Homelessness trend a positive one

We can’t be absolutely certain from the size of the survey population — sampling, as we were reminded in November, can be unreliable — but there’s convincing evidence that the number of homeless people in our area is decreasing, perhaps dramatically.

As reported earlier this week, Home for Good, a United Way-affiliated agency that finds short-term shelter, long-term housing, human and health services and other assistance for homeless people in the Chattahoochee Valley, completed its annual Point In Time Count in January. That’s a “snapshot” count in which volunteers fan out across the area seeking out and counting homeless people in an attempt to assess, as accurately as possible, the size of the problem. And then Home for Good and its partner agencies and volunteers go to work.

The numbers have dropped steadily. In 2011 the count identified more than 500 local homeless people. Last year there were 303. This year there were 282, and that’s probably a more accurate count than in past years, due to the participation of more volunteers and law enforcement.

Of those people who identified themselves as homeless in this year’s count, all but 73 said they were sheltered. That’s good to know, but shelter is not the same as a place to live.

This long-term effort to eradicate homelessness in the greater Columbus area is obviously an effective one. And it’s a necessary one: Every person provided with a way off the streets and toward a stable, sustainable home life means less human suffering and hardship, less stress on social services and law enforcement. It’s a triumph for all of us.

History on the move

Even as you read this, perhaps the most iconic of all Georgia historic and artistic treasures is rolling through the streets of Atlanta.

The Cyclorama — the massive panoramic oil painting that depicts in epic detail the Battle of Atlanta on July 22, 1864 — is being moved from Grant Park, its home since 1921, to a new facility built specially for it at the Atlanta History Center in Buckhead.

The 359-foot-long, 42-foot-high, 12-ton painting will undergo intensive restoration, as will the diorama that for decades has filled the space between the canvas and the viewers. (The Atlanta Business Chronicle reported a detail that probably few of us knew — the diorama was a New Deal work project of the mid-1930s, a half-century after the painting’s 1886 debut.)

A trip to the Cyclorama at Grant Park has been a rite of educational passage for more of us who grew up in this area than we could even begin to estimate. But the almost century-old building’s leaks and its temperature and humidity fluctuations have caused the exhibit to deteriorate toward a point of no return.

Its new climate-controlled exhibit building is the centerpiece of a $35 million project to save a priceless and irreplaceable American monument. We wish it a safe and uneventful trip to its new home.

This story was originally published February 9, 2017 at 3:57 PM with the headline "Homelessness trend a positive one."