AHA 15year ProgressReport

Atlanta Housing Authority 15 Year Progress Report
1995-2010
15 YEAR PROGRESS REPORT
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THIS IS NOW.
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hope
Atlanta Housing Authority 15 Year Progress Report

contents
letter from the chairman
Why we did this:
The opportunity to turn failure into

transformational success
Lesson Learned No.1
10
How we made things work
12
Lesson Learned No.2
22
What we learned:
25
Lesson Learned No.3
30
What powered our mission:
32
Lesson Learned No.4
38
What the future holds:
40
Appendix
46
The toxic impact of concentrated poverty
A lot of flexibility and ingenuity
The road to restoring human dignity
The principles that evolved
Children face the greatest risk
We realized we could save the children
The truth about AHA: making a better community

and strengthening families
Creating better, healthier cities
hope
The view from where I sit, indeed, the view from where nearly
all of us sit, is much different now than it was in 1994. When I
joined the Atlanta Housing Authoritys board, it was an institution crippled by paralysis. Its reputation at the time was as
one of the worst housing authorities in the United States. The
residents it served had sunken
increasingly into corners of the
city nearly everyone wanted to
forget, places where the lives of
thousands of residents were on
a downward slide into deeper
poverty, no opportunity for
advancement, shabby housing,
and increasingly violent crime.
I knew, and never wavered in my belief, that the policies
that had taken us to this bleak point in the history of the citys
most vulnerable residents must change. Despite Atlantas
justifiable pride and reputation as being the first in the nation
to open its doors to public housing residents, to continue on
the path that had led to the ruins I faced when I joined the
AHA Board would have been wrong.
We had to change our way of doing business in order to
improve the lives of our residents. The poor policy decisions
of the then-recent past were disastrous and had to change.
As we continue our march to deconcentrate poverty, to
demolish the citys old public housing sites, I look forward
also to the next 15 years. I like to think of the past 15 years
as a time of necessary change that will ultimately improve
the lives of our residents, people with potential that is only
waiting to be unlocked, and so too change for the better a
city we love so much.
Respectfully,
Atlanta Housing Authority 15 year Progress Report
1995-2010
(above): Photograph of Amari Dunn. Cover, photograph shot by Shannon McCollum.

(left): From concentrated poverty to choice, opportunity and healthier environments - 2007 ad
Cecil Phillips
Chairman of the Board, AHA
The opportunity
to turn failure into
transformational
success
In the early 1990s, after Atlanta had
won bragging rights to be the host of
the 1996 Olympic Games, civic leaders soon realized theyd been handed
a blessing and a liability. On the one
hand, Atlanta would be showcased for
the world to see. On the other hand,
what the world would see was not all
showcase material.
True, Atlanta was the booming
economic capital of a resurgent Sunbelt
South, a transportation hub of unparalleled importance in the nation. Many
global and national corporations flew
their corporate flags from soaring Atlanta
skyscrapers. The states universities
repeatedly won national acclaim. Pro
sports teams and a multi-faceted entertainment industry brought excitement
and glory to Atlanta.
Then there were the problems. Atlanta
was one of the poorest, the most crimeinfested and dangerous cities in the
nation. Much of the citys population
had fled to the suburbs in the 1960s and
70s and with the mounting problems
in the city, the families never returned.
Atlantas public schools exemplified
only one trait: failure.
And behind all of those problems were

more than 40 public housing projects
that distilled concentrated poverty into
a toxicity from which there was no
escape. There was a direct link between that blight and many problems,
such as the high crime rate caused by
criminals whose first and weakest
targets were public housing residents.
In other cases, such as the many distressed and declining neighborhoods in
Atlanta, the plethora of public housing
enclaves was a contributing cause. On
a percentage basis, more of the citys
population lived in public housing
than in any other major metropolis in
America. Those numbers meant that
crime would never decrease, jobs for
working-class Atlantans would never
materialize and schools would never
improve as long as the citys landscape
was cratered with the projects.
Most daunting to civic leaders was
the location of one of the most decrepit
and foreboding projects Techwood/
Clark Howell Homes directly adjacent
to the planned Olympic Village. When
the TV cameras of the world lit up in
Atlanta in the summer of 1996, they
wouldnt be able to ignore the blight of
those projects.
Regardless of the Olympic Games,
Atlanta was shamed by the awful
neglect of its housing projects. Tens of
thousands of people were condemned
to lives of failure because of the
indelible stigma of public housing. An
honest look at the projects revealed:
Deteriorated physical conditions;
Dangerous, crime-plagued, drug infested places;
Hopeless, dispirited residents who
were disconnected from, and
afraid of, the mainstream because
they felt they were labeled
and marginalized;
6
Children being poorly educated

