Several Hall County organizations are working together to try to meet the needs of hundreds of homeless people who were recently displaced by the closure of an encampment in Gainesville.
Michael Giddins with North Georgia Works joined WDUN’s “The Martha Zoller Show” Tuesday morning, Nov. 11, the day after the “Unity Project” finished its soft opening of an overnight shelter on Dorsey Street. The shelter is being held in the Set Free building across from Good News at Noon.
“We have a really large homeless encampment here off Dorsey Street called the “Flat Creek Camp” that has anywhere from 250 to 300 people in it, and that property needs to be closed down. The city has some sewage work (to do) on it,” Giddins said. “That was going to displace a lot of people, so we all kind of rallied together. North Georgia Works partnered with Good News at Noon to take control of the Set Free building…to create a resource center for those leaving those encampments.”
The Unity Project is a combined effort of various organizations and churches in the community. Giddins said the organization has already done a lot of work to make the shelter more accommodating, particularly as the previous two nights brought the first below-freezing temperatures of the season to the area.
“We’ve had to do over $100,000 worth of renovations to get it to where it can be an overnight shelter. We’re not quite there yet, but obviously last night the weather became a life or death situation,” Giddins said. “We opened up to host as many people as we could, to keep them safe, and had a great turnout of over 60 people just overnight.”
Giddins said the Unity Project is hoping to provide services for Gainesville’s large homeless population, but he said it can be a daunting task at times.
“We’re not hurting for organizations looking to help with the issue, but we’re all at capacity,” Giddins said.
He said the project is particularly trying to help single females in the area’s homeless population.
“They’re being exploited…Every day we have a new tragic story come through out door, black eyes, bloody noses,” Giddins said. “Those people need places to kind of re-acclimate to society, re-acclimate to safety, let the trauma, the fight-or-flight mentality, calm down.”
Giddins said the Set Free building is still not yet ready to be launched as a full-time homeless shelter, but he said the Unity Project is hoping to be able to do so on a date in December. He also said the project is looking for volunteers to help support their work.
More information on the effort can be found on the Unity Project’s Facebook page.
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