Debi Starnes, the mayor's policy advisor on homelessness, said the shelter, which can accommodate 1,000 people per night, is too big to be properly managed. She also said it fails to adequately help the homeless make the transition to a better life.
This year, the city cut off its funding of the shelter, which is run by the nonprofit Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless. However, the shelter carries on with a mix of other public and private funds. In fact, it is in the midst of a multi- million-dollar renovation of its historic, 95,000-square-foot building. It will eventually include a coffee shop and retail business to help teach its residents a trade.
Anita Beaty, the task force's executive director, said the shelter is misunderstood. She says it provides employment referrals, mental health counseling and other services. The problem, she says, is that local government has not come to grips with the magnitude of its homeless problem. Beaty's group estimates that as many as 68,000 people in the metro area are homeless in any given year.
(The city estimates that there were about 2,700 "unsheltered" homeless people last year in Atlanta and the urban counties of Fulton and DeKalb.)
Beaty says local governments do not maintain enough shelter space for all the homeless. This, she says, is the last place for them to go.
Beaty is also convinced that the city is trying to move the homeless off Peachtree Street, Atlanta's signature thoroughfare. The city has plans for a sweeping aesthetic makeover of Peachtree: Business boosters have talked about a Georgia version of Paris' Champs-Elysees.
"The emphasis has always been on beautifying Peachtree to get rid of those poor homeless people, to get them out of town," Beaty said. "We say there's no way to do that. It's just inhumane and silly."
Beaty said the Bum Bot doesn't help matters: "Not everybody outside our building is a drug dealer, and when they are, we want them arrested as much as [Terrill]. A robot is not the way to solve anything."
But Terrill said the robot has done a good job scaring off the law-breakers. On a recent Wednesday evening, he ambled toward the day-care parking lot with his creation rolling along at his side. When he arrived about 11:30 p.m., the lot was empty.
(Later, however, after he packed up the robot, dozens of men would swarm the place, hooting after passing vehicles.)