and socialized because they were
taught in captive elementary
schools located as part of each
public housing project campus;
And tragically low participation in
the work force and high rates of
illiteracy and/or under-education.
Public housing didnt begin with a
mission to destroy lives. Indeed,
Atlanta was Americas pioneer city in
building public housing during the
Great Depression. Seven decades ago,
public housing was where families of
modest means lived briefly while they
worked hard to win a share of the
American Dream.
In 1936, Techwood Homes, near
the campus of the Georgia Institute of
Technology, was the first public
housing project in the nation to open
its doors to residents. It was followed
quickly by adjacent Clark Howell
Homes and, a short distance away near
what is now called Atlanta University
Center, by University Homes and John
Hope Homes.
The expectation was that both
white and black families were preparing
themselves to live independent,
successful lives, albeit in racially segregated communities, says Rene Lewis
Glover, CEO of the Atlanta Housing
Authority. Over the years as society
changed, the government faced new
and very difficult challenges, numerous
and often conflicting rules and regulations were crafted to address these
challenges. Many of these rules and
regulations were reactive rather than
strategic. And, in many cases, the rules
and regulations were developed based
on the historical and political context of
the times, political expediency and, in
some cases, priorities that trumped
decent and safe affordable housing,
such as urban renewal or highway

expansion.
As a consequence of these complexities, the public housing program lost
its vision and mission, and was drafted
to address all of societys social
problems. To accommodate this very
complicated, and some would say
impossible, mission, the rules and
regulations drove the expectations and
standards down to a level where there
no longer were any meaningful expectations and standards.
The changing policies and the
lowered expectation for public housing
tenants turned Atlantas projects into
warehouses for people. The plight for
public housing residents was twofold:
What had begun as a bold social
experiment to open the door into the
middle class became a wall that forever
separated public housing residents
from economic opportunity. And, even
more insidious, during the 1960s, 70s
and 80s, public housing projects were
built far away from the centers of urban
life. These projects, almost exclusively
inhabited by African-American families,
became just one more devious
expression of Jim Crow segregation.
That dual isolation economic and
racial produced a hostile relationship between the projects and the city.
Housing authority leaders from the
60s through the 80s were so antagonistic and protective of public housing,
to the exclusion of its own neighbors,
that the relationship between housing
authority and commissioners and
tenants to its neighbors was hostile,
adversarial, and in a downward spiral,
recalls AHA board Chairman Cecil
Phillips. It hit bottom in the late 80s
and early 90s. Something needed to
be done.
All of the indicators flashed an alarm.
WHY WE DID THIS
(above): Techwood Homes

was the first public housing
project in the nation for
white families.
(right): Future African
American residents
preview soon-to-open
John Hope Homes, 1940.
(above): Eva Davis, AHA board

member and former resident of
East Lake Meadows,
participated in the CATALYST
campaign supporting families by
providing them with resources to
help them achieve their self sufficiency and
education goals.
(right): The projects had become
dangerous, crime-plagued,
drug infested places its residents disconnected from
mainstream society.
WHY WE DID THIS
Crime around housing projects was as

much as 35 times that of the city as a
whole, which in the 1990s was the most
violent city in the nation. Employment
rates plunged to 20 percent or less. The
elementary schools embedded in
housing projects ranked at the very
bottom of all Georgia schools.
There were other less obvious
problems that destroyed the lives of
public housing residents. Retailers fled
the areas around the projects, fearing
crime and knowing there was little
money in the pockets of residents
to buy goods. That meant quality
grocers were nowhere to be found
and the diets, often a continuous menu
of fast food fare, were deadly. For
example, studies show a quarter of
public housing residents live half a mile
or more from the nearest food store
with fresh produce and nearly

40 percent dont have cars to get there.
Health problems, in general, were
known to multiply in the concentrated
poverty of the projects. Numerous
studies showed that diseases and
health risk factors -- asthma, diabetes,
hypertension, and mental illness
soared in public housing.
The cost in human life is impossible
to calculate, but these questions are
worth pondering: How many potential
scientists never got the chance to
develop because their schooling in
the projects was stunted? How many
humanitarians withered on the vine
because they never got the chance to
blossom? How many families fell apart
because their homes could never
become fully nurturing? How many
women and men never grew to
greatness because they died as

children,victims of rampant crime in the
projects? There is no way to know for
sure, but even one would have been
too many.
Had change not come, says AHA
board member Eva Davis and a former
resident of the East Lake Meadows
housing project, the losses would have
been greater. We would have had so
many more high school dropouts, so
many drug addicts, so many prostitutes, so many babies having babies,
they would have been lost, she says.
We dont have that any more. That is
a major change.
Change was imperative and to
achieve real change required
ingenuity and innovation
Lesson Learned No.1

