Man stabbed multiple times outside Peachtree-Pine shelter
Friday morning incident the most recent violent crime reported outside the homeless shelter located just south of Midtown.
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A man who told police that he was a Poncey-Highland resident told investigators that was stabbed four times by another man during an early Friday morning incident outside the Peachtree-Pine homeless shelter just south of Midtown.
According to the Atlanta police report, an altercation ensued outside the shelter near the intersection of Peachtree and Pine streets around 3:30 a.m. The suspect told the victim he owed him $60 and not long after began hitting the victim.
When the 33-year-old victim began to fight back, the suspect allegedly produced a knife and stabbed the victim four times, including once to the left side of his neck and arm.
The suspect, described by the victim as a light-skinned black, standing 5-foot-11 to 6-feet tall with dreadlocks, then fled the area on foot. The victim was transported to nearby Emory University Hospital Midtown with serious stab wounds that were not considered life threatening.
Earlier this month, three women were robbed at gunpoint near the shelter, while four weeks back a taxi cab driver was assaulted by several men and robbed after dropping off a passenger near the Peachtree-Pine shelter building, which is operated by the Metropolitan Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless.
The hospital, located at 550 Peachtree Street, is situated just a block away from the shelter and concern has grown for the safety of staff and patients when outside the medical facility.
The most recent incident came less than a week after the City of Atlanta announced that it would benefit greatly from the state receiving more than $4 million in rental assistance to prevent homelessness or unnecessary institutionalization among the state's low-income individuals with disabilities.
The Peachtree-Pine shelter has been housing hundreds of homeless men on a daily basis for the last decade and a half. In addition to helping provide homeless persons needing immediate and emergency assistance, the 95,000 square-foot facility, the largest shelter space in the southeastern United States, has been a source from where a number of problems for Midtown and surrounding neighborhoods have generated.
Atlanta Police Department officials have confirmed that a certain amount of criminal activity that occurs in and around Midtown originates from those staying at and around the shelter.
Last month, the City scored a major legal win over the Task Force for the Homeless that could lead to the 2013 closing of the Peachtree-Pine shelter. In January, the Eleventh Circuit U.S. District Court upheld a 2011 lower court ruling in favor of the City after the Task Force filed a 2008 lawsuit in response to the City seeking to collect on delinquent water and sewer bills.
It marked the latest in a series of legal setbacks for the Task Force and is reportedly the end of the legal process at the federal level.
In February 2012, the Georgia Court of Appeals blocked a Fulton County superior court judge’s decision that the Task Force must relinquish control of the shelter. Control of the shelter was to be handed to the United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta, which was then going to assist the men who stay there find homes.
Atlanta City Councilman Kwanza Hall represents District 2 where the shelter sits. While he declined to comment on the on-going legal flaps over the shelter, Hall did say the time is coming where a change will have to come with regards to the shelter and the men who stay there.
“There’s still a lot of energy around that of course in terms of the neighbors wanting to see some positive change there,” the councilman told Patch last month. “All-in-all, from a philosophical standpoint, I’m firmly behind smaller footprint, supportive housing with a case management and a total structure for job placement and training. If we don’t have that in small footprint facilities, I think it’s too difficult to manage on a large scale the individuals in such a large building.
“I think most of the organizations in the homeless community that offer services agree with that philosophy and I think as a city we have the will and all the resources to bear to make that change happen and to shift the paradigm. I believe it will happen it’s just a matter of time. The legal system is the legal system.”
About three blocks north of the shelter, ground will very soon break on a state-of-the-art, $225 million, 115,000 square-foot cancer-treating proton facility on a 2.39-acre property bounded by Peachtree St., North Ave., Juniper St., and Ponce de Leon Ave.
The Georgia Proton Treatment Center at 615 Peachtree St., the state’s first proton therapy facility and just the 10th in the country, is a joint venture by Emory Healthcare and Advanced Particle Therapy, LLC of San Diego. When completed, it will employ approximately 110 professionals and treat around 1,900 patients annually.
There have been rumors that Emory officials have been buying property in the area of “SoNo” – the south or North Avenue dub-district of Downtown – with hopes of creating a campus-like environment around the hospital that would include mid-rise development.
Marc
8:25 am on Saturday, February 23, 2013
I'm shocked, SHOCKED to hear that a black male commited a violent crime in Midtown Atlanta. I hope that never happens again!
