UPDATE (8/24/26): Mayor Kelly Girtz told APN that he is meeting with Advantage Behavioral Health Systems tomorrow to craft a transition plan to ensure continuity of services, perhaps at the same location. Therefore the original title of this article, “The Homeless Day Service Center on North Ave is shutting down,” no longer seems accurate and has been changed to the current version.
However, most of this article has not been changed and still reflects the original title when it was unclear that basic-needs services would continue in any capacity at the center.
Advantage Behavioral Health Systems, the nonprofit that operates the Homeless Day Service Center located at 240 North Avenue, will soon begin winding down operations there in preparation for a final closing date of October 16. Some services, including laundry and showers, will end on September 25. Other services, including access to mail, will continue until October 16 at which point the center may close its doors for good.
The Homeless Day Service Center has operated at this location for over a decade, providing much needed services like laundry, showers and an address to receive mail for thousands of people experiencing homelessness in Athens. Hundreds use these services every month. The center is also a place where Advantage Behavioral Health case workers and street outreach teams make contact with clients to help them receive mental health and substance abuse treatment, as well as access to housing when available.
When the center closes, Advantage Behavioral Health Systems will no longer provide basic-needs services like laundry, showers and mail for people experiencing homelessness. According to a spokesperson, Advantage Behavioral Health’s other services will continue, including behavioral health treatment, case management and homelessness prevention.
“The services we provide – homeless prevention services, rapid re-housing, case management, street outreach – none of that is ending. It’s basically showers, laundry and mail services [that are ending],” said Evan Mills, the Vice President of Development and Community Relations for Advantage Behavioral Health Systems.
Mills told APN that the decision to end basic-needs services was a difficult one made after a sharp internal debate. Ultimately, Advantage Behavioral Health’s board of directors decided that the organization should renew its focus on its core mission, which does not include homeless services beyond case management and rapid re-housing programs.
“We’re not a homeless services agency. We are a behavioral health provider,” Mills told APN. “One of the things we’re strategically trying to do is to empower our community and find collaborative mechanisms so that it’s not one single organization trying to be everything to everybody.”
Tochuku Ikedionwu, the chief clinical officer at Advantage Behavioral Health, stressed that Advantage is looking to partner with other nonprofits to assist them in continuing these services.
“We know there are other providers here in Athens-Clarke County who provide basic-needs services. We would like to support them to be able to do those things in a stronger way.”
Why is the Homeless Day Service Center shutting down?
The Homeless Day Service Center has been plagued by a number of issues during its ten-year run, including a brutal attack on an employee with a machete in 2024. Just three weeks ago, an ACCPD officer shot someone close to the center who was also holding a bladed weapon (in this case, a knife). While this last incident may have sealed the center’s fate, Mills said that there were many other factors that played into the decision.
“It’s been a perfect storm of a bunch of different things. We’re facing a lot of legal situations [and] the liability was continuing to grow and grow,” Mills told APN.
Advantage Behavioral Health Systems does not receive any funding to operate the basic services of the center, according to Mills, and most who use the center are not Advantage clients in a strict sense. This makes reporting to the state government and meeting state audit requirements at the center awkward.
“We are a behavioral health treatment provider and we have to fall within the constraints of the state of Georgia,” Mills said. “The HDSC [Homeless Day Service Center] was a bit of an outlier or a strange little animal in that we weren’t necessarily funded for it, but being held to audit standards and things like that, it posed a bit of an issue in our reporting. What we want to do is extend and develop partnerships with other providers [to continue basic-needs services] who aren’t held to these same types of statewide standards and audit requirements.”
This leaves dozens or even hundreds of people in Athens searching for another option to meet their basic life needs. APN spoke with one person experiencing homelessness outside the Homeless Day Service Center last Friday about the news.
“I just came here to do laundry and check my mail and I found out their last day is going to be September 25,” Zach told APN.
Zach has lived in Athens since 2012 and has been homeless since 2023. He says that he’ll probably end up making use of the laundry services provided by the Sparrow’s Nest, if it can accommodate all of the new demand, although he would prefer to keep coming to the North Avenue center. He expressed some trepidation about how the closure of the center will affect him and others in the same situation.
“It’s a whole lot of services that aren’t going to be available just in time for the weather getting worse,” Zach said. “It’s going to be an interesting fall and winter.”
Advantage Behavioral Health Systems has written an open letter to the community about this situation, which you can read here.
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