ATLANTA (AP) — Less than a mile from the venue that will host thousands of World Cup spectators this month, numerous individuals had set up camp on a city sidewalk, waiting for a homeless facility to begin operations.
Several people rested in sleeping bags with face coverings to shield themselves from the bright afternoon light. Others sat on the pavement consuming food from cereal containers. Footwear was spread around next to discarded small alcohol containers. Music equipment played a Jay-Z track with the lyrics: “This can’t be right, there’s gotta be more.”
During the previous summer, the city unveiled a comprehensive initiative to eliminate street camping and encampments in the downtown area before the 39-day international soccer competition starting June 11. The program, known as Downtown Rising, reports successfully providing homes for close to 500 individuals. However, the situation observed recently outside the facility on Pryor Street demonstrated that the city’s efforts haven’t reached all those in need.
The city joins other municipalities across the United States, Canada and Mexico that are leveraging the spotlight from hosting the globe’s most prestigious soccer event to tackle homelessness issues. A northwestern city announced a housing initiative and indicated it would use the World Cup as a benchmark for measuring success. A Texas metropolitan area said it was expanding an effective program to provide homes for people living on downtown streets.
Research conducted by The Associated Press revealed that the majority of the 16 host locations, including New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Miami, Houston, Toronto, and Vancouver, British Columbia, are depending on current programs — mostly without additional World Cup-specific funding — to handle homelessness.
Expanding tent communities have troubled city officials for years. Government statistics revealed a double-digit percentage rise in homelessness across the nation from 2023 to 2024, when 770,000 individuals were documented as homeless — a figure recognized as incomplete. This was followed by a minor decline the following year to 745,652.
Historically, numerous municipalities have viewed homeless populations as unsightly problems to eliminate before major sporting and political gatherings.
During the previous year’s Super Bowl, New Orleans invested millions removing tent communities near the Superdome and relocating homeless individuals to a temporary warehouse facility. Before the 2024 Paris Olympics, migrants were transported out of the city until the Games concluded. Chicago eliminated one of its largest encampments before the 2024 Democratic National Convention.
“These events provide a choice for communities,” said Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “They can do the easy thing and sweep people out of encampments and into jails or other neighborhoods, or they can do the harder work that will benefit everyone in the community — housed or unhoused.”
When hosting the 1996 Olympics, the city relocated approximately 9,000 homeless individuals to a recently constructed detention facility. It provided others with one-way transportation out of the area and initiated “Operation Olympus,” detaining hundreds to reduce criminal activity.
However, for this occasion, city officials were committed to implementing different strategies.
The city has collected $185 million through state and municipal funding, along with corporate contributions and other donations, working toward a target of $235 million, aiming to house 3,900 individuals citywide by the following year. The most recent municipal count showed approximately 2,900 homeless people throughout the city, with roughly one-third living in encampments or on streets.
“There will always be homeless people on our streets, more than likely, unfortunately,” said Cathryn Vassell, the CEO of Partners for HOME, the organization tasked with creating and executing Atlanta’s homelessness strategy. The goal is “to be able to identify them and quickly exit them into shelter, resources, services, and then ultimately housing.”
Downtown Rising has assisted Michael Sutton in transforming his circumstances. Having been in foster care since infancy, he moved between different families. Throughout most of the previous decade, the 31-year-old slept in transit stations, parks, vacant structures and homeless facilities.
Since September, Sutton has occupied a one-bedroom unit in a suburban area and works with a case worker.
“Everyone has rough days, and being able to go home or vent to yourself about it, relaxing in your own home … is priceless,” Sutton said.
However, assistance isn’t possible for everyone.
Some homeless individuals resist shelter regulations, lack necessary documentation to quickly transition to permanent housing, or face complex substance abuse and mental health issues, or transient lifestyles that make them difficult to locate.
Tommy Elam said he’s been on numerous housing lists, but nothing has happened — though he’s hard to find. His phone was stolen countless times and he doesn’t currently have one.
“They don’t know where I’m at,” said Elam, who’s been homeless since early 2020 and spent the last three months sleeping on the sidewalk near the Pryor Street homeless shelter, his latest spot since a crackdown on the encampment where he lived near the Georgia State Capitol building.
Standing outside the downtown supportive housing center where he now lives, Willie Jackson, who spent years on the streets, said he knows people who’ve been helped by the Downtown Rising initiative. But he’s skeptical it will lead to lasting change after the World Cup — or that it’s made a significant impact on downtown’s homelessness problem.
“Just look around,” he said.
Two years ago, it was hard to miss the hundreds of tents around Dallas City Hall.
But ahead of the World Cup, there were no tent encampments downtown, where FIFA’s broadcast center is set up, or at the nearby fan zone. The matches will be played at Dallas’ stadium in suburban Arlington.
Sarah Kahn, president and CEO of Housing Forward, which leads the homelessness response for Dallas and nearby Collin counties, said a $30 million campaign since 2024 reduced the number of people sleeping on downtown streets by 87% and placed some 2,000 into permanent housing.
