Atlanta’s fight against blight on the Westside

Just a short trip from Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz stadium, the bustling city quiets into empty streets lined with homes in disrepair.

The once-busy neighborhoods on the Westside, particularly English Avenue and Vince City, were hubs for Atlanta’s middle-class African American community in the 1950s and 1960s. Prominent figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Maynard Jackson lived there.

In the years since then the population has dropped and the neighborhoods have deteriorated into poverty. By 2018, two-thirds of English Avenue had depopulated. What remained was abandoned, “blighted” properties.

Recently, the city identified 3,000 abandoned, overgrown and unmaintained properties across Atlanta — with 540 in English Avenue and Vine City alone. But a so-called “war on blight” and development from local nonprofits aims to bring back the once lively neighborhoods — while keeping their legacy.

On a Sept. 20 tour, the Blank Family Foundation and the Westside Future Fund led a tour of the Westside homes that have been redeveloped in recent years. The Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, created by The Home Depot cofounder Arthur Blank has invested $106 million into the Westside since 2007. It does so through grantmaking that targets economic stability and housing for long-term residents of the city’s west side.

“When we were developing our strategy, we thought it imperative to be able to support nonprofit developers because we know nonprofit developers lack the access to capital as compared to for-profit developers and may not necessarily have the network,” Blank Foundation’s Westside Youth Development Managing Director Daniel Shoy said.

One of its anchor partners is the Westside Future Fund. The organization focuses its work in four areas: mixed-use housing and income, cradle to grave education, safety and security and community health and wellness. The Blank Foundation recently donated $10 million to Westside Future Fund to establish 1,750 new units of affordable housing.

The fund has spent over $25 million buying up the blighted, abandoned properties in neighborhoods like English Avenue and renovating them. Then, the fund either rents the property at affordable rates or sells it to a legacy resident. The nonprofit becomes the renovator, funder and landlord all in one.

“The Westside Future Fund has this development philosophy that really talks about development clusters,” Westside Future Fund Chief Real Estate Officer Rachel Carey said.

One cluster is the blighted stretch of James P. Brawley Drive.

“This is the blight that is holding the neighborhood back,” Carey said.

Westside Future Fund has spent years buying up houses from willing owners. Once purchased, a team evaluates what can be salvaged — though it’s often not much since the buildings have been unmaintained for a decade. Then comes a hefty rebuild and renovation to create a new bungalow where the old one stood.

The fund tries to keep the “historic feel” of the original design, so the street is a blend of bungalows new and old. The rehabilitated homes are then sold to so-called “legacy residents” at affordable rates. It would be cheaper for the fund to tear down some buildings and rebuild, according to organization representatives, but that doesn’t align with their goals.

“For us, it was very intentional to keep the building because that then sends a message to people,” Carey said.

At 395 James P. Brawley Dr. the future fund took over a complex of 35 two-bed, one-bath units. According to the fund’s team, it was a major overhaul that involved shifting some units to three-bed and others to one-bed to accommodate different family sizes. But rather than replace the old structure with a shiny unrecognizable building, the property is intact — just rehabilitated.

“This is the challenge, right?” Carey said. “The challenge to come in and build and sell homes for somebody to live next to properties that look like this.”

The “community retention criteria” looks at a few avenues — buyers need to be either former or current neighborhood residents, employees in the neighborhood or involved with the nearby historically Black Spelman College And Morehouse College. If needed the fund will also offer down payment assistance. It also offers an Anti-Displacement Tax Fund program for legacy homeowners that freezes property tax rates for twenty years.

But the homes are only one piece of the neighborhood. On the blighted Brawley Drive stands the now-defunct yellow store. It opened in 1911 and was once home to several local businesses. But when the area depopulated the shops shut down and it became an epicenter of blight with violent crime, open air drug trafficking, solicitation and use.

In 2019, the fund bought out the space to shut down criminal activity and eventually develop it into a bustling retail center. It’s currently in the permitting phases. Carey said Councilman Julian Bond, an advocate against blight, told them it is “not just about redevelopment; it’s how to do it in a way that’s healing and bringing the community back to life.”

For developers like Jesse Wiles, bringing the community to life requires celebrating its history. He’s taking on the redevelopment of 220 Sunset Ave. next door to the house Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King once lived in. It’s also the family home of Atlanta’s first Black mayor, Maynard Jackson Jr.

The three-story apartment building was scheduled for demolition in 2019 due to structural issues. It took community uproar and Wiles negotiating with code enforcement to keep the building from demolition and redevelopment into a parking lot for the King home.

“What’s really important in the transformation of a neighborhood like Vine City is being able to celebrate the history and cultural character, and that’s very difficult,” Wiles said.

To preserve the building, Wiles acquired a statewide historic designation. The designation didn’t come through Jackson Jr., though. His mother, Irene Dobbs Jackson, was the first Black person in Atlanta to receive a public library card, and her desegregation work changed the landscape of the city’s libraries.

Wiles said the redevelopment will preserve the original floor plan of the building as well as some windows, but the three-story apartment building will soon be transformed into a five-unit property reserved for Spelman graduate students.

“I think it’s really important to celebrate the history and culture of the people who live in this neighborhood,” Wiles said. “That is a part of the neighborhood transformation, just like the brick and mortar is a huge part of it.”

But the Westside Future Fund can only handle some of the Westside’s redevelopment. The model relies on property owners to sell the blighted properties — a struggle for the city, which lacks any rental registry to monitor landlords.

Atlanta City Council recently declared its “war on blight” to join in the efforts of the city’s nonprofit developers. It allows municipal judges to hike the property taxes of a blighted spot by up to 25 times the existing rate.

It’s meant to bring knowingly neglectful property owners out of the woodwork. On Sept.3 the council also launched a blight condemnation program, which will rely on eminent domain to take control of properties in a condition “harmful to our communities.”

Ultimately, the goal is to transform neighborhoods like English Avenue and Vine City while keeping their legacy residents around. Housing is one part of the nonprofit solution. The other part is a steady income.

“How do you do inclusive development?” Westside Future Fund President and CEO John Ahmann said. “We want people to go back into that depopulation, but how do we have a real focus on resident retention?”

The housing push on the Westside comes in tandem with a focus on workforce development. On Sept. 20, Arthur M. Blank Foundation announced a $4.5 million donation centered around workforce training.

Three grant recipients, Atlanta Technical College, Goodwill of North Georgia and the Atlanta Department of Labor will use the funds to train future employees through local workforce collaborative Westside Works.

Arthur M. Blank Foundation announced a $4.5 million donation centered around workforce development  and training on Sept. 20 . The recipients, all centered around the Westside are Atlanta Technical College, Goodwill of North Georgia and the Atlanta Department of Labor.

The grant recipients will work with the local workforce collaborative Westside Works, which provides training and places participants with employment opportunities.

“Atlanta, like a lot of other urban cores around the country, is gentrifying,” Shoy said. “I often say gentrification in and of itself is not a bad thing — it’s the displacement that happens if the change in the community is not inclusive.”