When I first came to Atlanta, the city seemed really cool with the Coca-Cola headquarters, the CNN Center, and Olympic Park.

Now? I really don't want to go downtown unless I have to. So, I have to mentally prepare myself to drive into the city.

Recent surveys show that the homeless population in the Atlanta metro area is in the thousands. This includes both street dwellers and temporary shelter residents. However, this is just a snapshot from that day, and the actual number is believed to be much higher.

You can tell just by walking one block downtown. The numbers are misleading. Statistics are always more conservative than reality.

I'm not saying that homeless individuals are inherently dangerous. But the reality is what it is.

When I'm walking near a MARTA station and someone starts yelling and following me, it's scary. When I see people doing drugs in an alley on my way to the parking lot, I quicken my pace.

Seeing a tent city within a mile of City Hall makes me think, "Is this really a major city in America?"

What's really frustrating is that the city hall knows, the state government knows, non-profit organizations know, everyone knows. If they all know, then why is it still like this?

In 2017, the city of Atlanta announced a grand investment plan to solve the homeless problem.

That was already 9 years ago. Organizations like Gateway Center, Atlanta Mission, and Partners for HOME are operating shelters, providing job training, offering substance abuse treatment, and connecting people to permanent housing.

Are there some results? Probably. But has the downtown landscape improved compared to 9 years ago? It actually looks worse.

Where did all that tax money and donations go?

I know the causes are complex: mental health issues, substance abuse, domestic violence, job loss, skyrocketing housing costs.

These issues often intertwine within a single person. Especially in Georgia, Medicaid expansion has not been fully implemented.

This means that low-income individuals have almost no access to mental health care. So, people with mental illnesses go untreated, fall into substance abuse, lose their jobs, lose their homes, and end up on the streets. This is a complete system failure.

We can't overlook the issue of housing costs either. Rent in Atlanta has gone absolutely crazy since COVID. A typical two-story apartment now costs over $2,500 a month.

Even someone earning $15 an hour working full-time only makes $2,400 a month. The math doesn't add up. Once you slip in this neighborhood, it's almost impossible to get back up. The supply of affordable housing has hardly increased, and all new constructions are luxury apartments. Developers will build what makes money. But what has the city been doing all this time?

Let's talk about the Korean community. Several Korean churches in Duluth, Suwanee, and Johns Creek regularly go downtown to distribute meals and essential supplies.

It's a good deed. But to be honest, if the church volunteer groups could solve this problem by handing out lunch boxes every week, it would have been resolved long ago. This is not a scale that can be solved by individual goodwill. That's what makes it even more frustrating. While we're distributing lunch boxes, what is the city hall doing?

Sometimes when Korean families come to visit Atlanta, they plan their itinerary to skip downtown. They quickly check out Olympic Park and the aquarium during the day, and for dinner, they definitely head to the suburbs. It's embarrassing. Is it normal for a city to have a downtown that it can't proudly show off to tourists?

New York has its downtown issues, but at least you can go to Times Square. In Atlanta, even the areas that used to be "at least this part is okay" are dwindling.

I know that each homeless person has their own story. I also understand that they are not there by choice.

But I'm getting tired of being forced to maintain a human perspective. Who cares about the right to walk safely as a resident? If you say both sides are important, it sounds like a balanced opinion, but if you emphasize only one side, it creates an atmosphere where you're seen as a cold-hearted person, and that's frustrating too.

I won't conclude with a call to volunteer or donate.

That's the job of the city hall and the state government. They haven't done it for 9 years. I will closely watch who will actually solve this in the next mayoral election.

That's the best I can do. The tent city downtown is not a matter of charity; it's a failure of administration. I hope we can start by acknowledging that fact.