By Maria Saporta
Turning around a community without displacing legacy residents is no easy task.
And preserving housing affordability in a revitalizing neighborhood is even harder.
But Focused Community Strategies (FCS) is attempting to accomplish both goals in its community-rebuilding efforts in Historic South Atlanta, an area southeast of downtown Atlanta.
FCS, a 42-year-old nonprofit in Atlanta, has been involved in the South Atlanta neighborhood for about two decades. In the last five years, the organization decided to put all its focus on South Atlanta — working on a multi-pronged approach to community revitalization.
FCS has now joined the national network of Purpose Built Communities, a place-based consulting organization that was founded in Atlanta as a way to replicate the successful revitalization of East Lake. The Purpose Built model seeks to help create healthy communities with mixed-income housing, cradle to college quality education as well as provide options to improve the health and wellness of people living and working in an area.
South Atlanta partners with Purpose Built Schools, which is working to improve the schools in the surrounding community — the Carver Cluster of Atlanta Public Schools.
“FCS models the kind of leadership we would like to see more of, not just in Atlanta, but in the rest of the country,” said Carol Naughton, CEO of Atlanta-based Purpose Built Communities. “By leading with the neighborhood’s residents in a deeply collaborative fashion they are showing how to lead with racial equity to create a place that works for everyone. They are also on the cutting edge of how to instill home ownership as a key lever for economic mobility. Atlanta and America are better because of the work of FCS.”
The Campaign for a Stronger Southside, with help from the fundraising firm of Coxe, Curry & Associates, was launched in October 2020 with a goal of $8 million.
Jim Wehner, president of FCS, said the campaign ended up raising $8.59 million from 140 donors — including $1 million from FCS board members.
The new funding will allow FCS to continue making transformational investments in the housing, economic, and civic infrastructure of South Atlanta and its people.
FCS was able to raise the money based on its track record in South Atlanta over the past two decades. Working with its development partners, FCS has renovated or built more than 185 homes.
“When we started in 2000, home ownership was at 10 percent, and it’s now at 60 percent,” said Katie Delp, executive director with FCS, where she has worked since 2001.
It bought the commercial building in the heart of South Atlanta that same year. It opened the Common Grounds coffee shop in 2010, and it was able to renovate the community gathering spot this past summer. Then it bought Carver Market in 2015 — providing a grocery store in a former food desert. It also relocated FCS administrative and programming hub to the neighborhood.
FCS is unique among community revitalization nonprofit organizations because it focuses its efforts on the preservation and building of single-family homes for local residents. Historic South Atlanta has a total of 750 lots, of which 525 are single-family homes or lots. FCS was able to acquire almost 20 percent of the lots, Delp said.
FCS continues to look for opportunities to acquire lots in the area, and it recently bought a vacant gas station across from Carver Market as well as the now-closed Harold’s Barbeque restaurant, which it intends to turn into an affordable location for micro-entrepreneurs.
In many ways, FCS underwent its own transformation in 2015.
The nonprofit started as FCS Urban Ministries by Robert Lupton, and it purchased the old Glencastle building and helped launch a collaborative among builders called Glencastle Construction.
“When Bob Lupton stepped back at the end of 2013, I stepped into his role,” Wehner said. It conducted its first strategic plan in 2014, and the decision eventually was made to sell Glencastle and focus the efforts of FCS in South Atlanta.
At that time, there were five related nonprofits that were part of FCS, including Moving in the Spirit dance company.
“There were five boards,” Wehner said. “We needed to do significant repairs on Glencastle. But we knew that was not going to propel us into the future. Our staff was committed to being South Atlanta. So, we made the decision to sell Glencastle.”
It also merged the nonprofits into one organization, except for Moving in the Spirit, which ended up going out on its own. FCS ended up giving Moving in the Spirit $365,000, or 10 percent of the sales price of Glencastle, towards the dance company’s capital campaign.
“I wanted one team, one mission, one staff, one board,” Wehner said.
With the remaining proceeds of the sale, FCS created a $1.8 million revolving fund to acquire properties, and those funds seeded its own capital campaign.
FCS also began branching out into multi-family properties, offering rents across the income spectrum.
“If you are protecting affordability, you have to capture the properties early,” Wehner said, adding that FCS now is having to compete with for-profit developers. “We have three models. We do affordable rentals. We do affordable home ownership, which is our passion because we are passing equity by giving residents an opportunity to build equity.”
FCS also is providing workforce housing where it rehabilitates or builds a new home in the middle-income range.
“It is a true mixed-income community,” Wehner said.
And it has just started working the land trust model where it maintains ownership of the land, leasing it to the owner of the home.
“We have products all along the income spectrum,” Delp said. “We have some folks who are below 30 percent AMI [area median income]. We charge them a lower rent. We subsidize some of the rents with the income we get from market-rate properties.”
Both Wehner and Delp are looking forward to working with the administration of Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens.
“What you are seeing is a more friendly administration towards place-based development in Atlanta,” Wehner said.
The area continues to change. In 2024, the northern edge of South Atlanta will get the Atlanta BeltLine, which has transformed neighborhoods all along its path.
“We want to ensure it stays equitable,” Delp said. “If someone is not working every day to protect affordability and equity, it will go away.”
Do they still pay their (mostly Black) employees at their grocery store and coffee shop barely above minimum wage? And are they still filling those “affordable” houses with young white gentrifiers? Seems like some white savior nonsense covering for gentrification and bad labor practices.
Beth, I have been an FCS affordable homeowner in HSA for 13 years. My teenage son was recently offered a job at the Carver Market and the starting salary was $15/hr. I have also partnered with FCS on several community initiatives.
While the white savior complex is a very real thing, that has not been our experience!
Possibly should have shown some diversity, since it is South Atlanta