Exile on Peachtree Street

Peachtree-Pine homeless shelter closed for good last month. But Anita Beaty can’t stop worrying about what will happen to the men and women who once stayed in the massive downtown homeless shelter that, at times, housed up to 1,000 people on the coldest winter nights.

On a recent Thanksgiving vacation to her home state of South Carolina, the Peachtree-Pine shelter founder’s cellphone kept ringing with former clients seeking her help. She tried to direct them to services the best she could. Every time she thought of them, though, she felt a mix of sadness, anger and frustration about the loss of a place that had defined her world since the the late ‘90s.

“I’ve tried to distance myself, but I’ve had to face the fact that the community at Peachtree-Pine was my community,” she said. “When you leave something that you spent that much time with, there’s definitely grief.”

In early 2017 Beaty retired in protest when the Metro Task Force for the Homeless board agreed to settle a lawsuit that alleged the city and downtown boosters had dissuaded supporters from donating funds to the shelter. As part of the settlement, the shelter was to be sold and closed. The remaining leaders of the Task Force called it a return to the organization’s original mission of serving but not sheltering the homeless.

Beaty decried the fact that so many of the city’s most vulnerable men, women and children would be left without shelter in their time of need. While Central Atlanta Progress, the current owners of the building, moved the last of her clients out of the shelter, she continued to help those who called requesting advice on where they should go next.

Beaty doesn’t plan to ever fully retire from the cause. Instead, she’s found other avenues for advocating for the homeless. She’s looking for a new studio space where homeless men and women can express themselves through painting and exhibit their work, like they did at Peachtree-Pine. She also intends to speak out on issues affecting the homeless – like the sudden enforcement of permits required for groups that want to feed the poor – and lend her expertise to national homeless activists.

Beyond that, Beaty is writing in “fits and starts” about the rise and fall of the Task Force, and the broader history of homelessness in Atlanta. Her hope is that by telling its full story, she may spur the city to consider more progressive policies to address its affordable housing shortage and ensure that the homeless have access to a roof over their heads.

“All of it needs to be told,” Beaty said. “I don’t want to sit by quietly as bad things are happening to the people I love.”

HYOSUB SHIN / HSHIN@AJC.COM Anita Beaty, with her husband, Jim Beaty, on the front porch of their home following her resignation from the Peachtree-Pine homeless shelter she founded in the late ’90s.