Economy hurts efforts to help homeless

ATLANTA — Beneath the glowing red curlicues of the Coca-Cola headquarters sign, case worker Hylda Jackson bargains with one of Atlanta's left behind.

"Are you ready, right now, this morning?" she says, kneeling beside a white-bearded man.

Harry Byrd's rumpled form is enveloped by the odor of stale beer, even before dawn.

"To do what?" he drawls.

"To go to a place to live. Are you ready right now?" Jackson presses.

A yes would land Byrd in his own apartment, surrounded by people ready to smooth his life's kinks. No, and he'll remain among the 750,000 homeless sprinkled across the nation's streets and shelters each night.

He stirs but doesn't get up. Jackson moves on. She has other sidewalks to cover, other parks to check, other bridges to pause beneath. This tug-of-war is bound to increase as the economy pushes more people into homelessness.

In Atlanta and other top destinations for the homeless, a sense of urgency has settled over the efforts of advocates such as Jackson.

The recession is catching many of the nation's largest cities in the middle of pioneering 10-year plans to drastically reduce the number of chronically homeless, city by city, by sweeping parks and alleys for men and women and channeling them into apartments with built-in case workers.

Weary Wall Street donors have grown reluctant to open their pocketbooks to charity, and budget cuts have choked state support. By the time those dollars start flowing again, cities could be looking at starting from scratch.

Rampant foreclosures, meanwhile, mean more Americans without a house, pressuring agencies with new cases as they struggle to reach the long-term homeless that so dramatically drain resources.

"This is the start of tough times," says Protip Biswas, executive director of United Way Atlanta's Regional Commission on Homelessness, a coalition of partner groups that includes Jackson, who works in the city's Gateway Center shelter. Biswas is asking his own case workers to nearly double their load.

The economy is hitting all sectors hard. When your goal is eroding a phenomenon directly linked to poverty, however, a crisis this deep delivers an extra gut punch.

"We're sort of holding our breath," says Steve Berg, with the National Alliance to End Homelessness, a leader in forming plans to fight homelessness.