Local & Homeless: The Housing Crisis Behind Homelessness in Fayette and Coweta

When Newnan Mayor James Shepherd talks about homelessness, he doesn’t start with encampments.

He starts with housing.

“The vast majority of people who are homeless just don’t have a house,” Shepherd said. “It’s people who are sleeping in their cars in the Walmart parking lot. And that’s what we really need to fix.”

Across Fayette and Coweta counties, interviews with mayors, nonprofit leaders, first responders and residents reveal a growing consensus: homelessness is no longer just about the chronically unhoused or people living visibly on the streets.

It is increasingly about working people who cannot afford to live where they work.

It is about retirees on fixed incomes. Young adults locked out of homeownership. Families one medical emergency away from eviction. Mothers and children sleeping in cars. Hotel living. Couch surfing. People surviving month to month while rents climb faster than wages.

And increasingly, local leaders say the region’s housing market itself is driving the crisis.

“Working homeless”

Pam Gabel, who organized and currently chairs Coweta’s Attainable Housing Task Force — a coalition that brings together dozens of nonprofits serving economically challenged populations alongside community leaders each month — said many residents misunderstand what homelessness looks like today.

“We tend to think of homelessness as somebody pushing a shopping cart under a bridge,” Gabel said. “But there are layers to homelessness.”

Some people are completely unsheltered. Others are living in motels, doubled up with relatives, or sleeping in vehicles while holding down jobs.

“These are people working every day,” Gabel said. “They’re still falling behind.”

That reality surfaced repeatedly throughout The Citizen’s reporting.

Peachtree City police officers described helping a family of six who were living in an SUV while their children completed schoolwork using the public library’s Wi-Fi.

Newnan officials described residents living in cars for months at a time because they could not save enough for deposits and rent.

Coweta nonprofits described clients who work full-time but still cannot secure stable housing.

“Three thousand dollars might as well be three million,” Mayor Shepherd said of upfront housing costs for low-income families.

According to housing advocates, the problem often begins long before someone winds up fully homeless.

Federal housing standards generally define households as “cost burdened” if they spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing. Gabel said many local residents far exceed that threshold once transportation, childcare, food and health care costs are added.

“A lot of people are one emergency away,” she said.

One Fayette County woman interviewed earlier in this series described multiple vehicles arriving nightly at the grocery store parking lot where she sleeps in her car.

The drivers, she said, are often working people simply trying to make it through another night safely.

The disappearance of starter homes

Both Mayor Shepherd and Fayetteville Mayor Ed Johnson pointed to housing affordability — not simply poverty — as a central issue.

For decades, Mayor Shepherd argued, local zoning and development patterns have prioritized larger homes while eliminating the kinds of smaller “starter homes” that once allowed working families to build equity.

“We’ve gotten into this sense that your first house has to be your forever home,” Mayor Shepherd said.

He contrasted modern development standards with earlier generations who raised large families in modest homes.

“My grandparents raised five children in an 1,100-square-foot house,” he said.

Instead, he said, many local governments have encouraged expensive suburban-style development with large lot requirements and minimum square footage rules that inherently drive up prices.

“You end up with young people who don’t even have the opportunity to start building equity,” Mayor Shepherd said.

He repeatedly referenced what planners now call “missing middle housing” — duplexes, townhomes, apartments over retail space, small-lot homes and condominiums — housing types that once existed naturally in many communities but have largely disappeared from modern zoning patterns.

“We’ve created a housing monoculture,” Mayor Shepherd said.

Mayor Johnson said Fayetteville has intentionally tried to avoid that trap.

The city has hired consultants and worked with the Atlanta Regional Commission to study attainable housing and workforce needs as growth pressures intensify in Fayette County.

“As retirees come into the city, we wanted them to be able to have housing that they can afford,” Mayor Johnson said. “And we also have first responders, educators and young workers who are finding it difficult to afford housing.”

Mayor Johnson pointed to newer townhouse developments and higher-density projects near downtown as part of Fayetteville’s attempt to create more attainable options for both younger residents and seniors downsizing from larger homes.

“We want to grow,” Mayor Johnson said, “but we also want to grow properly.”

Two counties, two systems

The reporting also revealed a stark difference between how Fayette and Coweta counties respond to homelessness.

Coweta County has developed a growing network of nonprofits, churches and municipal partnerships focused directly on homelessness and housing instability.

Organizations like ReStart Coweta, Bridging the Gap, Coweta FORCE, the Newnan Housing Authority, Habitat for Humanity, I-58 Mission, St. Vincent de Paul and others coordinate services ranging from warming shelter operations to case management, food assistance, addiction recovery and transitional support.

Newnan also maintains a housing authority that oversees subsidized housing programs and partnerships.

No city in Fayette County has one.

There is no municipal housing authority.

There is no dedicated homeless shelter.

There is no warming shelter during extreme cold weather.

There are few services specifically designed for unhoused residents.

There are nonprofits that assist struggling residents broadly — including Fayette Samaritans and the Real Life Center — while Promise Place serves victims of domestic violence. But none operate a comprehensive homeless-services network comparable to Coweta’s infrastructure.

Mayor Johnson acknowledged the gap directly.

“We are behind the power curve in addressing that issue,” he said.

He described Fayetteville’s current approach as largely “band-aid” solutions while local governments attempt to study longer-term responses.

Counting the problem

One challenge facing both counties is understanding the true scale of homelessness locally.

During Coweta’s federally required Point-in-Time homeless count earlier this year, volunteers officially counted just 19 unhoused people countywide.

Local leaders openly called the number unrealistic.

The count occurred during one of the coldest weeks of the year, when many people sought temporary shelter wherever they could find it. Federal guidelines also exclude people staying temporarily in hotels, warming shelters or with friends and family.

Gabel said those rules significantly undercount the problem.

“A lot of people are hidden,” she said.

Mayor Shepherd estimated the real number of housing-insecure residents in Coweta County is likely in the “couple hundred” range at any given time.

“Everything comes back to housing”

Again and again, interviews returned to the same conclusion: housing affordability affects nearly every aspect of local life.

“It’s bad for our industry. It’s bad for our tax base. It’s bad for our quality of life. It’s bad for our community,” Mayor Shepherd said. “Everything comes back to housing.”

Local employers have already begun feeling the strain.

Mayor Shepherd and others described workers commuting farther distances because they can no longer afford to live near their jobs.

Mayor Johnson echoed similar concerns about teachers, first responders and younger workers being priced out of Fayetteville.

Even some local conservatives who disagree politically on other issues have increasingly voiced concern about attainable housing and the long-term consequences of pricing working residents out of local communities.

Meanwhile, nonprofits and volunteers continue trying to fill the gaps left behind.

In previous stories in this series, The Citizen documented police officers buying hotel rooms for families, churches arranging temporary lodging, volunteers purchasing bus tickets for stranded residents, and local organizations distributing survival bags, blankets and food during cold weather.

After The Citizen’s first homelessness story published, one local gym owner even contacted the newspaper to offer shower access and warmth to a woman living in her car.

But advocates say individual acts of kindness, while meaningful, cannot replace systems.

“I’d like to see everybody with a roof over their head,” Gabel said.

For now, local leaders across both counties agree on at least one thing:

The problem is here.

And ignoring it will not make it disappear.

View Part 1 of this series, Homelessness Hides in Plain Sight in Fayette

View Part 2 of this series, Coweta’s Safety Net Strains Under Growing Homelessness

View Part 3 of this series, Coweta First Responders See it First—But Can’t Solve It Alone

View Part 4 of this series, In Fayette, No System—and Few Places to Turn