New hire will walk Macon streets to connect unhoused people with local services

Downtown Macon’s Business Improvement District has hired Shakita Howard to serve as an outreach specialist responsible for connecting unhoused individuals with care and resources in the community.

The position is funded by the extra taxes collected from businesses in the district, which sits between Riverside Drive and Oglethorpe Street and is bounded by Spring and Fifth Streets.

In addition to the outreach specialist, the BID’s funds go towards a 11-person workforce that has supplemented Macon-Bibb county’s waste, beautification and visitor services since 2019, Richard Bingaman, BID’s operations manager, said.

The BID invested more than $100,000 in hiring the outreach specialist and in other efforts to alleviate pressures on the unhoused population, The Macon Newsroom reported in October. This addition came months after a report from Block by Block, which partners with the BID, found the city’s resources were not synced with the needs of its unhoused population.

“Many unhoused individuals are not being engaged daily, which is a missed opportunity for building trust and rapport with the population,” the report said. “Some of the services people seek are outside of the district, which people stated they had no way to access, and refuse to walk.”

Howard will walk through the BID Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Bingaman said, to be “somebody that’s creating this bond” with the unhoused population.

The report said there was little collaboration among agencies and care providers, which led to segments of the population being left out of the network.

“From talking and meeting with providers, it seems they are working in silos. Many people feel that there is little hope for their situations to improve,” the report said. “Boots on the ground from an outreach worker may change that mindset if they are ready and motivated to connect with the service providers.”

Bingaman said there was much overlap between what the report and what the BID “ambassadors,” the organization’s cleaning and hospitality workers, observe on their twice-daily routes downtown.

Sister Deborah Mallott, director of the Daybreak day resource center, said her center and others like it in Macon are working together as much as they can. But, she said, they serve different purposes and, depending on where their funding comes from, may have to enforce rules that can deter some unhoused people from going to those shelters.

One of the qualifications the BID sought was training in the Homeless Management Information System. The system is used by service providers to match unhoused individuals with services they need and track what resources are going underutilized, according to the Georgia Department of Community Affairs.

The position, Bingaman said, will take a proactive approach to care rather than depending on the unhoused population to find their own resources or rely on passive information exchange.

And as the unhoused population grows, as The Macon Melody reported, the need to spread information to newly unhoused people or unhoused people who are new to Macon is growing. The number of unhoused people who live primarily outside of shelters in Macon and statewide is determined every other January in a point-in-time count, most recently on Jan. 26, 2026.

“(Howard) is out there doing the social services on the streets and sidewalks, not in offices, not waiting for people to come. She’s going to them,” Bingaman said. “She’s out there providing information, making connections and relationships, trying to create bonds, and then trying to talk up the services that Macon provides.”

Howard has already started her role and is walking around the BID area, Bingaman said, accelerating the connection between the unhoused population and services they desire. On March 31, Howard went out to unhoused encampments with staff from Daybreak, Mallott said, to make connections and refer people back to the existing resources.

Bingaman said there have been past instances when an individual wanted to go to the Daybreak or Brookdale resource centers one day, but when transportation was arranged the following day, they refused to go to the resource center.

“It’s got to be a here-and-now sort of thing when somebody says, ‘Yes,’ versus telling them to wait a day, telling them to wait a week,” Bingaman said.

The Telegraph could not reach Howard for comment on the new position.