The Toxic Impact of Concentrated Poverty
(Editors note: In 2009, Atlanta Housing

Authority CEO Rene Glover began a series
of articles exploring what AHA has learned
over the previous 15 years, and how and why
its programs have been developed.)
By Rene Lewis Glover

Where do we start our discussion about
public housing? One of the underlying
problems in any such discussion is that it
always starts in the middle.
As a nation, we have never agreed
on the source of the problem. Thats
understandable as a nation, we are
uncomfortable about the issue of poverty.
We are unsure about why people are poor,
we vacillate about the following: Are
people poor because they are incapable?
Are people poor because they are
10
minorities, primarily black people? Are

poor people capable of moral behavior?
Are the projects crime-ridden because the
people are bad people?
We must address these issues. An obvious
statement is: People are poor because they
have fewer resources than they need to
live a more affluent life. If you believe
that objective assessment, as opposed to
believing that poverty is a punishment or
natural state for some people, then we can
make a bold conclusion: Poverty does not
have to be a permanent condition.
How we, as policymakers and administrators, approach issues of poverty makes
all the difference. The fact of the matter is
that in order to solve the issue of poverty,
we must accept the truth of the universal
humanity of all human beings.
The second truth that we must accept
is that environment matters.
To solve the issue of poverty and how
best to address the need for housing that is
affordable to people who are poor, we must
diagnose objectively and with integrity the
problem with public housing.
To attempt a solution, without
under-standing the root cause of the

problem, is to insure continued failure.
That is exactly the type of thinking
we rejected in Atlanta. We took an
honest look at the symptoms and
found the following about each and
every housing project in Atlanta:
- Deteriorated physical conditions;
- Dangerous, crime-ridden,
drug-infested places;
- Hopeless, dispirited and stigmatized
residents who were disconnected
from, and afraid of the mainstream;
- Children being poorly educated and
socialized because they were taught in
captive elementary schools located as
part of each public housing project;
- And tragically low participation in the
work force and high rates of illiteracy
and/or under-education.
Rather than address the real issues,
many would prefer to debate whether
the projects are really communities and
whether these incapable poor people
would be better off in the projects because
as bad and destructive as they are, these
are their communities. Therefore, the
issues are intentionally debated around
the margins: e.g. Where will the people
go? Will the people be capable of living
in mainstream America? Will they
destroy the communities into which they
move? Will they choose to move to better
communities? Will they move next to
me? Are they moving to places that they
have not earned or deserve? Will crime
go up when they bring their low morals
and incapacity to my neighborhood?
What is the best next for public
housing residents?
A4 / Atlanta Housing Authority
No doubt, these questions are important,

and they must be answered. But as the
starting point for decision-making, I think
we can all agree that doing nothing or
continuing to do things that have failed
in the past makes no sense. There is simply
too much at stake.
Affordable housing is not just a
bricks-glass-and-steel consideration. The
physical aspects of affordable housing are
important, but these issues are dwarfed by
the sociological design.
And that sociology can be summed
up in two concepts: Concentrated
poverty and low expectations. When
we comprehend the full implications of
those two phenomena, we then begin to
understand the reasons we felt compelled
to provide radical alternatives to old-style
housing projects.
The importance of asking these first
questions cant be overemphasized.
Often, those of us involved in providing
affordable housing to the very poor are
faced with concerns from Congress or
the federal administration. Questions
from many officials well-meaning
officials assume that the best place for
public housing residents is in conventional
public housing. Thus, any solution or next
step is wedded to the belief that anyone
who requires assistance to pay their rent
cant function in mainstream society and
cannot meet civil standards of law-abiding
citizens and of a civil society, and they
must be kept where they are. And, of
course, as we have learned, where they are
is the wrong solution! I find it incredible
that so many people dont comprehend
the awful, corrosive impact of intensely
concentrated poverty and de-humanizing
low standards and expectations.
Let me state up front that the linkage
of the grinding poverty in public
housing projects with failed sociology of
concentrating poverty and low expectations
and standards is not a uniquely American

