What Atlanta Can Do To Protect Vulnerable Homeowners From Aggressive Investors

[mahatmakanejeeves]

I can't remember which site led me to this.

What Atlanta Can Do To Protect Vulnerable Homeowners From Aggressive Investors

BY STEPHANNIE STOKES, GEOFF HING, APM REPORTS | SEP 14, 2020

“Don’t sell.” That’s been the message from Atlanta mayors to homeowners in the city neighborhoods lining projects like the BeltLine. ... Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms was the latest to deliver it. Speaking on the radio station V-103 in 2018, she said residents on the westside now live in one of the “hottest” real estate markets and advised homeowners to watch out for requests to buy their properties from investors. ... “People are putting fliers in mailboxes, telling people ‘I’ll buy your house. I’ll pay cash, $65,000,” Bottoms said. “Well, you may be sitting on a $400,000 house.”

Former Mayor Kasim Reed gave a similar warning before her. At a press conference about a new city design plan in 2017, he told a room full of westside residents not to give up their homes unless the investor is “talking about triple.”

{snip}

With investors overwhelming neighborhoods in south and west Atlanta with requests to buy properties, housing advocates say more will need to be done to protect homeowners and help them realize the potential value of their homes. ... There may be the beginnings of a solution in a workshop already sponsored by the Atlanta BeltLine Partnership, the trail’s nonprofit arm.

Earlier this year, before the pandemic began, about 60 people took seats in a room at the Metropolitan Library until there was standing room only. The crowd was mostly older, veterans hats visible among them. Some relied on walkers for support.

{snip}

This story was possible with support from America Amplified, a public media initiative, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It was produced in collaboration with APM Reports, the investigative reporting unit of American Public Media.

[delisen]

1. I can personally vouch for this. Urban renewal becomes urban removal in cities like Atlanta.

Promises of low and moderate income housing evaporate and luxury housing is all that is available.Homelessness is exploding as it did in the Reagan years, young adults cannot afford to buy houses, and developers and their enablers are making fortunes-helped by the same banks that brought us the depression economics of 2008.

Getting rid of some student debt (Biden agenda) may help young professionals but urban removal of poor people needs something else.

A great irony in Atlanta Metropolitan area is this: In the 1980s and 1990s lower income white families were priced out of Atlanta and fled to the suburban county of Gwinnett. The Olympics in the 1990s was used as an opportunity to justify urban removal of poor people and housing projects in downtown Atlanta. It was opined by one Georgia Tech professional that the poor would be better off in the outer reaches of suburbia where they "could raise chickens."

Well today the outer suburb of Gwinnett county is now the most diverse in Georgia. Since the yuppie gentrifiers never go there they are oblivious to this fact and the fact that they themselves are partners with the developers in urban removal.











































































































































































a