Neighborhoods

“Too many damn dogs,” Lucky Chuckie says. “More dogs than we ever had.” A lifetime resident of East Atlanta, Chuckie is describing one of the changes he has observed as his neighborhood has become Atlanta’s trendiest. “We,” in his mind, are the old-timers—mostly African-American homeowners who lived through East Atlanta’s startling transformation over the past four decades. “They” are the newcomer dog-owners—yuppies and families who are changing the neighborhood they now share with the old-timers. The “us” and “them” language he uses is a sure and subtle indicator of the state of East Atlanta: the first stages of gentrification.

Decades of Change

East Atlanta wasn’t always trendy. Since its optimistic conception as a model for “urban utopian living” at the turn of the century, it has been plagued by many of the same problems other American inner-city neighborhoods have faced: a fierce battle over integration, white flight to outlying suburbs, divisive highway construction (Interstate 20), and a crime wave that devastated the community.

But around the same time the neighborhood formed the East Atlanta Community Association (1981), things started to turn around. Many of the auto and tire shops were converted, crumbling homes were sold and rehabilitated, and local businesses began to thrive. After twenty years of slow improvements, East Atlanta’s quirkiness, historical character, proximity to downtown Atlanta, and relatively low property prices have made it attractive once again.

Over the past few years, Atlanta’s City Council has actively promoted East Atlanta’s desirability and has made substantial efforts to support its growth. It created a new zoning classification for the businesses in the East Atlanta Village commercial area, which established maximum building heights and identified ideal uses for individual development sites. It allocated $868,000 for a streetscape improvement project, the installation of sidewalks along Glenwood Avenue, and more consistent housing and commercial code enforcement. In addition, the Atlanta Development Authority has set aside $150,000 for business owners and landlords to use as no-interest loans for façade improvements.

After so much attention and investment, it’s no surprise that many people who have never lived in Atlanta’s inner city have decided to move in. They come seeking alternatives to the suburban lifestyle of the burgeoning metropolitan area—which includes four of the ten fastest-growing counties in the nation. First they flocked to Little Five Points, a bohemian retail area that lies just a mile closer to downtown along Moreland Avenue. Now, they gravitate to East Atlanta, bringing with them the specter of gentrification.

The Gentrification Task Force and Missed Opportunities

When the city noticed the extent to which outsiders were colonizing poor, black inner-city neighborhoods—whites doubled their numbers in Little Five Points between 1990 and 2000 alone—it convened a Gentrification Task Force. Chaired by Larry Keating, a professor of planning at Georgia Tech’s College of Architecture, the Task Force met in 2000 and 2001 and issued forty recommendations that it believed would protect existing homeowners and minimize the negative effects of gentrification.

Three years after that report was released, Keating worries now that it was ineffective: “There’s more public awareness than before, but all indicators say that gentrification is resurgent.” The City Council only adopted five of the Task Force’s recommendations, all relating to the shortage of affordable housing. While encouraging developers to build affordable housing can deter displacement effects, Keating argues that a one-pronged approach cannot adequately address the multi-faceted challenges of gentrification.

Missed opportunities abound. For instance, the city failed to secure further tax exemptions for elderly, long-term homeowners despite the recommendations of the Task Force. The Community Housing Resource Center has since stepped in to aid elderly homeowners threatened with eviction for nonpayment of taxes. Gregory Walker, a staff member at the Center, says, “These people are shipped out first [as developers buy their homes] for pennies on a dollar, put in minimal work… and then sell them for five times the price.”

Walker’s colleague, Scott Ball, points out that city officials have not addressed the recent rise of predatory lending practices: “Seniors who have large equity, particularly elderly women, are approached by contractors to get work done on their homes: easy financing, no money down. The relationships are often abusive.” Low-income residents are susceptible to threats of refinancing and foreclosure, and last year’s substantial enfeebling of Georgia’s Fair Lending Act leaves little effective means for prosecuting predatory lenders.

Even in the area most addressed by the City Council, that of constructing affordable housing, the Council has failed to implement a one-for-one replacement strategy for affordable housing built in the 1970s under long-term contracts with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that are now expiring. If this housing is torn down, under the HUD agreements the land on which it sits is freed for development and sold to the highest bidder. More often than not, the highest bidder is someone from outside the neighborhood.

