Atlanta suspends water shutoffs and evictions amid SNAP benefits crisis
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Mayor Andre Dickens speaks at the Atlanta Community Food Center in Adamsville. Photo: Kristal Dixon/Axios
Atlanta will pause water service terminations and evictions of tenants in city-affiliated housing units as it responds to a looming funding lapse for federal SNAP benefits.
Why it matters: They are two fewer things residents will have to think about as they weigh how to spend money on food, medicine, gas and other necessities.
Driving the news: Mayor Andre Dickens announced the two administrative orders, which will run through Jan. 31, 2026, during a press conference Thursday to unveil the city's ATL CARES initiative, a multifaceted approach to help SNAP recipients.
What they're saying: Atlanta Community Food Bank (ACFB) will use $5 million from its reserves account to provide an additional 6 million pounds of food over the next four weeks to residents in its 29-county service area, president and CEO Kyle Waide said.
- "It's going to ensure that we can meet more of the demand that we're going to be facing over these next several weeks," Waide said, adding ACFB has seen a 70% increase in demand in the last three years.
Yes, and: Goodr founder and CEO Jasmine Crowe-Houston said her company, which partnered with the city to open a free grocery store at the William Walker Recreation Center, is delivering meal kits to seniors and will pack and distribute about 1,000 bags of food through Atlanta Public Schools.
- Crowe-Houston said she's fielding calls and emails from "people really in sheer panic, not knowing how they're going to put food on the table."
By the numbers: Roughly 1.4 million Georgians receive SNAP benefits, including about 580,000 people who live in metro Atlanta, Dickens said.
- Atlanta Public Schools superintendent Bryan Johnson said about 17,750 students in the system rely on SNAP benefits. Another 1,000 APS students are unhoused.
- Johnson said APS will partner with Goodr to offer grocery items on Wednesdays and Thursdays by appointment only at the district's Student & Family Support Hub.
State of play: SNAP recipients will be able to use any remaining funds on their EBT cards after Nov. 1, but they won't get new payments until the shutdown ends.
- Gov. Brian Kemp told the AJC that the state will not use part of its $14.6 billion in reserve to fund SNAP in Georgia.
- "There is no mechanism by which the state can replace benefits on customer cards," he said in a statement issued Thursday.
Yes, but: Dickens, who said he understands the governor's rationale, said he will reach out to Kemp and "make my case that this might be a good time to do so, because we are facing a crisis."
- "We're pulling things together as much as we can right now on a local level, and so eventually it's going to be unsustainable for us to do food drives and donation boxes," he said.