Seeking Shelter
- Stephannie Stokes
- Aug 5
- 8 min read
Updated: Aug 6
To get an emergency bed in Atlanta, people must cross the city, wait in lines, and meet varying rules. Even then, they may not find help.
Susan Lawton was recovering from breast cancer when her family lost the Clarkston apartment that had been their home for 25 years. She was so overwhelmed by medical bills that she couldn’t stay on top of their rent.
With nowhere else to go, Lawton hoped she and her teenager could get into a homeless shelter. But she soon discovered a difficult reality in Atlanta, where most shelters in the region are located. “Everyone thinks, ‘Oh, you just show up and they’ll give you a bed,’” she said. “No, that’s not it.”
“Everyone thinks, ‘Oh, you just show up and they’ll give you a bed.’ No, that’s not it.” —Susan Lawton
Homeless shelters are meant to serve people like Lawton, who are in crisis and have no other options—and who may otherwise be on the street. The federal term for them, in fact, is “emergency shelter.”
In Atlanta, this emergency shelter space has become a scarce commodity. In 2024, the City reported around 2,400 temporary beds, which is roughly 500 short of the almost 2,900 people who volunteers counted to be homeless—a count that is believed to be an underestimate. A patchwork of shelter rules further exacerbates the problem. The city lacks a uniform process for accessing the limited number of beds that do exist. In many cases, the only way to learn about available beds is to visit shelters directly, arriving at their doors early each weekday morning.
According to interviews with more than a dozen advocates and people who have been unhoused, the result is a labyrinthine system that forces people in crisis to crisscross the city before dawn, stand in lines on dark city streets, and put their names on waitlists in the hope of a safe place to sleep.
Lawton and her family were stuck living between motels and their car for months until they were finally able to get into a shelter. “All we could do is wait, which was very frustrating,” she said.
To show how barriers like limited space, inconsistent rules, and long waitlists make it difficult for people in crisis to find an emergency bed in Atlanta, reporter Stephannie Stokes collaborated with designer Sarah Lawrence to create an interactive feature called Seeking Shelter. Keep reading for Stokes’s in-depth reporting on the city’s shelter system, then explore the interactive—best experienced on a computer—to see how these obstacles play out in real life.
There isn’t any clear starting point for people who lose housing in Atlanta. No central, online resource advises people what to do or where to go.
Many well-meaning volunteers and service providers direct people who are unhoused to the Gateway Center, a large shelter downtown that also functions as a resource center. It’s where the disorganization in the shelter system may be most visible.
Gateway is the designated site for the City’s “coordinated entry,” a system set up by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to streamline access to homeless services. But this system is mainly designed to connect people to permanent housing, and that kind of help is rarely available right away.
For emergency housing, the City of Atlanta body overseeing homeless services has created a shelter management system to work alongside coordinated entry; this is a sort of database through which shelters can report open beds. But according to interviews with advocates and providers, few shelters keep their vacancies up to date. As a result, Gateway staff often don’t know what space is available at shelters across the city, other than the center’s own 500 beds, which are only for men and are frequently full.
However, many people who are unhoused don’t learn this until after they’ve waited hours in line, which begins at Gateway’s Pryor Street entrance and can wrap around the block. While sign-ups for appointments start at 7 a.m., many people arrive before sunrise because the slots are so limited. Gateway estimates that its two-person assessment staff can meet with 15 to 20 of the 100 to 150 people who may line up at the center each day.
Kirstein Williams remembers getting in line at 6 a.m. and waiting three to four hours, having skipped breakfast with her kids in tow, to learn the staff would only be able to put her family on a waitlist for shelter. She said she was called back for a follow-up several months later to confirm that she was still in need, but her family didn’t get into a shelter until after a year. “‘This is too much,’” she remembers thinking. “‘Are you able to help or no?’”
“This is too much. Are you able to help or no?” —Kirstein Williams
With no other housing options, her family resorted to sleeping in their car.
Gateway’s line is notorious, but accessing other shelters isn’t much easier. The two biggest shelters in the City of Atlanta, Salvation Army and Atlanta Mission, also require people to show up in person early on weekday mornings to see if any beds are available. If there isn’t space, that person may have to just return to check in again the next morning—and the next. Fridays are especially challenging: Most shelters don’t accept new clients over the weekend, so people in need often have to wait until Monday to find help.
Michael Nolan, who serves people who are unhoused in East Atlanta for Intown Cares, said when people have to travel across town in search of resources only to be told there are none, it isn’t just confusing and frustrating—it fuels mistrust. “The worst thing you can do is offer false hope to someone who needs help,” Nolan said.
“The worst thing you can do is offer false hope to someone who needs help.” —Michael Nolan, Intown Cares
The reason for the lack of coordination among shelters in Atlanta is simple: It comes down to money.
A system like coordinated entry is required for providers who receive funding from the federal government. But most shelters in Atlanta are privately funded through donations. There are no unifying requirements attached to their funding. According to the National Coalition for the Homeless, most of the shelters in the country are privately run.
Gateway CEO Raphael Holloway said the center is working to address complaints about its line, and he’s hoping it can hire more staff to do assessments. But, he said, there’s only so much Gateway can do when other shelters aren’t participating in the common system. “Unfortunately, Gateway bears the brunt of most of the conversation because we are the primary provider of coordinated entry services, though we’re not the only provider,” he added.