As Keating laments, “We don’t have the resources to deal with the displacement, or to deal with the destruction of sociological fabric that is still happening. On balance, we’re losing ground.”

Losing Ground?

Lucky Chuckie’s East Atlanta certainly doesn’t look like it’s losing ground. Its main thoroughfares, Flat Shoals and Moreland Avenues, are bustling with more pedestrian life now than any time in recent memory. The Madison, a 1920s movie house, is on its way toward full restoration. And as Chuckie points out, people are walking their dogs and getting to know their neighbors.

In addition, unique small businesses have emerged to meet the needs of the changing population, defying the broader commercial trend in inner cities towards large chain stores. Diane Dreher is opening a restaurant called Pasta Thyme, to be housed in a small purple building she is renovating a block away from East Atlanta’s commercial core. She “was drawn to the exciting revitalization, the young couples moving in.”

Charles Turner, who owns Chances art gallery, also appreciates the neighborhood’s newfound diversity. Turner has lived in East Atlanta for twenty years and is a member of East Atlanta’s Culture Committee. He is proud to list the six countries represented by proprietors of Flat Shoals Avenue businesses: Thailand, South Africa, China, Ethiopia, Tunisia, and Australia. “East Atlanta has all ages, lifestyles, and ethnic groups. It is the new beginning of old cultures. We all live together in harmony.”

Perhaps Turner’s mindset has been influenced by a mural at the eight-month-old Australian Bakery, next door to his gallery. The mural, by Aboriginal artist Pamela Croft, reads as a loop. To the far left is an outline of Australia colored in Aboriginal flag colors, to the far right the Aboriginal symbol of community (two concentric circles). Stretched between them are river lines representing travel from home (native Australia) to a meeting place (America, East Atlanta) and back, without terminus. Lining the to and fro routes are the handprints of East Atlanta residents: passersby, City Council members, and the local kids club.

The artist explains that, “As an Aborigine, land is the mother church, the center of our being.” The mural speaks of change and adaptation, colored by the civil rights struggles that both Aborigines in Australia and blacks in America have fought. She has titled the piece, a visual metaphor for East Atlanta, “Bringing nations communities and cultures together.”

Taking East Atlanta Back

In their ode to urban transformation, “Calling All Zones,” the Ying Tang Twins, a hip-hop duo, have described the demographic shifts in the neighborhood as the time when “white folks took East Atlanta back” (see sidebar). But even Walker, who aids longtime residents negatively affected by gentrification, doesn’t blame the people who are moving in: “The neighborhoods are clean and safe. They have good schools, and they are within reach of young families. I can’t fault them for wanting to come in.”

Kimberly Shoemake-Medlock, a newlywed and new homeowner, is one of those who hope to take advantage of East Atlanta’s affordability and convenience. As an architect, she recognizes the problems associated with gentrification, to which she is contributing. Nevertheless, she says, “We just wanted to be somewhere where we could afford a house, and we could walk to bars.”

People like Shoemake-Medlock have been warmly welcomed by some of East Atlanta’s civic leaders. Natalyn Archibong, the neighborhood’s City Council Member, recalls her childhood growing up in the majority-black, economically devastated East Atlanta of the 1960s. She is “proud that East Atlanta has become one of the most diverse communities in Atlanta. I view this change as healthy.”

Councilwoman Archibong founded the East Atlanta Business Association before it was popular to do business in East Atlanta. Its astonishing success depends, she says, on the ability of both new and old residents to learn from each other while working toward shared objectives: “I encourage the old neighbors to welcome their new neighbors. Conversely, I encourage the new neighbors to respect and to get to know the long-term neighbors. I have found that when neighbors know one another, the perceived differences are soon replaced with confirmed areas of mutual interest. In other words, we are building a strong community in East Atlanta, neighbor-by-neighbor.”

If both new and old can coexist, perhaps East Atlanta is not “the place the white people took back.” Perhaps it’s a place where neighbors, working together, took their neighborhood back. One can dream.