Mechanicsville residents question land for homeless

ATLANTA — An Atlanta City Council committee voted Wednesday on a land swap to obtain land on Cooper Street from Atlanta Public Schools.

Residents of Atlanta’s Mechanicsville community have expressed concerns about whether the site, which is now home to an encampment filled with dozens of people, will become housing for those without homes.

“We work with human beings who are in really difficult situations,” said Cathryn Vassell, CEO of Partners for Home.

Vassell added that supportive housing is a step toward a solution.

“(Housing) would ultimately eradicate a lot of the problems associated with encampments, like crime, trash and public health issues,” she said.

RELATED: Atlanta’s Mechanicsville Community Concerns About Land That Will Serve as Homeless Shelter

Vassell said she has been visiting the site for about a year now.

“It used to be smaller and we housed 63 people from this location, which created a little magnet effect where people say, ‘Hey, if you come here, you can be housed from this place'”. Vassell said.

She estimates there are between 60 and 80 people living in the area.

Vassell said the plan for the land is for it to become housing for homeless people as part of a broader rapid housing initiative, which will create 500 new housing units for homeless people by end of next year. She said this was just one of the sites they were working on.

“We are currently looking at all different types of housing products for future sites,” Vassell said when asked what the homes would be built of. “We’re looking at traditional stick construction, we’re looking at modular construction, we’re really keeping all options open at the moment.”

The question she answered stemmed from community curiosity about whether this could be another shipping container site converted into a drop-in site like the one the city had previously opened.

“With this one, it’s a much larger site, and we plan to build more mixed-income multifamily housing there,” Vassell said, adding that they haven’t determined how many units would be on the Cooper Street site.

Vassell said they are still in the early stages and nothing is finalized. She said the team is open to listening to the community and using their feedback in future design.

“Continued neighborhood and community engagement,” Vassell said of the site’s next steps. “The city has to finalize the land swap, so I think the approval from the city council was just one more step in that process. And moving forward with the conceptual design, the architectural drawings, the planning and development of the site, it is therefore still far from being completed.