Photograph by Audra Melton

The day after Thanksgiving in 2025, a City of Atlanta police officer approached James Jones as he sheltered for warmth outside the library on Ponce de Leon Avenue. Rather than arresting Jones for loitering, the officer offered to take him downtown to the newly opened Center for Diversion and Services, where he could get a shower, a meal, and help with housing. Jones, who had been homeless for two years, agreed.

At the diversion center, Jones was assigned a case worker, who quickly found him a bed in a recovery house. She later helped him obtain his birth certificate and a spot on a housing program waiting list; he hasn’t slept on the streets since. Jones says the center helped him through the hardest part of his journey to stability: “[Learning to] trust the people who are giving you the information, so you don’t have to go back out.”

The Center for Diversion and Services opened in January 2025 as an all-hours hub where people who might otherwise be jailed for nonviolent misdemeanors are directed toward support resources. Since then, the center has facilitated more than 2,000 diversions for individuals experiencing homelessness, substance use, or a mental health crisis. But the numbers are far below the projected capacity of 10,000 to 14,000 annual visitors, hindered by underutilization and disagreements over how it delivers care. The disappointing results have raised fundamental questions about the center’s vision and how it should be carried out.

Courtesy of Grady Health System

On a recent morning, pressed shirts and pants hung in the center’s clothing room, and a kitchen freezer was stocked with microwavable meals. Such amenities are intended to help guests “feel like a human being again,” says Marci Tribble, who operates the center as part of her role at Grady Health Services, where she is the director of psychiatric emergency services and justice-related programs. She says restoring a sense of dignity is critical: “Why would you believe somebody’s going to help you if you believe you’re not even worth the help?”

Plans for this facility began in 2021 as a coordinated effort between multiple public and private groups, including the City of Atlanta, Grady Health Systems, and the Policing Alternatives and Diversion Initiative (PAD). Their roles varied, but everyone involved had the same goal: finding better solutions for people in crisis who needed help but didn’t belong in a jail or a hospital.

Integral from the beginning was PAD, a nonprofit launched in 2017 that operates a mobile pre-arrest diversion program (it’s also the designated responder for the city’s 311 nonemergency calls). But after years of seeing needs it couldn’t always meet in the field, such as wound care or basic hygiene, PAD proposed a more permanent diversion headquarters.

“Oftentimes when people were diverted to us, they had needs that would be best addressed in an actual physical safe place,” says Moki Macías, PAD’s executive director. Macías worked with a coalition of government and civic leaders to plan for such a space, and they toured similar projects in Houston and Tucson. They also identified an underused part of the Atlanta City Detention Center to adapt for the diversion headquarters. A contract was drafted to clarify the partnership: The City of Atlanta and Fulton County would cover funding, Grady would manage the facility and provide behavioral and clinical screenings, and PAD was responsible for long-term stabilization support.

Before it opened, the city declared the diversion center would receive upwards of 40 people a day, but a year and a half later, it isn’t operating anywhere near that capacity; the average is five or six people a day, according to an April report. (Most individuals are brought to the center by the City of Atlanta, but a handful come from 17 other local law enforcement agencies who partner with the center, from Roswell to Union City.)

The number of people diverted depends on how many police officers and first responders elect to use it; some people are also excluded for eligibility reasons, such as minors or those with an outstanding warrant. The center’s staff is working to ensure officers know about the option: Karen Sutton, the facility’s director and a clinical social worker at Grady, says she regularly advocates for the program at Atlanta Police Department morning briefings and police academy trainings.

But critics say that the APD itself hasn’t done enough to educate officers about diversion or to encourage its use. “The problem is that this is not mandatory from APD leadership,” says Michael Collins of Play Fair ATL, a watchdog group composed of multiple advocacy organizations. “What we’re missing is political will from the mayor to push his police chief to say, This isn’t a choice. We’ve collectively invested $6 million a year, and we need this to work.” The APD declined an interview request but said in a statement that it “remains fully committed” to the center and to pre-arrest diversion.

Photograph by Audra Melton

In March, operations at the center were further disrupted when a contract dispute led to PAD’s withdrawal from operations, at least temporarily. During a contract renewal process, PAD disagreed with a change proposed by the City of Atlanta and Grady that would have altered the way it manages caseloads; the organization declined to sign the new contract and withdrew its staff from the facility until a resolution could be reached.

In emails exchanged with the city, Grady officials said the new contract emerged from their desire to be “good stewards of finances.” Macías, however, argues that the changes would force the PAD team to reduce its caseload and shorten the time staff works with clients. “We’re contracted to provide our model, and our model is that we work with people for as long as they need us to,” she says.

After PAD’s withdrawal, services that were formerly offered in-house, such as housing assessments, were shifted to a referral system, in partnership with a wide range of local providers. “We want to utilize the entire network of Atlanta,” Tribble said in a June meeting. “That was the original intention of the center, to bring all these service providers together.”

In a July letter to the Justice Policy Board, Macías wrote that PAD “welcome[s] opportunities to continue to collaborate” with the center, and board members have expressed support for PAD’s role being restored. There’s also hope that more people will soon come through the center. In late May, Fulton County Sheriff Pat Labat announced that the Fulton County jail would no longer accept certain misdemeanor bookings, a move meant to alleviate overcrowding at that troubled facility. Grady’s team said in a statement that the center is ready: “We are prepared to connect more individuals . . . through our extensive network of community partners.”

The diversion center’s vision has rolled out unevenly, but for many who have gone through its doors, the experience has changed everything. James Jones is now a mindfulness and yoga practitioner with plans to teach classes for others struggling with homelessness and mental health stressors. “The fact that someone cares enough to listen,” Jones says of his diversion experience, “is enough for me to continue to move forward.”

This article appears in our September 2026 issue.