Advocates say Atlanta one of three top cities unfriendly to homeless

Posted 7:18AM on Thursday 17th January 2002 ( 23 years ago )

ATLANTA - Atlanta ranks right up there with New York and San Francisco when it comes to being harsh on the homeless, according to two Washington-based advocacy groups. The Georgia capital ``continues to treat its homeless people as criminals,'' said a report by The National Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty. Their study analyzed data from 80 communities in 37 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. The report said a large problem in Atlanta is the number of citations issued for urinating and sleeping in public, using parks after hours and loitering. Tim Love, civil rights monitor for the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, said there were 436 public urination arrests in Atlanta from October 2000 through December 2001, based on information from the city jail. Anita Beaty, executive director of the task force, said that ``on any given night in metro Atlanta, there are six times as many homeless people as there are shelter spaces for them.'' Police say they are just enforcing the law. ``We're not trying to pick on any particular group,'' Police Department spokesman Sgt. John Quigley said. ``We're out there trying to do the things that the Legislature and the City Council have passed in order to protect the rights of all its citizens,'' Quigley said. ``If that means you can't sleep overnight in a park, you can't sleep overnight in a park. That's not something we're trying to be mean with.'' Some people in downtown Atlanta say even more should be done to steer homeless people and their toilet habits away from parks and public streets. ``It stinks when you walk down the street in the morning,'' said Arash Karimi, who runs Alphagraphics across from Woodruff Park, where homeless people congregate. ``Businesses have moved out,'' he said, adding that he's thinking of moving, too.

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