On a Monday in June, 25 years ago, activists broke into the vacant Imperial Hotel, made their way to the highest floor, and lowered a massive sign emblazoned with the directive: “House the Homeless Here.” Soon the encampment inside the historic hotel numbered 100 protesters. They decried the Imperial’s owner, developer John Portman, for allowing the fire-damaged structure to sit empty for a decade, and Mayor Maynard Jackson for dragging his heels on policies to assist homeless Atlantans, then estimated to number 10,000 (almost double the present homeless population).

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Source Atlanta Magazine