Athens, Georgia Pastor Says County Officials Turn Deaf Ear to Complaints of Homeless Harassing His Church Members

Members of one Athens church fear for their safety after they said homeless people — many of whom they suspect aren’t even from that city — have harassed and threatened them on church grounds.

Luis Ortiz, the senior pastor of the Athens’ Young Harris Memorial United Methodist Church, said his complaints to Athens-Clarke County officials go mostly ignored. He and other city residents told The Georgia Star News they believe Athens’ officials are using a $60 million federal grant to bestow upon homeless people. Consequently, homeless people from other areas of the state have learned about this grant and are relocating to Athens.

Ortiz said he sympathizes with the homeless and their plight. He said that as a younger man he sold drugs and ate out of fast-food trash cans to survive. But, as he went on to say, he pulled himself “out of the gutter.”

“As a minister I have a dual responsibility to help the poor and the needy, but I also have a responsibility to my church and our members and their safety and their security. I don’t want to make it sound like we don’t care, because we do. But I have discovered that there are a handful of homeless people legitimately in need for either psychological reasons or economic reasons, or, for whatever reasons, they are addicted to some kind of drug or they just can’t get their lives straightened out. Then there is a good larger percent who are what I call the modern-day Andy Griffith tramps,” Ortiz said.

“They just go from town to town. They come here because there is an app they can go to, and there are vans literally dropping them off from Decatur, from Fulton County, from Smyrna, from Gwinnett, and from other cities. They are being dropped off here because they have been informed that Athens will provide you with everything you need. Housing. Food. Clothing. Medication. Anything you need. The city of Athens will take care of it for you.”

The Star’s repeated attempts to contact Athens-Clarke County Mayor Kelly Girtz and the county’s 10 commissioners were unsuccessful Wednesday and Thursday.

Ortiz spent nearly one hour late last month describing how homeless people who congregate near Young Harris Memorial intimidate and endanger members of his church, many of whom are elderly. The homeless, Ortiz said, beat on church windows begging for money. They threaten to set the church on fire. The homeless also threaten other forms of physical violence.

Ortiz said one homeless man even caused a disturbance at a school on the church campus that has 60 children.

“It was 6 a.m. in the morning. The owner of the school asked me to please come to the building. There were three homeless people sleeping in tents there, and the owner could not get into the building,” Ortiz said.

“I walked out, and one [homeless man] walked off the steps and got ready to unzip his pants and urinate right there. I told him he cannot do that. ‘I need you off the property here. This is a school,’ I said. I asked him politely to please leave.”

Another time, a homeless man wearing nothing but his underwear walked into the church building during a funeral.

The Athens Banner Herald reported last year that county officials wanted to use $60 million in American Rescue Plan money on, among other things, assisting the homeless.

“We are a church, and we don’t try to get involved in politics of things, but sometimes you are forced by your community’s politicians to get involved with the politics of things,” Ortiz said.

“There does not seem to be adequate resolve on what is happening around us.”

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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star and The Georgia Star News. Follow Chris on Facebook, Twitter, Parler, and GETTR. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “Luis Ortiz” by Luis Ortiz. Background Photo “Athens, Georgia” by alans1948. CC BY 2.0.