Outcry after Atlanta tosses unhoused people’s belongings near World Cup spot

A woman carries groceries at a homeless encampment in the vicinity of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, temporarily renamed Atlanta Stadium, in May. Photograph: Megan Varner/Reuters View image in fullscreen A woman carries groceries at a homeless encampment in the vicinity of Mercedes-Benz Stadium, temporarily renamed Atlanta Stadium, in May. Photograph: Megan Varner/Reuters Outcry after Atlanta tosses unhoused people’s belongings near World Cup spot City official says staffers were performing ‘routine park maintenance’ where 15 people have gathered for months City employees in Atlanta , Georgia, recently threw away tents, medication, identification and other belongings of unhoused people at a public park without warning. This led activists and a local official to point to an apparent violation of procedures created after a city employee ran over a tent with a front loader last year, killing a man. The sweep through the park occurred less than a mile from a popular spot for World Cup watch parties, drawing into focus ongoing tension over the issue of what happens to the city’s several thousand unhoused people during the month-long event. A city official said the park where about 15 people have gathered for months was “not an encampment” and that the incident was not a sweep. Instead, city staffers were performing “routine park maintenance” last week when they threw out people’s belongings, wrote Chatiqua Ellison, Atlanta senior adviser on homelessness, in an email to the Guardian – and therefore procedures developed last year after months of meetings, including giving unhoused people ample warning before arriving at a camp, did not apply. But Atlanta city council member Kelsea Bond, whose district includes Freedom Park, disagreed. “It’s disappointing that the city is more concerned about the strict, and perhaps arbitrary, definition of ‘encampment’ here rather than the impact these kinds of clearings have on the houseless community,” Bond said. “[Incidents] like this are disorienting and traumatizing no matter whether they adhere to the mayor’s office’s specific definitions. Our focus should always been on the impact of a policy, not the intention on paper,” the council member said. The recent incident calls into question the city’s approach to the World Cup and homelessness, as exhibited by the Atlanta mayor, Andre Dickens, months before the event, when he told media : “We want to make sure those unsheltered individuals don’t come anywhere downtown, and throughout the city of Atlanta, not just during the World Cup, but now.” Downtown Atlanta is where Mercedes Benz stadium is located. Atlanta, New York-New Jersey and Los Angeles all are hosting eight matches, second only to Dallas, host to nine. Meanwhile, activists said that at least two downtown Atlanta parks where unhoused people gather were also fenced off in recent weeks, leaving dozens of unhoused people to scatter to other parts of the city, disrupting everything from healthcare to the friendships th