Are pricey developments the remedy for urban decay?
by Keith Laing, Atlanta Tribune: The Magazine
May 2007
In the 34 years Bryon Amos has lived in the Vine City community just west of downtown Atlanta, he has seen its good, bad and ugly days.
“I’ve seen us go from kids on the corner [playing] and picket fences [in front of houses] to the dark days of drugs and crime,” says Amos, a lifelong resident who now serves as president of the Vine City Civic Association. “The neighborhood has changed drastically, but I’m happy to say we’re on the upswing again.”
Like many once-thriving predominantly black inner city communities that saw its residents flee to the suburbs a generation ago, Vine City is fast become prime real estate again. These days, in Atlanta and nationwide, living just minutes from downtown is enough to make areas once known primarily for their decay dream destinations for suburbanites who are tired of spending most of their day behind the wheel of their car.
And with rush hour congestion strengthening its grip on Atlanta, along with continued resistance to non-automotive transportation solutions from Georgia’s powers that be, there may be no end in sight to the urban migration. That’s because weary road warriors are helped in their quest to live closer to work and play by developers who buy cheaply valued properties and renovate them or replace them with shiny new houses and sparkling new shopping centers, a phenomenon that has become so widespread that mere mention of it elicits strong reactions from everyone involved.
Some lambaste gentrification’s effect on long-time residents, who often are priced out of the communities they’ve known and loved by rapidly increasing property values. They argue that those getting the boot are elderly, working class and more frequently than not, black. Others counter with the fact that for the first time in what seems like forever, development is coming to these neighborhoods and it is long overdue. They say that residents who weathered their communities’ storms are now seeing the other side of the rainbow in the form of investment and development.
However, like beauty, truth is indeed in the eye of the beholder, which is why many others, like Amos, fall somewhere in the middle.
“Its part of the natural evolution of neighborhoods,” he says. “As people move out for certain reasons, people move in for other reasons. [Gentrification] is a valid concern, but we can control gentrification. A lot of people say you can’t, but gentrification is sometimes good because it eliminates overwhelming spots of poverty and creates a better balance throughout the city.”
Amos adds that contrary to popular belief, it is not the outside redevelopment that is creating the problems most often associated with gentrification.
“Due to crime and disinvestment, it is easy to buy properties flip them as they say, but its not always that process that causes the property values to increase,” he says. “Once any neighborhood begins to clean itself and organize, that can cause property values to raise as well.”
It was residents’ determination to save the community they love that started Vine City’s turnaround, Amos says.
“The pendulum really sprung the other way when we as citizens began to organize,” he says. “We’re creating a neighborhood again, a live, work and play scenario where you don’t have to leave the confines of your neighborhood to get the services you need.”
Vine City is just one of the many Atlanta communities experiencing what some might call a restoration and what others might deem a whitewash. Karl Barnes, a certification specialist with the Georgia Minority Supplier Development Council (GMSDC), says the same thing is happening in West End, home to the bastions of black education in the Atlanta University Center.
Barnes, former president of the West End Neighborhood Association who has called the neighborhood home for more than 30 years, says he is glad to see developers take an interest in the area, but hopes they keep in mind why he has stayed so long.
“Preservation is a good tool in African-American revitalization,” he says. “The problem is the market. People come in and buy the historic properties and pull out all of its character to make it look like a suburban home with a great view. It’s appealing to people who don’t know what they are buying.”
If the face of the displaced is the greatest generation, Barnes says, the face of his new neighbors is unmistakably Generation X. Twenty-something’s fresh out of college are primarily the buyers in the gentrified marketplace, he says. They are drawn to its proximity to urbane downtown Atlanta and to condos with coffee shops in their lobbies and specialty stores nearby.
“The context [of gentrification] is that they are selling to young suburban buyers,” he says. “They come because it’s nice or it’s close to downtown,” he says. “There’s a generation of young folks who’ll go out and spend $200,000 on their first house and think nothing of it. When I was coming up, you brought a start house and worked your way up.”
Typically the first people displaced by gentrification are renters whose landlords greet them with hefty rent hikes at the end of their leases. But Barnes says that even those who own their homes feel the pain.
“When property values go up, the county tries to make you pay more taxes,” he rues. “The only people looking for property values to go up are the people looking to sell. Nobody wants to pay more taxes. When the county assesses you more, you’re not getting more services.”
Barnes adds that he has seen gentrification in his neighborhood before.
“I’ve seen three or four waves of redevelopment,” he says. “Some of it has been good, some of it has been bad. The bubble in the housing market you’re getting ready to see burst happened in the 70s, the 80s and the 90s.”
Barnes adds that, like Vine City, West End has struggled with people attempting to “flip” its properties.
“We’re seeing the manifestation of sub prime lenders that are raising the values [of property] and not doing their job with the upkeep,” he says. “It’s cheap money. People buy [property] without income verification and hope they can sell it before the first payment is due.”
