Atlanta Jewish Foundation Impact Story
September 8, 2026
In the winter of 1984, Atlanta was experiencing an extremely cold winter. Concerned about people at risk of dying on the streets, Jackie Garson Howard turned to Rabbi Alvin Sugarman of The Temple: What could be done?
Within nine days, The Temple had converted classrooms into shelter beds. That first winter, seven couples found refuge there.
What began as an urgent, volunteer-led response would become the Zaban Paradies Center (ZPC), an independent nonprofit dedicated to helping people experiencing or at risk of homelessness achieve stability and self-sufficiency.
More than 40 years later, ZPC has grown far beyond those first seven couples. This past year alone, the organization helped 555 households facing homelessness receive emergency shelter and day services, prevent eviction, or move into permanent housing.
“They’d Rather Stay on the Street Than Be Separated”
From the beginning, ZPC filled a gap few other shelters addressed: providing shelter for couples together.
“There’s still to this day, less than a handful of shelters in the United States that are specific to serving couples,” says Danny Lester-Drew, ZPC’s Executive Director. “And we hear all the time that people do not want to separate from the only person that they feel safe with, who has been there by their side throughout everything that they’ve just experienced and the trauma that they’ve gone through.”
While most shelters are dedicated to either men, women, or women with children, At ZPC, couples have a private room where they can remain together while working with staff toward permanent housing. Many of these couples are also parents, who, due to the circumstances, have had to separate from their children or enter them into foster care.
As Maria Englehart, ZPC Experience and Marketing Manager, puts it, “They are able to spend 30, 60 or 90 days in our shelter and really focus on creating that path to stability and hopefully reuniting with their children.”
A Dramatic Shift
In 2025, ZPC moved from an overnight model – where residents arrived at 4:30 p.m. and left at 7 a.m. – to a 24/7 residential model with expanded case management. The change came from listening to residents, many of whom worked late shifts, had disabilities, were pregnant, or simply needed access to their shelter during the day.
“It became clear to us through feedback from our clients and through looking at our outcomes that there was a lot more we could be doing to advance people toward permanent housing and self-sufficiency,” Lester-Drew says.
The results have been striking. In 2024, 26% of ZPC residents moved into permanent housing. In 2025, that figure jumped to 57% – more than double the previous year.
Preventing Homelessness
Now, ZPC is taking its mission one step further.
Through Atlanta Rising, a new homelessness-prevention initiative supported by Partners for HOME, ZPC is helping households in the Atlanta Public Schools district that are at imminent risk of losing their housing. The program provides financial assistance, legal services and individualized support.
Recent studies show that 50% of people in Atlanta spend more than one-third of their income on housing, while 25% spend more than half. “A huge portion of our neighbors in Atlanta are living right on the edge and can’t afford an emergency expense when it comes up,” Lester-Drew says. “There’s a lot of ways that people can find themselves spiraling quickly into homelessness. many of us are one step away.”
The need for support became apparent almost immediately. Within four or five weeks of launching the prevention program – and without advertising – ZPC received 283 requests for assistance.
The program focuses on households earning below 80% of the area median income that are imminently at risk of losing their housing. Case managers assess each household individually and determine what intervention can best prevent homelessness.
One early participant was a veteran and mother of four who fell behind on rent after taking in her teenage niece and nephew. Living on a fixed VA income, she couldn’t absorb the additional costs. ZPC paid her past-due and current rent, resolving the eviction and allowing her children to remain in school. She is now preparing for the next month’s rent and building an emergency fund.
In another case, a mother and her two children were living in an apartment with persistent mold that their landlord failed to address. When an eviction was filed, ZPC helped the family move into a new apartment. The court ultimately dismissed the eviction case.
The goal is to intervene quickly. “We try to resolve the crisis within 72 hours of meeting the clients in our program,” Lester-Drew says.
A Community-Powered Mission
ZPC’s work is made possible largely through private philanthropy. The Temple continues to provide the space and utilities for the shelter, while individuals, foundations and corporate partners fund its programs.
Atlanta Jewish Foundation Donor-Advised Fund holders have been critical to that support, sending grants when needed most. “The emergency shelter does not have a recurring funding source. It’s not funded by the government. It is funded entirely by the generosity of our community,” Lester-Drew says.
That generosity helps make possible shelter, meals, showers, laundry, clothing, case management, day services and financial assistance that can keep a family from becoming homeless in the first place.
On October 29, 2026, ZPC will host its Home, Within Reach gala. The organization is seeking to raise approximately $240,000 through the gala as part of its broader $1 million annual fundraising goal, including funding for a major kitchen renovation and other shelter improvements.
There are currently 2,894 people in Atlanta experiencing homelessness. Supporting ZPC is an opportunity to help Atlanta neighbors move from crisis toward stability – and increasingly, to prevent that crisis from happening at all.
To support the Zaban Paradies Center through your Donor-Advised Fund, visit the donor portal. To learn more about how your charitable giving can make a lasting impact, contact Ghila Sanders, VP of Foundation, at gsanders@jewishatlanta.org.
This project is supported in part by Partners for HOME, on behalf of the Atlanta Continuum of Care.