experience. Nor is it, as some would have
us believe, a matter of race. Elsewhere in
the world, notably Europe, the findings
are the same. Confine any group in a
virtual prison of poverty, coupled with
low expectations and standards, and social
failure is the result. National Public Radio,
for example, reported in 2005: Analysts
blame recent rioting in France on the
discontent and alienation fostered by bleak
housing projects on the poor outskirts of
French cities. The location and architecture
of public housing can contribute to a sense
of isolation and hopelessness.
Isolation and hopelessness is one way
to define concentrated poverty. There are
others. I wasnt content to read reports and
studies. I went to all of the housing projects
AHA owned and managed. I vividly recall
hundreds of conversations, one with a
woman living at East Lake Meadows. She
told me about the death threats she faced
on a daily basis, about worrying day after
day because her children were threatened
by the violence and crime that preys on
public housing residents. I realized that she
had become exactly what society expected,
someone whose life was doomed to failure.
I recall the dismal epiphany when I learned
that no child (black or white) living in
Techwood Homes during recent decades
had crossed the street to attend our states
most prestigious university, Georgia Tech.
It struck me that there was something
fundamentally wrong here. And it was
wrong at many levels. For example, many
in Congress believe that social design
doesnt matter. Well, it does matter.
In the mid-1990s, Atlanta was cited as
one of the most crime-ridden and violent
cities in the nation. Thats bad but whats
unacceptably horrible is that in one of
Atlantas housing projects violent crime
was 35 times greater than the entire city.
In another community, known in the
1990s as Little Vietnam there was a $38

million drug trade being operated from
that site. Those horror stories are repeated
over and over.
Other statistics were equally appalling.
Just 10 percent of the children attending
schools embedded in the housing projects
passed basic reading comprehension
tests. We found unemployment rates at a
staggering 70 percent to 80 percent. And,
about 80 percent of our residents were
women and children, along with the men
who illegally resided with them.
In short, families were broken or nonexistent. Education was broken. Economic
success was unattainable. The threat of
crime was a daily, sometimes hourly, reality.
We know that people are not inherently
bad or defective. I personally believe
that all people are children of God with
unlimited human potential.
We know with 100 percent certainty
that peoples lives will transform if their
environment is transformed and we invest
in the people. Environment matters. We
not only believed that, over the last 15
years we have been innovative with our
programs and we have believed, challenged
and invested in the people, and we have
measured their successes.
The good news is that the successes
number in the thousands!
What we did will be detailed in this
series of newsletters. In closing this first
one, however, I want to say that while much
of what I write in the future will be heavy
with statistics and analysis, what we did in
Atlanta began with matters of heart and
spirit. Ill never forget my promise that,
as a community and nation, we can do
better than allow the horrible conditions
at housing projects to go unchallenged.
11
How
we
made
things
work
How
we made things work
May 2009 demolition begins at Bowen Homes, the last of

the obsolete large, family public housing projects
12
A lot of flexibility
and ingenuity
here was no question two decades

ago that something had to change
with Atlantas public housing.
After winning the bid to become the
1996 Olympic Games host, Atlanta was
compelled to remedy the awful conditions at its obsolete housing projects.
That was especially true at Techwood/
Clark Howell Homes adjacent to the
Georgia Tech campus and directly across
the street from the proposed site for the
Olympic dormitories. If those projects
had been left standing, Techwood/
Clark Howell would have been center
stage while the world was watching its
best athletes compete. So, the thinking
in the early 1990s was to do a thorough
renovation of the projects.
13
I knew that would never be enough, not

in a million years, says Egbert Perry,
CEO of the Integral Group, which eventually would become a private partner
to AHA in transforming many of the
sites of former housing projects. To put
it bluntly, the situation was so bad that
all that we were doing was grooming
young men for prison and young
women for public housing. There was
no way to change the population without a fundamental change in our
thinking towards housing.
The dysfunctional projects had
become dead ends for people segregated by economics and race, cut off
from mainstream society. World-famed
Atlanta architect John Portman, who
designed AHAs Antoine Graves high
rise for senior citizens more than 40
years ago, regrets seeing the building
torn down but he understands the
structure is now obsolete.
What worked in the 1960s doesnt
work today, he says. I guess one of
the first things is to start to think about
is how the project will be used by the
tenants, and what could we do in
public housing to make it not just a
storage unit for people, but to create
a lifestyle, to create something that
goes beyond just a shelter. That was
the basis of our approach to
Antoine Graves.
In September 1994, the catalyst for
transformation arrived at AHA in the
person of Rene Lewis Glover, an
attorney who had agreed to become
CEO of the agency. She assembled
around her an informal kitchen
cabinet whose mission was to find
breakthrough solutions to problems
that had festered for decades.
The beauty of it was that none of
us was part of the system, says Carol
Naughton, who joined Glovers staff as
14
legal counsel. The law firm Naughton

