Free WSB-TV News app for alerts as news breaks] 'When his body was crushed, that did not take the spirit of survival, the spirit of resistance, the spirit of community away from us,' Taylor's family's attorney Mawuli Davis said. Taylor's sister, Darlene Chaney, said that her brother deserved a clean place to lay his head. 'He was worthy of having a place that was clean. He was worthy of being fed. He was worthy of living a life that he desired,' Chaney said. RELATED STORIES: Funeral for Cornelius Taylor held at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta Atlanta City Council to vote on creation of Homelessness Task Force after Cornelius Taylor death Atlanta rethinks clearing homeless camps after a man is crushed inside his tent Atlanta mayor calls for moratorium on homeless encampment sweeps, organizers want more done They are calling for a city policy to provide safe and stable housing in an effort to show what it means to love your neighbor. 'I just want to make sure we can help the next person, that this doesn't happen again, for one. Hopefully at the end of the day, we can get people a home,' Chaney said. Volunteers told Mims they plan to clean homeless camps as often as needed. [SIGN UP: WSB-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter]
Associated Press
20-02-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
Advocates fear Georgia bill advanced by Republicans could land more homeless people in jail
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia House Republicans advanced a bill Wednesday that would let property owners get compensated by local governments if they don't enforce bans on homeless encampments and sanctuary laws that limit local cooperation with federal immigration authorities. The bill comes weeks after Cornelius Taylor was killed when a bulldozer crushed him inside his tent while destroying a homeless encampment in Atlanta. It also comes amid a slew of proposals across Republican states, including Georgia, to reinforce rules for local law enforcement agencies to cooperate with federal immigration officials. The bill passed 8-5 along party lines and would let property owners file claims amounting to lost property value or incurred expenses from local governments failing to enforce laws also prohibiting panhandling, shoplifting, public urination and loitering in addition to encampments and sanctuary policies. 'Our hope with this bill is it is never used,' said Athens Republican Rep. Houston Gaines, the bill's sponsor. 'Our hope is that local governments simply do their job and enforce the laws of our state and their local governments, and then no one would ever be able to utilize this.' Opponents, including housing advocates, lawyers and affordable housing providers, said the bill could lead to frivolous lawsuits and would lead police to jail more homeless people, which would only make their situation worse. Many cities aren't equipped with enough programs and infrastructure to house homeless people, leaving many with no place to sleep but the streets. 'Pressure on cities and counties to increase incarceration for crimes and survival is a mistake that benefits no one,' said Michael Nolan from Intown Cares, a nonprofit that serves homeless people. 'If we want to reduce the effects of homelessness on Georgians, we have to reduce homelessness, point blank. This bill would only kick that can further down the road.' Going to jail interferes with homeless people's ability to get housing, opponents testified during Wednesday's hearing, which would keep them homeless for longer. For example, people with criminal records aren't able to get into certain housing programs and people could get removed from a housing waitlist while in jail without knowing. It also could worsen their mental health. State lawmakers should instead invest more in affordable housing, opponents said. A lack of affordable housing is widely cited as a root cause of homelessness. Supporters of the bill said it does not criminalize homelessness and doesn't stop local governments from investing in other programs. They say it merely holds local governments accountable for keeping constituents safe, especially when shelter isn't immediately available for homeless people. 'We've got to protect everybody, and we do need to find better ways to serve people in the community,' said Rep. Jesse Petrea, a Savannah Republican. 'There's a better solution than doing what we're doing.' Rep. Yasmin Neal, a Jonesboro Democrat, asked whether the bill would penalize local law enforcement for not having enough resources to respond to all the crimes mentioned in the bill. Gaines, the bill's sponsor, responded, saying the bill deals with a 'systematic' failure by governments to enforce the law rather than individual police actions. Noah Roenitz from the Georgia Municipal Association worries the bill could penalize local governments for decisions by district attorneys to dismiss charges. The bill would also protect businesses from illegal activity near their storefronts, which impacts customers and employees, supporters said. Voters last year approved a similar ballot measure in Arizona that would let property owners apply for a property tax refund if a locality doesn't enforce laws on public camping, panhandling and others mentioned in Georgia's bill. Alethea Allison, who was once homeless with two daughters after she was injured in a car accident in 2020, urged lawmakers at the Gold Dome to oppose the bill. She now works for Project Community Connections, which helped her get housing, but worries this bill would hinder people from escaping unfortunate circumstances by incentivizing officers to put them in jail. 'Pushing people to the brink and then punishing them for that is not the right choice,' Allison told lawmakers. 'We don't need anything like handcuffs. We need help.'
