Are community land trusts the answer to preventing displacement in English Avenue and Vine City?

Temika Lewis' great-grandmother owned a home in Vine City. Her mother owned a trailer. Her grandfather and father lived in neighboring English Avenue. But in Lewis' 40 years in the area, she's always rented and never owned. The garbage truck driver has lived in the Westside neighborhoods nearly all of her life, and, despite the area's challenges, she wants to stay.

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"It's home," says Lewis, who would one day like to have her own house.

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As the neighborhoods watch investments being made near their borders — and inside their community thanks to philanthropy tied to the new Atlanta Falcons stadium — a community group wants to preserve affordable housing and make sure longtime neighborhood residents get to stay. But making the proposal become a reality requires the help of policymakers — and cash.

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Crews to the west of English Avenue and Vine City are building the Atlanta Beltline's $43 million Westside Trail. A few blocks to the east the new $1.5 billion Mercedes-Benz Stadium is taking shape. Georgia Tech, which is across the railroad tracks, is studying a mixed-use innovation district across Northside Drive. The city was recently awarded a $30 million federal grant to help nearby neighborhoods, including Vine City.

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Inside English Avenue and Vine City, some residents wonder how new development could affect their futures there. The Westside Atlanta Land Trust nonprofit is proposing the city help it purchase or donate some of the many dilapidated and vacant homes in the area. Doing so could help protect existing residents from displacement if property taxes and current rents start to rise.

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Earlier this summer, WALT hired neighborhood residents to survey the streets and collect data on the vacant properties. The nonprofit also partnered with academics from Georgia State University and Georgia Tech, among others, to analyze the neighborhoods.

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According to their research, roughly half of the two neighborhoods' 5,327 lots are vacant parcels of land. Most are behind on paying property taxes. Some of the properties were purchased by investors before the foreclosure crisis who no longer, or never did, live in the communities.

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Left unattended, the vacant lots and homes can turn into overgrown eyesores and a refuge for squatters, exacerbating crime. But WALT CEO Pamela Flores says even some of the occupied homes — particularly those in lower-elevation areas that are prone to flooding — are in "subhuman conditions" with serious mold and rat infestations.

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WALT nonprofit wants to take on vacant properties from the city at no or low cost and rehab the houses with donated materials. WALT would then launch a community land trust. Under that model, an individual purchases the home — the actual building on top of the land — but not the land itself, which is owned by the trust. Because the nonprofit is not charged property taxes, the homeowner is buffered from increases. A formula outlined in the buyer's contract helps prevent people from flipping to pocket a profit.

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The group estimates the $858,000 first phase along North Avenue in English Avenue could include 23 homes and properties.

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To make the plan work, WALT officials say, Atlanta and Fulton County would have to tax property owned by land trusts at a different millage rate or freeze them. Doing so could help prevent the financial shocks and bill increases that so often push residents out of their homes.

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"There is no public policy in place for the city of Atlanta — or for Fulton or DeKalb counties, or for the state of Georgia for that matter — that makes a community land trust available," says Al Bartell, the chair of the nonprofit's policy action committee.

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Land trusts have been fairly successful across the country, says LaShawn Hoffman, the former president of the Pittsburgh Community Improvement Association in southwest Atlanta, but "it's the Atlanta market that we're trying to figure out. There's still a struggle for people to understand what this tool can actually do."

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There are only a handful of CLTs in Atlanta, including the Atlanta Land Trust Collaborative, which focuses on areas along the Beltline, and is currently tweaking its business plan. But because they're uncommon — and somewhat complex — lending institutions sometimes don't understand them.

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"The CLT comes with a covenant and/or a rider, and a ground lease that kind of governs how the transaction happens," Hoffman says, "The paperwork becomes a bit cumbersome."

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But WALT and other advocates argue that the historically black communities where Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. lived as an adult but now wrestle with blight, drugs, and entrenched poverty deserve the effort — and could help avoid repeating mistakes of the past. Temika Lewis is interested, as the program could help her have a home of her own and something else she's rarely had in life.

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"I want some stability," she says. "Me and my kids have been through a lot, bouncing around. I want my kids to have a place when they come home from college — and that they always know they have a home to 'come home' to."