House the Unhoused DeKalb Alliance holds homelessness forum

(Left to right) Shelly Simmons, Dan Immergluck, Kamau Franklin and Sara Patenaude participated in a homelessness community forum moderated by Fonta High (far right) on Monday, Jan. 9, at Oakhurst Presbyterian Church. (Zoe Seiler/Decaturish)

The House the Unhoused DeKalb Alliance held a homelessness community forum on Monday, Jan. 9, at Oakhurst Presbyterian Church to talk about some of the root causes of homelessness and ways to address the issue.

Dan Immergluck, a professor of urban studies at Georgia State University, dove into some key decisions made that impact housing. He noted that Atlanta has shifted away from a model of public housing and has primarily moved to housing vouchers.

“That has come home to roost, because we now have a system, in Atlanta especially, built on vouchers and nobody can find a unit that will accept their voucher because the market rents are so much more lucrative and are going up much faster than what HUD will pay for a vouchered rent. Instead of having a stock of dependable public housing, or social housing, we have a voucher based system,” Immergluck said.