Mayor Franklin targets the homeless

By BOB CRAMER
Published on: 09/10/07

Since her first days in office, Mayor Shirley Franklin has presented herself as someone interested in helping Atlanta's homeless. She speaks eloquently about her own father's experience with homelessness, and she has personally told me that she considers serving the homeless "God's work."

Against this backdrop, it is shocking and disappointing that Franklin would go out of her way to try to deny funding to Atlanta's largest facility serving homeless people. In an August letter to the state Housing Trust Fund for the Homeless, she writes, "as the mayor of the city of Atlanta, I am stating that we do not support the allocation of funding for the Peachtree-Pine facility."

One has to question why Franklin is now personally involved in reversing a letter of certification for the Peachtree-Pine facility that her own administration had provided to the state just months earlier. What would cause her to take such an unprecedented action harming hundreds of homeless people? How could she make any judgment on the Peachtree-Pine facility when she has never visited in her two terms in office?

Perhaps Franklin is not really leveling with us when it comes to her support of the homeless. Certainly her record in office does not equate with her rhetoric. Four years ago, she put together a commission that promised to end chronic homelessness in Atlanta in 10 years. This summer even The Atlanta Journal-Constitution editorial board called the commission's efforts far from successful.

Franklin and her team oversold their $10 million, 24-hour Gateway facility. Today this downtown building serves only 300 people at full capacity, thus shutting out homeless people who are forced to sleep outside.

On a broader scale, Franklin supports tearing down more than 3,000 units of public housing. She doesn't say much about it, but I'm sure if she were against evicting more than 9,600 people, many highly vulnerable, she would not hesitate to write a letter. Perhaps the developers in town have persuaded her that she is in office to look after their interests, not the interests of the poor and vulnerable.

Finally, Franklin is not content with just preventing $110,000 of state money from reaching needy homeless people. Her administration is also trying to stop $340,000 of federal Housing and Urban Development funds from coming to the Peachtree Street-located Peachtree-Pine facility. Frankly, if you did not know better, you'd think Franklin was out to get Peachtree-Pine.

Which, of course, is exactly the case. The mayor's premeditated assault on the hundreds of predominantly African-American men who live at and depend on the Peachtree-Pine facility needs to be spelled out in black and white for all to see. Her recent letter to the state shows her true agenda. It is truly disheartening that she would stoop so low.