AHA: Housing more low-income families in better living environments

• Joeff Davis/CL File

In last week’s Creative Loafing issue, the Editorial Board published a column that raised questions about whether Atlanta’s low-income residents are better off now 20 years after the Atlanta Housing Authority began tearing down public housing projects. You can read that story, titled “Atlanta’s affordable housing hang-up,” here. Shean L. Atkins, AHA’s vice president of external and governmental affairs and corporate communications, has taken issue with some of the points made in the article. He’s written an op-ed in response to that piece, which you can read below:

Creative Loafing’s editorial, “Atlanta’s Affordable Housing Hang-up,” would have you believe that Atlanta’s public housing projects at the time of the demolition of Techwood Homes were “tight-knit communities” providing low-income residents with viable, affordable housing. This belief is anything but the truth. The findings of a 1994 audit by the HUD Inspector General confirmed AHA’s status as a “troubled agency” and reported that AHA’s public housing was severely distressed and poorly managed. The report also indicated that 88 percent of inspected units failed health and safety standards. Many of the public housing units were boarded up and uninhabitable. Over 7,000 maintenance work orders remained undone. Also noted in the report were the dysfunctional social conditions plaguing Atlanta’s public housing — violent crime, drug trafficking and resident victimization were prevalent. For those residents who needed the housing, there were no other choices available to them. Public housing was warehousing the poor without providing hope of any kind for a better life.

AHA made the bold move in 1995 to change public housing altogether — not reinvent it. Techwood Homes and Clark Howell Homes were demolished and gave rise to Centennial Place, a mixed-income residential community with a seamless affordable component. AHA’s new paradigm was not a rehash of 1930’s slum clearance policy. Former public housing residents who relocated under the housing choice voucher program were given the right to return to the new community. However, most opted to use their vouchers to start a new life elsewhere. The new community offered a new high performing elementary school, a state-of-the-art YMCA, a bank and quality affordable housing. Centennial Place was constructed on the footprint of the old public housing projects — public housing assistance representing 40 percent of the rental units remained downtown.

In the years since then, AHA and its private sector development partners have developed 16 master planned communities. The guiding principles for these AHA-sponsored communities are grounded in providing amenity-rich, quality living environments that provide early childhood and other educational opportunities, retail and recreational facilities. In addition, AHA designed and implemented its own project based rental assistance program that incents private developers through a competitive process to build affordable housing with a percentage of the residential units designated for eligible low-income families. Nearly 4,500 PBRA units have been created. Furthermore, AHA is a leader in providing supportive housing programs for families at risk of being homeless. Under the housing choice voucher program, AHA continues to offer expanded choice to program participants. Using its flexibility under a HUD demonstration program, AHA can provide higher levels of rental assistance to families who choose to live in the city’s submarkets with higher rents. To assist program participants achieve self-sufficiency goals, AHA also provides human development services and workforce training opportunities.

Lastly, any assertion that AHA provides fewer affordable housing units is inaccurate. In 1994, AHA housed approximately 15,250 households in public housing and under the voucher program. Today, approximately 21,500 low-income households are being served in communities of their choice, whether in AHA-sponsored mixed-income communities, AHA-owned communities or units receiving rental assistance.