had left had no ties to public housing.
CEO Glover had been a corporate real
estate attorney. Perry was a successful developer of mainstream residential
communities. All brought a fresh
perspective to old problems.
Perry explains: It doesnt make
sense to go to 100 percent public
housing because weve been there,
done that, and it didnt work. So why
try to re-create it? We were never in
the business of developing public
housing communities, wed never done
one, never desired to do one, but the
concept of creating a healthy and
sustainable community that had a mix
of units for lower income families seamlessly integrated into the development
made sense.
With this groups first battleground
being Techwood/Clark Howell Homes,
the vision for the future began to
crystallize. Congress had given some
flexibility to local housing authorities
under a program called HOPE VI, first
enacted during the administration of
President George H.W. Bush and then
expanded under President Bill Clinton
and his secretary of Housing and Urban
Development, Henry Cisneros.
We knew HOPE VI was out there
encouraging the demolition of the most
distressed housing projects, Perry
says. The first time that was actualized
was at Techwood/Clark Howell. The
solution wasnt to renovate. We proposed that the whole thing come down.
HUD Secretary Cisneros agreed, and
that HOPE VI was the answer. The
program provided much-needed deregulation, covered much of the nonfinanceable cost of the developments
and created a platform for dramatically
reshaping approaches that no longer
worked. It was uncharted territory.
(top left to right): Egbert Perry, Carol Naughton,

John Portman, (bottom right) Herman Russell
We felt that not only could we make

great improvements to the city, but
even more important, we had a strong
belief that we could break the cycle of
poverty for those who have been held
as economic captives in the housing
projects for so many years, says
Hope Boldon, CEO of the Integral
Youth and Family Project, which using
Hope VI funding provides almost three
years of coaching to assist relocating
public housing residents to transition
smoothly into societys mainstream.
For Centennial Place to come into
being, everything --all the historical
baggage that public housing carried
in 1995 -- had to be rethought. The
pockets of racially, economically and
socially isolated poverty could only be
replaced with fresh thinking and new
ways of getting an old job done.
The changes included the revolutionary approach of using public-private
HOW WE MADE THINGS WORK
partnerships to create the new communities. The communities were to

be made up of residents from a broad
range of incomes (minimum wage to
white collar executives), and the new
communities would have a variety of
uses - rental housing, home ownership,
retail and commercial space, schools
and recreational facilities.
What I think was noble in the new
concept under Rene Glovers leadership, says developer Herman Russell
of Atlanta-based HJ Russell & Company,
one of the nations largest minorityowned construction firms, is having
reduced the percentage of public
housing and having introduced a new
concept of mixed-use living.
As AHAs revolutionary concept
moved forward, eventually all that remained of Techwood/Clark Howell was
the dirt on which the housing project
once sat. What grew on the landscape,
15
From resident community

meetings to ballots,
we heard the voices of more
than 90 percent of project
tenants who wanted out.
16
the mixed-use, mixed-income

Centennial Place, made the turf unrecognizable as the same area that had
blighted Atlanta just a few years earlier.
The key was mixed-income housing
developed by public and private partners in the case of Centennial Place,
AHA was the sponsor, public investor
and co-developer, while Atlanta-based
Integral and St. Louis-based
McCormack Baron Salazar were the
private developers, bringing both knowhow and private investment. Seeding
the project was a $42.5 million HOPE VI
grant, leveraged by $150 million in
private investment.
Mixed-income communities as a
wholesale replacement for public housing were so novel that tenants at the
old projects adopted a show me attitude. Meeting after meeting were faceoffs between the tenants and AHA CEO
Glover, her aides and the private developers. AHA officials agreed that each
step of the process needed the support
of those most affected, the agencys
tenants. No tenants of the projects were
tossed out of housing many moved
into the mixed-income communities
and others used housing assistance
vouchers to move into homes of their
choice. The people most affected the
former public housing residents were

