Last month, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens held a press conference with U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Deputy Secretary Jemine Bryon to celebrate a windfall of federal funding for local nonprofits that house people living with HIV and AIDS.
It was, by all accounts, a joyous affair — and a chance to highlight a redemptive opportunity after the city in 2019 struggled to disburse HUD funds on time to nonprofits handling the actual rent payments for clients living with HIV.
But immediately after the press conference, Dickens’ tone shifted. Stone-faced, he interrupted an interview this Atlanta Civic Circle reporter was conducting with Bryon to hand her a sheet of paper. On it, a spreadsheet broke down how much HUD money local governments receive to rehouse people experiencing homelessness from the federal agency’s Continuum of Care (CoC) program.
In the 2023 fiscal year, the document showed, Miami and Boston — major metropolises with populations comparable to Atlanta’s — claimed $16,000 and $17,000, respectively, in federal CoC funds for each unhoused person they counted during the annual, HUD-mandated Point-in-Time study.
But Atlanta received less than $5,000 for each of the 2,679 people it determined were living on the streets or in shelters, totaling just over $13.2 million.
“We need to talk about this,” Dickens told Bryon. “We need to talk about making some changes.”
Atlanta deserves more federal funding to mitigate homelessness, he meant, and the mayor will pressure HUD to take a hard look at this “inequity,” he told Atlanta Civic Circle in exclusive text messages.
Point-in-Time unhoused tally
About a week earlier, Cathryn Vassell, the head of Partners For Home, Atlanta’s primary homeless services agency, had shared the same spreadsheet during a Zoom call discussing the city’s latest Point-in-Time findings.
The headcount, taken every January, showed a 7% uptick in homelessness for fiscal year 2024 — increasing to 2,867 people from 2,679 people in 2023.
Nationwide, Atlanta ranks fifth for homelessness per capita, trailing only New York City, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, and Boston, Vassell noted — but the federal Continuum of Care funding the city receives each year doesn’t reflect that.
“We continue to get a fraction of investment from HUD, compared to other major metropolitan cities,” Vassell said. “Comparable CoC [grantees] are getting three to four times more funding from HUD than Atlanta.”
That’s in part because the city of Atlanta wasn’t ambitious enough about seeking federal Continuum of Care dollars in the 1990s, when HUD began allocating the funding to nonprofits for transitional housing and related supportive services.
“Atlanta was slow to apply when these funds first came out in the early ‘90s,” Vassell said. “We were not strategic about going after new money.”
Thirty years later, HUD distributes CoC money separately to Atlanta, Fulton County, and DeKalb County governments. But even now, with a combined $23.7 million in CoC funding for Fiscal Year 2023, the three jurisdictions collected only $7,288 for each of the 3,246 total unhoused people they counted during the Point-in-Time initiative.
That figure still pales in comparison to the $16,000 or $17,000 per person that metro Miami and Boston secured — and those cities each tallied only between 2,800 and 2,900 people living without a permanent roof over their heads during Fiscal Year 2023.
HUD responds
A Dickens spokesperson said in an email that the mayor is pressing federal officials to boost Atlanta’s CoC funding — and that HUD recognizes that the city receives a disproportionately smaller amount than other major cities with similar homeless populations.
A HUD spokesperson said the agency is waiting on Dickens’ office to set up a meeting, adding that HUD’s CoC funding decisions stem from “several factors.”
“Total funding available is capped by congressional appropriations,” she said. “The CoC program is required by statute to be a competitive, rather than formula grant program, meaning communities must apply through a competitive process to obtain funds.”
“The level of funding that communities receive is based on both their overall CoC application score as well as the scores of their individual projects,” the spokesperson continued. “Funding levels are affected by a local CoC’s annual renewal demand, such that CoCs that have a higher number of renewal projects tend to have a higher baseline of funds for which they can apply.”