The family of a homeless person who died after a bulldozer crushed his tent last year during a sweep of the encampment, filed a lawsuit Friday against the nonprofit organizations involved in cleaning up the encampment, the second trial they filed a complaint regarding his death.
The lawsuit says Partners for HOME and SafeHouse Outreach are partly responsible for Taylor’s death because employees failed to check to see if Taylor, 46, was in his tent before a bulldozer was deployed to clear it, flattening his tent while he was in it and leaving blood in the street.
Taylor lived in an encampment on Old Wheat Street in Atlanta, which city officials asked to clean up before the holiday celebrations. Martin Luther King Jr. vacation last January. The encampment was near Ebenezer Baptist Church, where King had preached and where annual events are now held in his honor.
Partners for HOME is the city’s lead agency fighting homelessness. SafeHouse Outreach is another Atlanta nonprofit that serves people without housing. The lawsuit says the organizations should have known to check Taylor’s tent after doing outreach to the site in advance.
Cathryn Vassell, CEO of Partners for HOME, said the nonprofit can’t comment on the lawsuit because she hasn’t seen it, but is “committed to fulfilling our mission of making homelessness in Atlanta rare, brief and nonrecurring.” SafeHouse Outreach did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.
Taylor’s family sued the city of Atlanta in July, city workers also reportedly had to check to see if Taylor was in his tent.
Taylor’s death sparked outrage among local advocates and encampment neighbors who at the time called the city’s policies regarding cleaning up encampments inhumane. They said the city faced a severe shortage of affordable housing, making it inevitable that people would end up living on the streets.
Right after Taylor’s death, the city placed a temporary moratorium on sweeping encampments. With the FIFA World Cup taking place in Atlanta this summer, the city has since resumed cleaning camps in an effort to eliminate all the homeless in the city center before this date. Partners for HOME is close to its goal of housing 400 people before the World Cup, Vassell said.
The suit filed Friday seeks unspecified damages as well as compensation for medical and hospital bills, burial costs, attorney fees and litigation costs.
Harold Spence, one of the attorneys representing the family, said at a news conference Friday that city officials and association employees did not want “dignitaries” attending the Martin Luther King Jr. event to see the encampment.
“They were in a hurry to take it down,” Spence said. “Unfortunately, it turned out that they were ready to remove it at any cost.”
Spence added that Taylor had recently found a job and was ready to “change his life.”
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Kramon is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to cover under-reported issues.