convinced. When in recent years AHA
asked tenants at the remaining public housing if they wanted the projects
razed, more than 90 percent said, Yes!
In the mixed-use, mixed-income
communities such as Centennial Place
and Villages at East Lake, former public housing tenants lived side by side
with others whose incomes were often
far higher than theirs, affording a view
of life denied them for decades. A core
belief was that everyone, if held to the
same high expectations and standards,
can enrich the lives of their neighbors
by sharing cultural wealth and lifestyle
examples.
The mixed-income model doesnt
work if market rate families or people
with choice dont come, Integral CEO
Perry says. You have to develop,
design, build and manage to the highest standard possible by producing a
product that people of choice would
want to consume.
Revitalization of the old public
housing projects into these new amenity-rich communities is a way to spread
the good news of opportunity and
growth. By scraping the landscape
clean and building market-rate mixeduse, mixed-income communities and
setting and enforcing high expectations and standards, life has been and
will continue to be improved for those
living there and for anyone considering
living within them. Beyond just the
former sites of the housing projects,
whole areas of Atlanta have blossomed
because the blight of public housing
has been erased. Revitalization is particularly striking in Midtown Atlanta
in and around Centennial Place. The
growth of Georgia Tech, the relocated
World of Coca-Cola, the Childrens
Museum and the Georgia Aquarium to
just name a few, show how AHAs
beliefs, begun 15 years ago in the
shadow of poverty, have manifested
themselves into a brighter present and
a glowing future.
Success breeds success. In the case
of AHAs programs, Centennial Place
was the cornerstone for what was
called the Olympic Legacy Program,
which employed the same development and financial model and
principles to revitalize other obsolete
housing projects.
Centennial Place gave us the
opportunity to do East Lake, says
Cecil Phillips, chairman of the AHA
board of commissioners.
The first four Olympic Legacy
Program projects were Techwood/
Clark Howell Homes, East Lake
Meadows, John Hope Homes and
John Eagan Homes. Eventually
16 distressed public housing projects
were revitalized under the banner of
the Olympic Legacy Program, leveraging HOPE VI and non-HOPE VI public
housing development funds. Since
then, $220 million from those funds
have been leveraged to about $3 billion
in private investment in the new communities and their surrounding areas.
17
AHA wasnt perfect at the beginning.

We constantly had to assess what we
were doing and make refinements and
mid-course corrections, as needed, to
do our work better, AHA CEO Glover
says. Our yardstick wasnt how many
buildings we put up, but how much
better the communities and neighborhoods became and how many of the
lives of AHA-assisted families had
improved.
AHA is constantly piloting new ways
to integrate AHA families into the larger
Atlanta community. For example,
Project-Based Rental Assistance, or
PBRA, was designed to leverage the
pre-recession private sector real estate
development activity taking place
throughout the City of Atlanta by providing a renewable, long-term rental
subsidy to a private owner, who agrees
to rent a percentage of its apartments to
(top): left to right

from podium Rene
Glover, then Secretary
of HUD Henry
Cisneros, former
Atlanta Mayor
Bill Campbell at the
groundbreaking for
Centennial Place
(bottom): Centennial
Place was the prototype for revolutionary
change to publicprivate relationships
and mixed-income
communities
18
persons who earned minimum wage up

to 60 percent of the metropolitan area
median income. There are more than
35 PBRA arrangements with private
owners in the Atlanta area, adding to
the list of mixed-income communities in
the city.
PBRA gives AHA-assisted households a broader array of choices, says
Joy Fitzgerald, AHA chief operating
officer for real estate operations. It is
an efficient tool for expanding housing
opportunities.
Slightly different but with the same
goal of giving families more choices is
a program that could only be implemented with the regulatory autonomy
that AHAs success has won from HUD.
Typically, HUD pegs voucher rent subsidies based on a metropolitan-wide
average of apartment rents. This
ignores the wide disparities in neighborhood quality, amenities and characteristics. It also has the unintended consequences of distorting rents and pushing
voucher holders into lower-income
neighborhoods. With its regulatory
autonomy, AHA has divided Atlanta into
numerous sub-market areas, aligning
the voucher subsidies to be comparable
with the neighborhoods prevailing rents.
The impact of sub-market rent alignment has been significant. Today, AHA
families live in neighborhoods that, on
average, are 27 percent more affluent
than the neighborhoods surrounding
the housing projects, according to a
recent analysis based on tenant
ZIP codes.
In 2003, AHA became what HUD calls
a Moving to Work, or MTW, agency.
MTW is a very broad program of local
autonomy reflected in an agreement
negotiated and executed by HUD and
the MTW Agency. Granted to only about
30 public housing authorities across the
nation, AHAs MTW Agreement allows it

to use private-sector real estate principles and local strategies to meet
Atlantas affordable housing needs.
These strategies, in most cases, dont fit
into more rigid federal guidelines.
AHAs MTW allows for single block
grant funding, which includes operating
funds for low-income housing, Section
8 voucher funds, and capital funds. In
this way, the money can be used as
seen fit for eligible MTW activities as
set forth in AHAs HUD-approved MTW
Plan.
AHA upped the ante for personal
responsibility when, in 2004, leveraging
the lessons from AHAs HOPE VI revitalization program. As part of MTW, AHA
required compliance with the work or
education requirement for non-elderly,
non-disabled adults in order for them to
receive housing assistance. At that time,
16 percent of those adults were
working full time. By 2005, 80 percent
of the households were compliant with
AHAs work program, although that
number has decreased to 56 percent
during the current recession. MTW is a
factor in AHAs success and it can lead
to economic independence and home
ownership, as public housing was originally intended.
Just as independence has meant
opportunities for AHA, it has also
created new areas of work. Long-term
family-centered coaching and counseling families moving out of the projects
and into mainstream housing has
become a major endeavor one in
which AHA has invested about $27
million over the last decade, utilizing professional firms such as Integral
Youth and Family Project and Families
First. Similarly, AHAs Service Provider
Network includes organizations that can
help in such areas as credit counseling,
domestic violence, home ownership,

