Atlanta's homeless population has been forcibly displaced ahead of the World Cup, with city officials admitting to targeting unsheltered individuals near downtown. One man, Cornelius Taylor, was crushed to death by a bulldozer during a clearance operation in January 2025.
Homeless Sweeps Intensify Ahead of World Cup
City employees entered Freedom Park, less than a mile from a World Cup fan zone, without warning and removed tents, ID, medication, and belongings. A city official called it 'routine park maintenance,' but advocates say it's part of a broader pattern to clean up the city for tourists.
Mayor Andre Dickens stated in 2024: '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.' Vice-President JD Vance used similarly hostile language, saying people should not have to 'cross the street to avoid a crazy person yelling at your family.'
Deaths and Displacement
Cornelius Taylor, 42, was sleeping in his tent on Old Wheat Street when a five-tonne bulldozer crushed him. His fiancée found 'blood and body parts' in his possessions. The city promised new protocols, but a care worker at the Centre for Health and Rehabilitation noted: 'I haven’t seen evidence of what has occurred, but we do know the people are gone. So where did they go?'
A homeless man named Sirius described being taken to a centre beyond the West End: 'They dropped me off there in the middle of the night. They call them Mormon centres, but it ain’t nothing but a warehouse of cops. It looked like a Fema camp. I walked all the way back here.'
Community Voices
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 that they’ve chosen to treat us less than human.'
Atlanta's Downtown Rising plan claimed to have housed 500 people, but the city has no official rehousing centre for the World Cup. Seattle's mayor pledged 500 new homes but built only 50 by the tournament start.
Nationwide Crisis
There are at least 770,000 unhoused people in the US, according to official figures. Hundreds of new bills criminalising sleeping outside have passed in the past two years. The World Cup has accelerated this process in host cities.
At the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the city detained 9,000 people. Paris bussed homeless out during the 2024 Olympics. In Los Angeles, homeless were placed in motels; in Dallas, a 200-tent encampment was cleared.
FIFA's Sloganeering vs Reality
Sirius concluded: 'They always bring a big event that everybody’s blinded by. It’s like the Games. It’s a distraction. They treat us like trash and trampled over us. But that’s America for you.'
