Homeless individuals in Atlanta have described feeling targeted and excluded by city cleanup efforts ahead of the World Cup, with one man saying they are treated 'less than human'. The clearances have intensified as the tournament brought global attention to the city.
Freedom Park clearance and city actions
City employees entered Freedom Park, less than a mile from a World Cup fan-watch area, without warning and removed tents, personal ID, medication, and other belongings. A city official said the park was not an official encampment, so rules over process were not applied, describing the sweep as 'routine park maintenance'. The park now shows no trace of the tents and bags removed.
Mayor Andre Dickens has been clear about the city's intent: 'We want to make sure those unsheltered individuals don't come anywhere near downtown and throughout the city of Atlanta, not just during the World Cup but now,' he said last year.
Tragic incident and ongoing concerns
In January last year, Cornelius Taylor was sleeping in his tent on Old Wheat Street when council workers arrived for a clearance. Taylor was crushed to death by a five-tonne bulldozer as he slept. His fiancee later described finding blood and body parts inside his possessions. The death led to promises of greater care and new protocols in the city, which is home to an estimated 3,000 unhoused people.
A care worker at the Center for Health and Rehabilitation in Fulton County noted a drop in people on the streets during the World Cup but said: 'I haven't seen evidence of what has occurred, but we do know the people are gone. So where did they go? A lot of those people definitely wanted to be where they were within that vicinity. And I don't know where they were taken. So they could have been displaced well away.'
Relocation experiences
Sirius, a homeless man visiting the Crossroads Community Center near Fifa hotels, described being taken to a centre beyond the city's West End. 'They dropped me off there in the middle of the night. They call them Mormon centres or whatever, but it ain't nothing but a warehouse of cops. It looked like a Fema camp. When I saw it, I left. I walked all the way back here. It's because of the World Cup. They're trying to make it look good for tourists.'
Another homeless man, Drayvon Clark, expressed frustration: 'We feel like a lot of our community has been pushed out. We're not just dollar signs, we're more than that. We're people and we're frustrated with the fact that they've chosen to treat us less than human in a lot of the areas because of making money.'
Broader context and other host cities
Homelessness is a profound problem in the US, with at least 770,000 unhoused people nationwide, according to official figures. Hundreds of new bills criminalising sleeping outside have been passed in the past two years. The World Cup has accelerated these processes in host cities. Similar issues have arisen at past events: the 1996 Atlanta Olympics saw 9,000 people kept in a de facto detention centre, and Paris bussed homeless out during the 2024 Olympics.
In Los Angeles, homeless people have been put up in block-booked motels. In Dallas, an encampment of up to 200 tents near city hall was cleared. Seattle's mayor, Katie Wilson, pledged to build 500 new homes to clear city centre homeless camps by the start of the World Cup, but only 50 were built. Despite these efforts, the presence of homeless people in host cities remains a stark reminder of inequality.
Criticism of Fifa's rhetoric
Sirius added: 'They always bring a big event that everybody's blinded by. You've seen Gladiator, it's like the Games. That's what it's for. It's a distraction. They treat us like trash and trampled over us. But that's America for you, isn't it? They've got to reckon with heaven and hell at the end of it. God bless America.'