faith-based resources and substance
abuse treatment.
AHAs motive for such programs is
simple. We have got to stop losing
generations of people just because
theyre temporarily poor, says
Rene Glover.
When Glover began her work, one of
her strongest allies was the then-secretary of HUD, Henry Cisneros. Although
he left HUD in 1997 just as AHA was
beginning to see the fruits of HOPE VI
Cisneros has followed progress in
Atlanta. His praise is strong. A combination of people coming back to sites,
market homes, for sale, schools, both
at the East Lake charter school and
Centennial Place in the center city, and
Section 8 for individuals and the
aggregation of Section 8 to create
additional new kinds of subsidy-based
apartments, using all of those strategies,
assisted housing in Atlanta is not what
it was before and its a model for the
country, Cisneros says.
Atlanta has done the best job of
any city in the country of using a
variety of strategies, not just HOPE VI
but improvement and modernization
funds, private investment, and slowly
transformed the entire system.
Michael Dobbins, former commissioner of planning for the City of Atlanta,
has witnessed that transformation.
For many, many years wed sort of
developed and cultivated and repeated
what I think has always been a myth,
that somehow lower income people,
and middle income people and upper
income people cant live with each
other, he says. The reality is the initiatives AHA has implemented have been
absolutely vital to what I think has been
a really successful overall program to revitalization and reinvestment in the city.
19
Looking back, the process has been

one of inventing solutions to problems,
assessing the success of the solutions,
modify the programs, and then tackling
new problems with more innovations.
The truth is, we were making it up as
we went along, Perry remembers. We
really didnt know what we were doing.
I mean that seriously. We knew how to
develop, but we were doing something
that was totally outside the box because we were trying to transform
communities beyond the physical and
the financial and integrate a human outcome in ways that hadnt been
done before.
Yes, AHAs transformation was a
success but only because strong
values guided the work
20
Revitalization in and
around Centennial Place
sparked great economic
growth in the area from
the Georgia Aquarium
and the World of Coke
to restaurants, hotels, a
YMCA, and more.
21
Lesson Learned No.2

The Road to Restoring Human Dignity
(top) Shunquille Peterson said her childrens grades picked up once she moved from University
Homes to a healthier community with higher performing schools

For decades, our society has struggled
with the social issues surrounding poverty.
Some believe that people are poor because
they were born into the wrong family, race
or culture, while others believe poverty is
a matter of being unlucky, unwilling or
incapable. Sound reasoning shows us that
there is no single reason why, at any given
time, an individual has fewer resources.
Yet, public policies are often based on such
generalities or assumptions, and thats
wrong.
However, while we know stereotypes and
generalities lead to inaccurate conclusions,
22
we can be certain that many expectations

often become reality. That is, if we expect
people to fail based on the judgment that
somehow they are inherently incapable
then often they will fail. On the other
hand, if we expect people will succeed
and that it is mostly external forces that
have impeded their success then when
nurtured, prepared and afforded access to
opportunities, people will travel a path
to success.
We also know that the public housing
program started out as temporary housing
assistance for working poor families. The
vision was clear and the expectations and
standards were high. Even with clarity
of vision, the program was conceived
and developed during a period of racial
segregation and conflict. Notwithstanding
that historical context, the expectation was
that both white and black families were
preparing themselves to live independent,
successful lives, albeit in racially
segregated communities. Over the years,
as society changed and the government

faced new and very difficult challenges,
numerous (and often conflicting) rules
and regulations were crafted to address
these challenges. Many of these rules
and regulations were reactive rather than
strategic. And, in many cases, the rules
and regulations were developed based on
the historical and political context of the
times, political expediency and, in some
cases, priorities that trumped decent and
safe affordable housing, e.g. urban renewal
or highway expansion.
As a consequence of these complexities,
the public housing program lost its vision
and mission and became positioned to be
all things to all people and to address all of
societys social problems. To accommodate
this very complicated (and some would
say impossible) mission, the rules and
regulations drove the expectations and
standards down to a level where there no
longer were any meaningful expectations
and standards.
Most of the politicians and
administrators charged with overseeing
the public housing program assumed
that all people who received housing
assistance in public housing were helpless
and incapable of being successful in the
mainstream. I refuse to accept this premise.
In fact, in 1994, when I decided to take
on the challenges at the Atlanta Housing
Authority, I knew that the only way to
address the myriad problems was to call
on my faith and follow my belief that all
people are children of God, with unlimited
human potential.
I firmly believe that when our lives
and our work are not guided by our faith
and by high moral and ethical standards

