When temperatures drop below 40 degrees, the city of Atlanta typically issues a press release announcing that it will open two emergency warming centers — the Old Adamsville Recreation Center on the Westside and the Central Park Recreation Center in Old Fourth Ward.
But a press release today announcing the city will open warming centers tonight and tomorrow night had a glaring blank spot: The Old Adamsville Recreation Center was notably absent, signaling the apparent deactivation of one of the city’s two primary warming center sites. That would leave just one city-run option, the Central Park Recreation Center, for unhoused people seeking potentially lifesaving refuge from the harsh winter elements.
A few hours later, however, Mayor Andre Dickens’ office assured Atlanta Civic Circle that the Old Adamsville Recreation Center would, in fact, open as a warming center. But City Councilmember Andrea Boone and Cathryn Vassell, the head of the homeless services nonprofit Partners For Home, said in text messages that they weren’t so sure.
This confusion over what city-run warming centers are available for people experiencing homelessness comes just over a week after the Atlanta City Council quickly — and without public input — passed legislation trying to prevent emergency warming centers from operating within 1,000 feet of schools. The Adamsville location on the Westside neighbors the Frederick Douglass 9th Grade STEAM Academy.
Boone, who authored the Dec. 2 resolution, has said the goal was to keep kids safe from unhoused people who may struggle with addiction or mental health challenges, even though there is no evidence to suggest that people experiencing homelessness pose any particular threat to schoolchildren.
Boone said last week that, due to constituents’ concerns about children’s safety, she aimed to stop the city from using the Adamsville rec center as a warming center and relocate the crucial resource — but she did not know where.
The Adamsville location’s absence on the city’s Dec. 11 warming center announcement led many to believe the city had permanently decommissioned it as a warming center. What might that mean for people who seek shelter there tonight, homeless advocates wondered.
“Not only is it nearly impossible that this memo actually reaches the people who depend on this warming center, but it is also unclear what will happen for the people who arrive at the Old Adamsville Recreation Center tonight seeking warmth,” the Center for Civic Innovation said in its own press release.
That statement was written before Atlanta Civic Circle notified the organization that the mayor’s office claimed the Adamsville rec center would open as a warming center on Dec. 11 and Dec. 12. But as of 2 p.m., the warming-center press release on the city’s website still only mentioned the Central Park location.
Where are warming centers allowed?
Not only is the fate of the Adamsville warming center up in the air from the newly passed legislation; it also calls into question where else the city can operate warming centers.
Jason Hudgens, a pastor at Calvary United Methodist Church, said he had hoped the city could run a warming center out of his church, which is located in Westview at 1471 Ralph David Abernathy Blvd. “But the KIPP Academy is literally in our backyard,” he said.
“I think [this legislation] shows where our priorities are as a community,” Hudgens said. “We’ve seen our city invest in sporting events — with the upcoming World Cup and the Super Bowl and the NCAA championship — and in the Beltline. But when it comes to the most vulnerable in our city, we don’t see that same level of investment or that same level of commitment.”
That the new city council legislation could deactivate the Adamsville warming center and prevent other locations from replacing it is “really shameful,” said Monica Johnson, the organizing director of the nonprofit Housing Justice League.
“Adamsville is clearly on the other side of town,” she said. “People who need shelter out that far west will not be able to easily make it to Central Park at all — and it should be embarrassing to the mayor’s office to put out a press release announcing only one warming center.”
“If anyone freezes to death as a result of this,” Johnson added, “their blood will be squarely on the hands of the mayor and council.”