Communities belonging to minority groups consisting of historically disenfranchised people take issue with development because, as it presently handled, development-gentrification does not benefit them. In the early 1990’s Atlanta began to tear down its public housing to rid itself of eyesores in the way of the impending Olympic games. Then a floodgate was opened when a singular model, the Eastlake Foundation, was successful in establishing low-density mixed income housing for former and future residents in 1995. Although this foundation remains and continues to thrive it is difficult to assess its value in the conversation of Atlanta’s path to eliminating poverty/crime dense areas and replacing them. It was less than half of the former residents who continued to live in the new property once Eastlake Meadows was torn down and that does not speak success to me. A documentary The Atlanta Way begs the question: Where did the other residents go?
It is questions like this one that plague Brookhaven, Atlanta (Summerhill, Peoplestown, Old 4th Ward ect…) and soon Doraville, along with Chamblee. As developers march across the north east and south west sides of the inner city and greater Atlanta area the same entities crop up. Carter was involved in the redevelopment of public housing during the early millennia. The Atlanta Housing Authority pushed for the displacement of people from public housing and provided vouchers without guarantee of locating homes for the residents. Yet it was this entity that stressed the importance of eliminating these dilapidated facilities (that they had been responsible to upkeep) and convinced people that the benefits that came in to their community would be for them. The Atlanta Regional Commission an entity born out of a need to improve the cities air quality has opened a gateway for developers to enter neighborhoods and build low-density mixed income properties.
It is not the properties that are the issue. It is not the white people that are the issue. It is not the wealth or poorness of the people moving in… The reason why we do not have answers to the questions that crop up once gentrification is on the table for discussion is because we are viewing the development as a solution to a greater problem. We are viewing widening streets, reviving streetcars, reducing traffic, increasing the area median income, as a solution to our city’s greatest problems of crime and air pollution-which they are not. They are the results of government officials attempting to undo a previously poorly planned city without addressing fundamental issues founded in elitism.
Follow and stay tuned for a follow-up analysis of this claim in my next article.
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