In March, an additional $28 million was allocated to expand countywide, with a goal of providing 1,100 people housing, the agency said. Outreach workers deploy daily within a quarter-mile of transit hubs, the fan zone and the FIFA broadcast center to find anyone sleeping outside and offer services, it said.
Elisabeth Jordan, founder of The Human Impact, which helps the chronically homeless, praised the initiative as “the single greatest change … in homeless response in Dallas.”
But she criticized Dallas police tactics that included zip-tying and removing people who remained after their encampments were cleared. Dozens of people from one encampment were housed in May, but about 20 who remained were detained, she said. In a statement, the Dallas police department called such detentions “standard practice” for people “violating the prohibited camping law” and who refuse housing.
Kacey Coker, who spent years on the streets or in jail, described a dramatic improvement in how the homeless are treated. Authorities used to “come through with a bulldozer and take our stuff and throw it away,” said the 51-year-old, who lost her birth certificate and social security card in those sweeps.
In May, she was offered a subsidized one-bedroom apartment for a few hundred dollars a month. For the first time, Coker feels safe.
“I can actually build something,” she said.
At a vacant lot several miles from Seattle’s stadium, workers were putting the final touches last week on 75 tiny homes.
The 70-square-foot units with a bed, space heater and air conditioner are part of Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson’s ambitious plan to open 500 units of new shelter by the start of the World Cup.
It’s a goal she acknowledges she has missed — by 425 units.
“The World Cup …. provided just kind of a good goal post,” Wilson told the AP in an interview, saying the city will open an additional 228 beds by the end of the summer.
“When you put a number out there, that has the advantage of galvanizing people,” but it can also be framed as a failure if you miss it, Wilson said. “So, I really hope that the message … is look, we are making progress.”
Homelessness advocates said they weren’t surprised Wilson didn’t meet such a lofty goal within six months of election. The World Cup isn’t what’s important; getting people housed is, they added.
“I’m just happy that anything has happened so far,” said Bruce Drager of Ballard Community Task Force on Homeless and Hunger near where the tiny homes were built.
Camped out with his wife between a sidewalk and train tracks just blocks from the stadium, Chris Moore said he hasn’t heard about the city’s housing plans.
A large encampment nearby has been cleared twice in the five months since he’s been there, said Moore, who’s been homeless for eight years. But dozens of tents were back again a week before the first game.
“I guess because the World Cup’s coming, you don’t want homeless people around,” he said.
In Inglewood, California, site of the Los Angeles area stadium, roads were squeaky clean and paved with fresh asphalt. Bright flowers filled planters downtown and near the stadium.
“There’s no homeless in Inglewood,” Mayor James Butts told the AP when asked about the city’s plans for housing people living on the streets ahead of the World Cup. “Just look at the numbers.”
Indeed, Inglewood’s homeless count last year was small — just under 400, about a third of whom were living on the street in the city of 100,000 people — compared to LA, where 43,695 homeless were counted in the city of 3.8 million-plus.
But less than 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) from the stadium and just outside Inglewood city limits, the nonprofit St. Margaret’s Center was handing out dozens of sack lunches for the homeless on a recent morning.
Carter Hewgley, who oversees strategic partnerships at LA County’s Homeless Services and Housing Department, said it has secured three motel sites ahead of the World Cup — “not because there’s games, but because there’s homeless.” The sites, including in Inglewood, range from 54 to 104 rooms. The agency also maintains tens of thousands of shelter beds, he said.
In Canada, Toronto and Vancouver said they were relying on their already extensive services to provide thousands of shelter beds and temporary housing rooms, as well as outreach to those living on the streets. Vancouver has also set up centers where matches will be shown. Both said there were no plans to relocate homeless people ahead of the games.
Still, there were sporadic reports by advocates of crackdowns targeting homeless people.
In Toronto, where Canada’s largest shelter system supports more than 8,500 people each night, advocates held a rally last month denouncing what they said were transit police tactics aggressively targeting the homeless at the city’s main train station.
Toronto Underhoused and Homeless Union said its survey of dozens of homeless people found some forcibly removed from lavatories and elsewhere, and subjected to verbal abuse by transit police. In a statement to the AP, the city did not directly address the complaints but said it doesn’t “tolerate, ignore, or condone discrimination or harassment.”
In Vancouver, hundreds of activists held a protest in April over increased security ahead of the World Cup. A 2025 count showed 2,715 homeless people, some in Vancouver’s Downtown East Side area near the stadium.
Last month, at a downtown park where homeless people are allowed to stay overnight, Harley Ransom was resting in his tent and said he’s seen aggressive tactics.
Nearby, Francesca Crane, who said the van she lived in with her pet rabbits had been towed away, accused the city of “sweeping the homeless people under the carpet for FIFA to make it look like a clean city, no homelessness.”
“They are catering to people from other countries but stepping on the people of their own city and province,” she said. “What they’re doing is wrong.”
