Place matters. So says Raj Chetty, the economic mobility guru of Harvard University.
Chetty’s Opportunity Insights just released a comprehensive study on the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s HOPE VI program — a model that was first designed and developed in Atlanta by Egbert Perry, the chairman and founder of the Integral Group, in concert with the Atlanta Housing Authority’s Renee Glover in 1993, in preparation for Atlanta’s 1996 Summer Olympic Games.
The idea? Replace older public housing projects with communities that have mixed-income housing, including market-rate, while offering critical amenities, such as early childhood learning, quality K-12 education, after-school centers, health and wellness programs, as well as other community-building initiatives.
That HOPE VI model was replicated across the country, including at Atlanta’s East Lake Meadows, which, at the time, was one of the most crime-ridden public housing projects in the city. Tom Cousins, an Atlanta developer who died last year, led the transformation of East Lake, working with AHA’s Renee Glover and Perry.
Cousins, in partnership with billionaires Warren Buffett and the late Julian Robertson, launched Atlanta-based Purpose Built Communities in 2009 to spread the model to neighborhoods across the country.
Chetty’s just-released deep-dive study on the 262 communities funded by the U.S. HUD’s HOPE VI program shows the model has been an effective way to address poverty and improve the economic mobility of children who have grown up in mixed-income communities.
According to Nicolas Kristoff’s New York Times article summarizing the study, children who spent their childhoods in the transformed public housing communities would earn 50 percent more over their lifetimes — a difference of $500,000.
The Chetty study, Creating High-Opportunity Neighborhoods: Evidence from the HOPE VI Program, lands at a critical time. Chetty is becoming a household name in Atlanta for his economic mobility rankings of metro areas.
In 2014, Chetty released a study showing that Charlotte, N.C., was 50th out of 50 metro areas when it came to economic mobility. At the time, Atlanta ranked 49th. Charlotte took that as a call to action, and Chetty updated his economic mobility study in 2024. Charlotte improved to 38th, and the Atlanta region got the dubious distinction of last place.
Chetty came to Atlanta last month at the invitation of the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, where he participated in three separate events to help Atlanta better understand how it could improve its economic mobility rankings. During his presentation at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, Chetty previewed his HOPE VI study, saying that place-based initiatives had some of the greatest impact in improving economic mobility outcomes.
What is amazing to me, as a decades-long observer of urban development in the region, is how influential Atlanta has been in housing and place-based transformation.
Integral, in partnership with the McCormack Baron real estate firm, proposed tearing down Atlanta’s Techwood Homes, the first public housing project in the country, which was highly controversial.
Renee Glover, then-head of the Atlanta Housing Authority (now Atlanta Housing), believed in the transformation model — replace concentrated poverty with mixed-income housing and community-building amenities. The redevelopment of Techwood Homes won one of the first HOPE VI grants in 1993, and its transformation model was quickly adopted by housing authorities nationally.
“All of a sudden, we became the gold standard,” Perry said in a lengthy interview tracing the impact Atlanta has had on housing policy for nearly 90 years.
Atlanta eventually had eight HOPE VI projects, more than any city other than Chicago, which had nine over the life of the program.
Atlanta’s role was further elevated by Purpose Built Communities. Carol Naughton, who worked for AHA under Renee Glover from 1995 to 2002, is now Purpose Built’s CEO. She left AHA to join the East Lake Foundation. She has been with Purpose Built since its inception in 2009. In other words, she has a perspective on Atlanta and community redevelopment.
“Place matters, and it matters acutely in the trajectory of children and their economic mobility,” said Naughton, who calls herself a “neighborist,” in an interview on Jan. 23. “There are about 5,000 census tracts around the country where 30 percent of the people live below the poverty line. That’s where Purpose Built wants to work — in neighborhoods where people have been trapped in poverty.”
Purpose Built is deeply engaged in helping transform communities, serving as a consultant. It is working with about 60 communities across the country, with about half of them being an official part of its network.
In the past five years, it has diversified beyond its initial three funders. The Cousins Foundation still supports the nonprofit, and it has attracted support from other major national organizations, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Truist, and its largest grantor to date, Blue Meridian Partners, which awarded Purpose Built $25 million a couple of years ago.
Coincidentally, the Blank Family Foundation announced last month that it’s awarded Blue Meridian a $75 million grant to work on a five-year economic mobility initiative in the City of Atlanta and a couple of other Georgia communities.
Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens has launched the Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative to help transform seven economically-challenged communities in the city.
“Purpose Built is really excited to be part of this team – the Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative,” said Naughton, who is partnering with the city, the Atlanta Committee for Progress, Blue Meridian and the identified neighborhoods. “We know the answer. The question is, do we have the political will to do it? The mayor says he does, and I believe him.”
Under Naughton’s leadership, Purpose Built has grown significantly, from 14 people to 41, becoming more deeply involved in neighborhood transformation. By 2028, it expects to have 35 U.S. communities across its network.
Naughton, however, is less focused on metro Atlanta’s dismal economic mobility ranking.
“I don’t think the number is as important as the fact that people are living in pain and don’t feel they have a chance to live a better life,” Naughton said, adding her focus is on neighborhoods being the engines of change. “I’m motivated, not by the ranking of a city, but by the real opportunity people have to live a healthy, happy, choice-filled life.”
But the question remains. How is it that the Atlanta region is 50th out of 50 when the city has been a center of innovation in housing and neighborhood revitalization?
Perry said the new Chetty study validates the HOPE VI model that was born in Atlanta 30 years ago.
“Mixed-income community development works when it is pursued with discipline, consistency and time,” Perry said. “Atlanta’s last-place ranking is not an indictment of the model; it is the consequence of a policy shift made about a decade ago, when the city and AHA stepped away from an approach that had been delivering positive and indisputable results.”
Perry was referring to the administration of former Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed, which had a vendetta against Renee Glover and Egbert Perry, and against his predecessor, Mayor Shirley Franklin, who became the first CEO of Purpose Built after leaving office. As a result, Atlanta’s most influential transformers of community were sidelined during the Reed administration.
“Ironically, at the time when all major cities were looking toward Atlanta, a shift was made,” Perry said. “The takeaway for public officials is simple: when long-term strategies are interrupted for short-term political reasons, the costs show up later, in the data and in people’s lives.”
Looking forward, Perry sees an opportunity to implement Dickens’ vision of Atlanta being the best place in the country to raise a child.
To fulfill that vision, Perry said it is essential for it to be “a group project,” one of Dickens’ favorite phrases.
“The Chetty study is an opening salvo for us,” Perry said. “Comprehensive work has to be coordinated among all the parties that drive the elements it takes to create community. They have to work together towards the same goal.”
Perry summarized it another way:
“In an ideal world, the city, the school system, and the county would partner to support the same community projects, so you are deploying your resources in a strategic way.”
