Wednesday, June 5, 2024–9:25 a.m.
-Adam Carey, Rome News-Tribune-
This story is possible because of a news-sharing agreement with the Rome News-Tribune. More information can be found at northwestgeorgianews.com
The homeless problem in Rome and Floyd County is plain to see. Yet, despite the efforts of many citizens and government officials, a solution to the homeless situation remains murky at best.
The Rome and Floyd County Joint Services Committee met Tuesday morning, and the lengthiest conversation during the meeting was to share ideas on the many causes and possible solutions to the homelessness issue.
Rome Mayor Craig McDaniel advocated for stricter enforcement of urban camping and trespassing ordinances. The hope, he said, is to clean up long established homeless encampments alongside providing medical care and potential solutions for Rome’s homeless population.
“We’ve done a much better job this year of enforcement,” McDaniel said. “But one of our problems is that the better we get at helping the homeless, the more homeless we attract.”
Many of the homeless people are from outside of Rome and Floyd County, McDaniel said, and are drawn here by local programs or sent to Floyd County from other places to receive those services.
Staffers in the county and city have been actively looking for a model that seems to work in other locations, Floyd County Commission Chair Allison Watters said.
“This is not just a Rome or Floyd County issue,” Watters said. “This is across the state and even the country. And everyone is looking around to see how other governments handle the problem.”
Many local organizations attempt to help Rome’s homeless population in a variety of ways. Some feed them regularly, some try to get them treatment if they have drug issues, and some try to find them housing.
“Not everyone is in a homeless encampment for the same reason,” McDaniel said. “Some have mental health issues, some have drug issues and some are homeless because they lost their job and their housing.”
Although everyone in the room was asking for a solution, a clear path wasn’t identified. The question of who should pay for any solution was also referenced a few times, especially considering the upward trajectory of property taxes across the region.
“This is an ongoing population that we all care deeply about,” Watters said. “And we will continue to look for solutions.”
In 2019, the city and county created a task force that brought together nonprofit organizations under a homeless task force umbrella to assess and create goals to combat the problem in this area.
The task force’s goal was to pool the community’s resources, and it had a lot of momentum then. However, those efforts were stymied by the pandemic.
In 2009, a 23-goal action plan called “Breaking the Cycle of Homelessness” came out of the efforts of a Rome and Floyd County Task Force on Homelessness formed in 2007.
“They did a ton of good work,” former Davies Shelter Director Devon Smyth said in 2019 of the group that put together the 2009 document. “There’s probably a number of reasons why all 23 action items didn’t happen. The economic downturn in 2008 certainly played a large role.”
Smyth noted in 2019 that a January count discovered more than 200 unsheltered homeless people in Floyd County, a problem that has been growing since NW Georgia Regional Hospital was shuttered by the state.
“A huge population of the mentally ill were let out in 2011,” she said. “Many are abusing substances to self-medicate and complications arise.”