Renaissance_Man_ATL
9:30 am on Saturday, February 23, 2013
What is the status of the Georgia Appeals Court stay? What has to happen for the stay to be lifted? It's time to get that place shut down!
Ruben Brown
10:02 am on Saturday, February 23, 2013
Yeah when they shut it down, there will be more homeless on the streets and more crime will breed.
Bad spellers UNTIE!
10:44 am on Saturday, February 23, 2013
I think we should give them a short window of time to join society as responsible citizens. If they cannot assimilate in that time then ship them out of here. It really is pathetic that there are long term residents at this place. I have absolutely no sympathy for homeless people in this country. I would imagine being homeless in America is still far better than middle class in many countries on this world. The difference is, we hand out the food and shelter. In those countries I you don't work, you starve. It's sad that thousands of people, willing to work, are trying to get into this country everyday and yet these worthless individuals are preying on the same hardworking citizens that provide them with their safety net.
While I do agree that closing the shelter would initially result in more homeless on the streets and likely higher crime, at least it will stop people flocking to midtown to reach the bum Mecca. As the article states this is the largest facility of its kind in the region. People are traveling here for the free ride. Let's put an end to our importation of freeloaders. It will be much easier to police these people when they have no shelter to run to.
N
11:12 am on Saturday, February 23, 2013
Round them up ( like the animals most of them are), give them a Greyhound bus ticket out of town, and let some other metro area deal with them!!!
Bad spellers UNTIE!
11:35 am on Saturday, February 23, 2013
Hunger games?
Andre Dickens
10:46 am on Monday, February 25, 2013
Crime is bad regardless if it comes from a homeless person near a shelter or someone stealing people's pensions or life savings. Whether the criminal is black (as I notice that Marc likes to make a case about often as though this isn't a metro with the highest number of blacks in the US and the north fulton/gwinnett/cobb suburban jails have their share of non-black criminals from DUI, abuse, and larceny) or they are some other race, doesn't matter because all crime is bad. The only truth in all this is that facilities that only provide housing and food rations are unsustainable and often unsuccessful. Structured programs for job training, counseling, and coaching should replace extended stay shelters. I can even see the benefit of large gymnasium style shelters when the temperature is below freezing as a public safety support but of course there are lots of nuances associated with housing people and their personal life belongings who are unfamiliar in cramped spaces.
But anyone saying ship them anywhere is real scary to me. Shipping anything requires ownership or possession. Humans can't ship other people like that anymore. Human trafficking is and should have always been illegal.
Lastly, assimilation is not a goal. Assimilation assumes that there is a current gold standard to assimilate to. Who is that standard around here...cast the first stone? Our goal should be law-abiding, tax-paying, wage-earning, productive citizens. Center for change not shelter.
Jvoice
7:24 am on Thursday, May 2, 2013
While there are people who show up at the shelter due to no fault of there own, they can quickly get assistance and move on. The people who are more or less permanent resident's at there by choice. No amount of counseling is going to change that, X number of people will always live on the fringe no matter what you do. If you make it difficult for them to be comfortable, they will move on.
The Savannah Suites across from the shelter is the scary place, I'll bet the coroner has carried many a drug overdose body out of the place.
Now The area further down near the Salvation Army shelter has fewer problems, if someone is drunk or high, they get no shelter, and they must come up with $7 or something very nominal.
Patrick L
5:34 pm on Monday, May 13, 2013
Curious...has anyone who left a comment above on "how to handle this problem" ever volunteered at this shelter to help feed, etc. these homeless people? Have you ever tried to have a real conversation with a homeless person?
Or are you "rendering verdicts" from afar?
And before you go jumping to more conclusions, although I vote for the candidate not the party, I almost always vote Republican and am conservative politically and value-wise. So you "slave owning wanna beez" can't just cast my questions into your black hole of bleeding hearts.
Answer my questions or live with guilt of ignoring them.
DG
3:40 pm on Tuesday, May 14, 2013
"Man stabbed multiple times outside Peachtree-Pine shelter".....that headline explains why I would never volunteer at this shelter. That's not judging from afar....it isbeing concerned for my safety. At times there are literally 100 people hanging out on this street and harrassing everyone that passes by. When they get it under control, I will be more than happy to help.