Peachtree Hills Update

I’d like to call attention to my very first comment, and a very in-depth one at that.  Thank you to Rick White, spokesperson for the Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA), for composing several paragraphs in response to the Peachtree Hills community comments to the ASAP and Atlanta’s plan for affordable, ADA accessible, senior housing.  Mr. White is involved in public relations with an Atlanta firm interested in providing “strategic counsel and communication services for complex issues”.  Their website promotes that “Our clients rely on us to frame the most complex or controversial issues to win public support.”   

Well senior housing is definitely a complex and controversial issue.  It involves so many aspects, political expediency, urban design, public process, market feasibility, and historical precedence.  Its policies are intertwined formally with every level of national, state, and local governments and informally, on a much more personal level, with thousands of families in our area.  The AHA uses their blog to address matters in the public eye, and add supporting detail to their formal webpage. 

Mr. White details what the AHA is currently doing to support an aging population, but the real issue at the Peachtree Hills meeting was that the City of Atlanta itself, had no policy on senior housing, or affordable housing.  The City has a way to go before it can consider itself amenable to those that need it most – its lifelong residents.   

As the demand for affordable housing becomes more pressing, Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA) announced plans to partner with real estate developers and to increase by 5,000 the number of mixed-income workforce housing units available in the city over the next 5years.

AHA has dubbed its latest initiative the “Housing Affordability Initiative.” AHA’s commitment will support approximately 5,000 units of workforce housing over the next five (5) years.

“For-Profit” and “Non-Profit” developers will be called on to develop additional mixedincome communities and to make a percentage of their newly developed rental communities affordable to Atlanta’s workforce. The new housing will be available to those who earn between minimum wage and up to 60% of the metropolitan area median income (or $40,260 for a family of four).

As Atlanta continues to gain in popularity, affordable workforce housing opportunities will grow scarce. The booming development and new construction markets present AHA with an opportunity to ensure great housing remains affordable for Atlanta’s workforce. AHA’s commitment ensures healthy mixed-income communities will remain affordable and available in the city.

A negotiated agreement between AHA and HUD created a window of opportunity (July 1, 2003-June 30, 2010) during which AHA has financial and regulatory flexibility to address Atlanta’s affordable housing needs.

AHA will commit a ten (10) year renewable stream of rental assistance toward a percentage of housing units in mixed-income developments. These housing units will be then leased by the owner to working citizens at rates lower than market rents.

The next solicitation of qualified developments will begin in late 2007. “For-Profit” and “Non-Profit” developers will compete for the opportunity to partner with AHA.

City of Atlanta Through new construction, investment in existing private properties, and other public/private ventures, AHA is assisting nearly 6,000 more low-income households than it served in 1994, when Renee Glover became CEO and President and when the revitalization strategy was first implemented.

 

Public meetings

For work in the past week, I attended several community meetings for introducing the new comprehensive plan update to the neighborhoods. Its called ASAP, or the Atlanta Strategic Action Plan (I designed the cover – woohoo!). Of course, at these meetings, things always go off a little into left field. Typically, the residents will bring up several issues, but band together to really harp on one. Thursday night, our meeting was held at the Peachtree Hills Rec Center. One of the primary points of contention revolved around senior housing:

· Atlanta just doesn’t have enough and is tearing down what little it does have.

· Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA) is closing all of its towers – Where are the disabled going? We need ADA compliance, amenities in all our new housing. Change is occurring too slowly.

· There are seventy four Section 8 properties along Boulevard, in NPU-M. This land is slated for development, where are those people going to go with their vouchers?

· Developers tore down aging housing stock in Lindbergh. They’re replacing it with live/work. The ironic thing is that it was truly live/work before. Cheap, aged housing, close to jobs. Now it’ll be more expensive, newer housing, close to shopping.

In that same vein, City Council held a hearing on senior housing issues, and the debate lasted all afternoon. The AJC reported on the discussion:

The housing authority’s decision to give vouchers to former housing project residents is prompting many of them to move to Clayton County, where housing prices are lower than in Atlanta, said former City Councilman Derrick Boazman. Once there, the former Atlanta residents lose some quality of life because they are ineligible to receive free health care at Grady Memorial Hospital and no longer can hop on a MARTA bus to get to church or the grocery store, he said.

The tension for people who get help from the Atlanta Housing Authority stems in part from the agency’s decision to begin replacing in 1994 dilapidated projects with vouchers that allow residents to pick their own homes and with mixed income communities filled with residents with a range of incomes. The number of vouchers the housing authority provides has more than doubled since 1995, from about 6,000 to 14,500, Glover said.

The remaining projects and highrises are slated to come down within the next two years. Some residents fear they will have no place to go after that happens.

So the housing authority’s decision to use vouchers to alleviate the centralized poverty problem in Atlanta has had several consequences. Primarily, it’s an issue of location. Where do the displaced people go? And if the answer is the ‘burbs, will their quality of life suffer without access to the cities amenities? And as for an architecture suited for an aging population, when will we begin to require ADA compliance in senior, public housing? It seems like a no-brainer.