Problems arise when these buyers get stuck holding the bag on houses they cannot move, Barnes says. Property owners who never had any intention to investing in the community become responsible for its upkeep.
“Sometimes they get stuck with it longer than they anticipated,” he says.
However, he says, the community has been able to utilize zoning measures to combat the practice.
“We removed R5, which are duplexes, and are now solely R4, which are single family houses,” Barnes says. “Speculators build [duplexes] because Housing Choices pays the best rent in town.”
Still, Barnes says, gentrification could help the West Ends and Vine Cities of the world keep up with midtown and downtown Decatur, areas known for stylish housing and pedestrian friendly shopping.
“Midtown has college campuses and so do we, but look at what’s around the Georgia Tech and what’s around the AUC,” he says. “There are uses of places around the AUC, either by public policy or lack thereof, that were not placed around Georgia Tech.
“We’ve got the same number of students as midtown, but go to Morehouse or Spelman and ask where they spend their money,” he continues. “West End is not on their radar. We have to enhance the quality of our housing because at the end of the day, you’ve got a plethora of [housing] supply on the market. As long as you’ve got good credit, you can get a good deal in midtown. If we don’t look like midtown, we’re not going to appeal to young professionals and we’re always going to be a community of last resort.”
However, for Brent Brewer, an engineer who works for the city of Atlanta and was looking to move out of the house he was renting in Decatur and buy one to call his own, West End was far from a last resort.
“The primary reason why we choose to relocate is that we were expecting a baby and needed more space,” he says. “We also wanted to move closer to my wife’s [job] at Spelman College.”
Brewer, 32, was familiar with West End and thus unfazed by warnings from friends and colleagues about the crime in the area, he adds. Brewer relished the idea of living in a once-thriving black community.
“My image of West End was that it was an environment of young black consciousness, a place where you were likely to see young black men and women wearing African garb and wearing their hair in dreadlocks,” he says. “I regularly traveled there to shop, buying shea butter, incense and black soap from the numerous African import shops and purchasing books at the Shrine of the Black Madonna. I got my hair twisted at a braiding shop on Ralph David Abernathy and frequently ate at the Soul Vegetarian restaurant. I attended the annual Malcom X celebration in the West End Park. When I went into the West End, I felt a great sense of community and acceptance.”
Brewer says that he hopes more young residents follow his lead.
“The neighborhood isn’t at all that youthful,” he says. “Many of the Historic West End residents have lived there for over ten years. I’d like to see people moving in the neighborhood. We have quite a number of vacant houses which are in need of owner occupants.”
That’s because gentrifiers in the West End has saturated the housing market, Brewer says.
“In the West End, investors have bought several houses that have been renovated rather than a full on restored and put them on the market for $300,000, which is almost double the typical fair market value of a home, but no body’s living in those houses,” he says. “The houses that are occupied are sold in the $160,000-$215,000 range, which isn’t going to price out many people. In the past three months, I know six people who bought homes in the neighborhood for less than $200,000.”
Shannon Carey of the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership (ANDP), which promotes mixed income communities and pushes for more affordable housing, wants to see more stories like Brewer’s. Carey says many of Atlanta’s in-town neighborhoods could use a little sprucing up.
“The benefits we see to this kind of redevelopment begins with making the neighborhoods more viable, more attractive and providing a wealth building strategy for the residents,” she says. “These communities are frequently well planned and well cared for. Often you will see more amenities. You will also see more attention being paid to safety and transportation options.”
Still, Carey says, her organization understands why gentrification is a touchy subject in black communities and why developers and newcomers are sometimes personas non grata to long-time residents.
“We see gentrification as a cruel double edged sword,” she says. “There is a pattern currently of people being displaced from communities as they gentrify. Price points are going up rapidly. It is definitely necessary for the improvement of a community, but it puts such a strain on the “least of us” in any community. In inner city Atlanta, that tends to be lower income African Americans.
“Typically when a neighborhood gentrifies, the look and feel of the neighborhood completely change unless you have people on the ground fighting to not allow it to happen,” she continues. “An area of urban decay that gentrifies will bring in more middle class or affluent people while displacing the lower income residents.”
That’s why any urban redevelopment plan should include affordable housing, Carey says.
“We advocate a mixed income housing strategy that provides varying housing options at many different price points,” she says. “We have seen this work all over the country as a solution to “pricing out” our lower income residents. It takes work and creativity, but if you can build a community that has apartments for rent at decent price points, mid and upper range condos, a mix of single family housing ranging anywhere from $120,000 on up – you can really build a solid community.”
“The key is making sure that the housing that is more affordable doesn’t look ‘cheap’ and isn’t immediately identifiable as the affordable housing in the neighborhood,” Carey continues. “We believe there is a way to do more inexpensive housing that also looks
good.”
If not, long time residents like Amos and Barnes may soon feel like visitors in the neighborhoods they have always called home.
