Tony Johnson says that in his eight years of being homeless in Atlanta, he has been bundled up like so much trash on the street by the police and carted off to jail more than 100 times, mostly for trespassing.

Mr. Johnson said he did not need a calendar, a calculator or a statistician's precision to know that his arrests and those of others were clustered around events like the 1994 Super Bowl, the 1995 World Series, any Billy Graham crusade and computer industry trade shows.

It was all about as predictable as 90-degree-plus days in July here.

"I know what the deal is, I know the routine," he said recently while talking about his life on the streets and the problems of drug addiction and alcoholism that have kept him from patching up his life.

Mr. Johnson, who is 40, said he knew what to do to avoid police sweeps in the days leading up to the Summer Olympics. "All you have to do," he said, "is have a place to stay, some identification, some money in your pocket, nice clothes and avoid the hot spots."