Midtown Homeless Shelter: City Council Gives OK To Sell

ATLANTA, GA — A city council meeting on the future of the Peachtree and Pine streets homeless center turned raucous on Monday.

Several dozen homeless advocates turned up at the meeting, according to the AJC, which was being held to consider Mayor Kasim Reed's long-desired plan to close the shelter and turn it into a new police and fire facility.

Police had to escort some of the protestors from the meeting after they reportedly exceeded their allotted time to speak to the council. Some of the protestors then got into heated arguments with police over their removal.

In December 2015, the city voted to approve a study to determine whether the Midtown shelter could be re-purposed to serve the city’s public safety needs.

In August 2015, Reed sought to seize the shelter through the use of eminent domain after the CDC informed him that the shelter was the source of a nationwide tuberculosis outbreak.

The shelter was also near the scene of a deadly shooting in September 2015, when a Nigerian immigrant and U.S. Army soldier was shot and killed following an altercation.

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