“Unfortunately, Gateway bears the brunt of most of the conversation because we are the primary provider of coordinated entry services, though we’re not the only provider.” —Raphael Holloway, Gateway
Rachel Reynolds, marketing director for Atlanta Mission, which is privately funded, said its shelters do try to share bed availability with the city’s homelessness system, but she acknowledges that information is not always up to date.
She agreed that coordinating in real time is difficult when all shelters do things their own way. “We’re all operating our centers how we want to operate our centers, based on our corporate principles, based on our mission, based on our board, based on our funding,” Reynolds said.
Major shelters in the city have their own intake procedures and requirements. Atlanta Mission mandates 72 hours of sobriety. Most shelters require tuberculosis tests and photo identification—some immediately, some within a few days. The Salvation Army, which didn’t respond to an interview request, may require clients to pay a nightly fee if they have income, such as social security, according to advocates and those who’ve stayed there.
“We’re all operating our centers how we want to operate our centers, based on our corporate principles, based on our mission, based on our board, based on our funding.” —Rachel Reynolds, Atlanta Mission
Some advocates, like Sherri McCoy, who helps those with housing insecurity through her nonprofit Blessing Bags of Warmth, see these rules as part of the problem: Obtaining identification or running to a clinic for a TB test ends up being another hurdle for someone in need. Once people are accepted into any shelter, there may be additional rules, dictating when they must wake up, shower, and how many bags they’re allowed to keep.
But these barriers are the norm in Atlanta. There has been no shelter without barriers in the region since the 2017 closure of Midtown’s Peachtree-Pine shelter, which was known for accepting all people at all times, as well as for unsanitary conditions and crime. “There’s not one that you can just walk up to the door and say, ‘Hi, I’m homeless,’ and you’re welcomed in with open arms,” McCoy said.
“There’s not one [shelter] that you can just walk up to the door and say, ‘Hi, I’m homeless,’ and you’re welcomed in with open arms.” —Sherri McCoy, Blessing Bags of Warmth
Underlying the disorganization in the shelter system is a problem with space.
According to data submitted to HUD over the last decade, Atlanta has never had enough shelter beds for the number of people it has estimated to be homeless. Even when the city has counted fewer people who are homeless in its annual census, it’s also reported fewer shelter beds.
The beds are scarce enough, according to several advocates, that some homeless service organizations will pay shelters to reserve space for their clients. The advocates said this is one reason for a strange phenomenon in Atlanta’s shelter system: Despite the demand for beds, some still go unused. According to Atlanta’s 2024 survey of the unhoused population, known as the Point-in-Time Count, only 67 percent of shelter beds were in use. At the same time, more than 1,000 people were found to be living unsheltered outside.
Cathryn Vassell, who leads Atlanta’s homelessness strategy as executive director of the nonprofit Partners for HOME, acknowledges the need for greater shelter space. She said the City is considering how it can support more options. She’s interested in projects similar to the one where the City of Atlanta leased hotels during the COVID-19 pandemic to not only get unhoused people off the street but also provide each person with their own room. (The classic setup that many older shelters still follow is more like a warehouse of beds.)
She’s also hoping to see shelters with fewer restrictions. Vassell makes it clear that she feels no nostalgia for the days of Peachtree-Pine. With the mold and bugs the City found at the shelter’s closure, she said, it was not a humane place for people to live. But she said the shelter did some things right. “To the extent we’re learning a lesson from what Peachtree and Pine provided for us, that ability to be an open door to anybody 24/7, 365 days a week—that is ideal,” she said.
“To the extent we’re learning a lesson from what Peachtree and Pine provided for us, that ability to be an open door to anybody 24/7, 365 days a week—that is ideal.” —Cathryn Vassell, Partners for HOME
But the challenge, again, is funding. She said the city has to manage scarce resources, and Atlanta has made significant investments in permanent housing developments, where formerly unhoused people can live indefinitely.
This approach comes with tradeoffs. Permanent housing inevitably reaches fewer people. Donald Whitehead of the National Coalition for the Homeless said it also serves a specific population. “It’s only designed for people with the most chronic issues of homelessness, people who’ve been homeless for a period of years,” Whitehead said.
As for temporary shelter, which can reach a broader group, Whitehead said some cities have developed better systems for accessing help. He named Franklin County, Massachusetts, and Prince George’s County, Maryland, as two places that have combined outreach with coordinated entry to get people into beds quickly.
But he said no cities in the country have enough emergency beds for the unhoused people in their communities.
The fewest options tend to be for homeless women and children. In Atlanta, there are roughly three times more beds for adults than for families, according to the latest shelter numbers submitted to HUD. Historically, men made up more of the homeless population, Whitehead said. But the shortage of beds can leave people of all backgrounds on their own, figuring out alternatives—from scrounging up money for a hotel to, in some cases, staying outside.
In Atlanta, one woman, who didn’t want to be named, said she was able to get into a shelter on her first try. But she remembers watching others sleep in their cars for several days, waiting for a bed. “I guess it was just luck,” she said. •
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