I’m George Chidi. I work on policy related to homelessness, substance abuse, mental illness and other quality-of-life issues for the Atlanta Downtown Business District. I am a former staff writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and occasionally provide commentary to local television on matters related to politics and policy.
I felt it necessary to reach out to you all after reading Megan Reed’s story in the Gainesville Times today, regarding your Midtown Overlay District zoning. (Published here: https://www.gainesvilletimes.com/news/new-midtown-overlay-rules-ban-variety-uses-including-homeless-shelters-pawn-shops-coin-laundries).
Hall County’s most recent homelessness point in time count for 2017 showed 123 people experiencing homelessness there. That number is almost certainly wrong. Hall County has about 200,000 residents. One out of six live in poverty. Nationally, about 1 percent of people living in poverty are homeless: one would expect the county to generate roughly 300 homeless people simply from economic conditions. Schizophrenia occurs in roughly one percent of the population, and roughly three in a hundred people living with schizophrenia are homeless. Simply as a matter of statistical inference, I would expect Hall County to have at least 60 people living with schizophrenia on the street, never mind those with other psychiatric disorders. (Schizophrenia is the most common.)
Gainesville city schools have about 8,000 students. According to the documentation submitted to the federal government for McKinney-Vento funding in 2016-2017, 3.62 percent of those students were homeless. That’s about 290 students. Many of those students have parents experiencing homelessness as well.
Hall County reported only 87 emergency and transitional shelter beds.
(As an aside, I went looking for the right contact at the city and county for a conversation about homelessness. This page, on the county website? Embarrassing. https://www.hallcounty.org/881/Homeless-Assistance)
I don’t object to zoning decisions that place shelter operations where they make the most sense in a municipality. I do object to zoning decisions that restrict shelter operations when existing services are plainly not meeting the needs of your community, because it effectively raises the costs on ours as those burdens inevitably shift to the streets of downtown Atlanta.
Downtown Atlanta has struggled with a persistent problem: city and county agencies outside of Atlanta underfunding supportive services, then sending people in need … here. Staff at Grady Memorial Hospital regularly tell us that sheriff’s deputies from outlying counties – including Hall County – have dropped people seeking mental health treatment at their emergency room. HOPE Atlanta – a social services charity here that helps people stranded in the city and works on housing and mental illness problems – regularly tells us that people are sent here from cities across the country. Including Gainesville.
Atlanta shoulders these burdens as a consequence of our size and our international profile. Gainesville, with its Level 1 trauma center, certainly has a similar problem with north Georgia counties struggling with health care provision offloading patients at Northeast Georgia Medical Center. The hospital picked up $19.8 million in indigent care costs from Hall County residents last year … and another $15.4 million from residents outside Hall County. (Looking at you, Dalton.)
But there are limits.
I’m looking for a test case for a lawsuit. The degree to which counties outside of Fulton and DeKalb underfund their expected needs related to homelessness and mental illness is a glorious political and economic strategy. Lower taxes for you, making your community more tax competitive. But it’s exacerbating significant medical problems. I believe a very expensive ADA case can be made around this issue, particularly when residents of other counties end up here through direct governmental action – a deputy at Grady’s doorstep, or a county case worker telling someone to get on a bus to Peachtree Street.
I’m asking local police and social services agencies, the Ambassador Force downtown and Grady Hospital to put Hall County on our radar. As we see people in need shunted from Gainesville to Atlanta, we’ll be taking names and testimonies.
If you would like to discuss this further, feel free to call. Thanks.