Building up, Not pushing out: how OaksATL is revitalizing English Avenue

By: Gabi Hart

In Atlanta, new development often comes with a cost: neighborhoods change, prices rise and longtime residents get pushed out. But in English Avenue, a community just west of downtown, OaksATL is transforming that narrative.

This summer, my co-intern Asia and I took a tour of the neighborhood with Rue Gunter, OaksATL’s director of business development. I also conducted a follow-up interview with Gunter to learn how the organization is working to develop English Avenue without fueling gentrification.

Unlike many developers, OaksATL is hyperlocal. Its staff live in the neighborhood. They don’t build luxury homes. And they’re focused entirely on English Avenue, not the Westside at large.

OaksATL started in 2017, born out of the work of Peace Preparatory Academy (Peace Prep), a school founded in 2015 by Benjamin Wills. Peace Prep offers trauma-informed education for students through fifth grade, and focuses on engaging and supporting entire families.

Gunter stated; “They started Peace Prep and then was like, hey, we’re getting to the place where like our kids’ families need housing. And so that was kind of how this was born.”

The housing need was urgent. Gunter described how speculative buying and mass vacancy were already transforming the neighborhood.

Rue Gunter, said the area’s long history of disinvestment still affects the neighborhood today. “English Avenue had very high levels of vacancy and abandonment prior to OaksATL, and many other community organizations starting their work here in the neighborhood,” she said. “There are a lot of historical and systemic reasons for that, but it was between 60 to 70 percent vacant and abandoned up until around 2015.” Gunter added that many of the new residents are not replacing longtime neighbors but are moving into previously empty homes. “Many of the new neighbors here weren’t moving into homes that were formerly lived in by legacy residents, but they’re moving into homes that were formerly vacant,” she said

So far, OaksATL has completed 33 units of affordable housing, and the organization hopes to eventually reach 100 units, enough to become self-sustaining through property management revenue.

On our tour, Gunter showed us the now-vacant English Avenue Elementary School, which closed in 1995. She explained how years of disinvestment led to extreme infrastructure failures. For a short time after the Peace Prep’s opening, raw sewage flowed in front of an apartment building across from the school. Children were subjected to stepping over human waste on the morning commute, these deplorable conditions helped inspire OaksATL’s founding. 

“There was literally sewage running by the building that was happening when the kids were still in school, which is, like, terrible.”

That history has fueled OaksATL’s urgency to stabilize the community for the long term.

OaksATL is focused on affordable housing, not quick sales or speculative flips. They’ve incorporated accessory dwelling units (ADUs),  smaller units in the backyards of single-family homes, to generate rental income and support multigenerational living.

“We have some families that have their mom or their cousin… living in the back unit. And we have some that we rent to another family that needs affordable housing.” Gunter explained. 

For homeownership projects, they often partner with the Atlanta Land Trust to ensure affordability is preserved across generations.

“We’ve had a lot of success finding people who have ties and connections to the neighborhood to buy their homes. There’s plenty of them.”

Schools like Peace Prep remain central to the neighborhood’s ecosystem. The school offers onsite mental health services to students while also engaging the entire family, work that aligns directly with OaksATL’s housing-first approach.

Other community resources, including Rodney Cook Sr. Park, which help prevent flooding, also contribute to neighborhood revitalization.

Gunter emphasized that building a healthy neighborhood takes more than bricks and mortar. OaksATL invites volunteers, donors and neighbors to join their work,  whether by helping fund gap dollars for housing or connecting residents to job training programs.

“It’s a unique neighborhood and there are people here who are trying to do something different,” she said. “We’re trying to build a model that actually works for the people who live here, not just for developers.”

As Gunter put it: “I think people realize it’s now or never.”