emanating from our faith, our vision
becomes distorted and we lose our way.
When we fail to apply high expectations
and standards to ourselves and to the
people we serve, we get outcomes that
fall far short of what is possible. I further
believe our faith requires us to advance
the notion that each individual, because of
his/her God-given potential, is responsible
for his or her own life and that each
individual is capable of success regardless
of family, race, creed, culture or financial
circumstance.
I know that when discussing public
policy its not popular to talk about faith
because it makes people uncomfortable.
Lets not forget that while Americas
Founding Fathers insisted on the
separation of church and state, they were
mostly men guided by their own strong
faith-derived values. That combination
of secular government shaped by strong
values has created discomfort throughout
our nations history, and with this
writing, I also intend to make the reader
uncomfortable. I will start by describing
the bleak, on-the-ground reality faced by
Atlanta in the 1990s, and by many other
large cities today.
Because of failed public policies and low
expectations, the public housing program
in Atlanta became a system that created
an institutionalized culture of poverty for
people who were temporarily down on
their luck. Temporary became permanent
for most, recycling itself to fit generations
of families.
The program suffered from several fatal
flaws, including:
- A failed social design of concentrated
poverty.
- Very low expectations and standards.
- No requirements for personal
responsibility.
- No support for personal
transformation.
- No opportunities for economic
independence and upward mobility.
- And, no access to quality education;
all of the captive schools that served
the public housing projects were
failing.
The public housing program had
become the devils bargain. That is, in
exchange for a social, financial, and housing
arrangement with no or low standards
and without personal accountability
or responsibility one could live in a
compromised, dangerous and dysfunctional
housing development. Because it was
the only affordable option available to
them, families needing assistance with
paying their rent, found themselves in
environments where, over time, they were
exploited and destroyed by the chaos that
resulted from concentrated poverty and
low expectations and standards.
The unintended but predictable
consequence of these environments was
that societys criminals and predators
were empowered, and the vulnerable, lawabiding, very low-income families who
found themselves trapped in these no-win
situations were imperiled.
After a few years of living in this social
disorder, families that were only seeking
rental assistance tended to become poorer
and poorer, more dependent, distrustful
and further stigmatized.
In due course, the law-abiding
residents, in their hearts, questioned
why a system was allowed to exist when
it so overwhelmingly favored thugs and
predators over children, mothers and the
elderly. Ultimately, all families learned
they couldnt trust housing authority
officials, elected officials, or government
officials of any ilk because they had been
compromised and entrapped by the system
itself.
For sure, the issues of poverty are
complex. And, we would be well-served

to remember that there is a big difference
between having little income and being
institutionalized into a culture of poverty.
Given this background and context,
in September 1994, when we started
our public housing transformation in
partnership with private sector developers,
we understood that the old model of
concentrated poverty and low expectations
and standards had failed and must end. We
knew our efforts would not be successful if
we could not restore integrity and human
dignity by pursuing strategies that insure
great outcomes for the assisted families
and the larger society, earn their trust and
change the culture, minds and hearts of
both the assisted families and the larger
society.
One of AHAs strategic goals for
mixed-use, mixed-income revitalization
is to mainstream the families. In order to
encourage, motivate, and facilitate better
outcomes, we had to restore the human
spirit and dignity by providing customized,
long-term human development support,
setting high expectations and standards,
and requiring personal responsibility. Low
expectations and standards only serve to
break the human spirit and rob individuals
of their dignity. Not only had this type of
destructive thinking destroyed the public
housing program, it has also systematically
destroyed our public schools, child welfare
system, publicly subsidized healthcare,
and most other social institutions and
programs.
Because I believe that our faith must
inform our work, I called on my faith to
restore trust with the assisted families and
to develop a rational system of thoughtful
policies, expectations and standards.
I believe that bringing faith-informed
levels of integrity and accountability to
this work shaped my thought process in
a completely different manner. Race, sex,
23
culture, religion and income differences are

required to be eliminated as considerations.
Now, the same high level of expectations,
standards and personal responsibility
is demanded of everyone and for all
situations. In a faith-informed context,
the work becomes focused on building
Gods Kingdom, the place Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr. so beautifully refers to as
the Beloved Community. In this new
context, mediocrity, low expectations and
standards, segregation, discrimination and
concentrated poverty are not tolerated.
All of us, without exception, are called
upon to use our God-given gifts of
unlimited human potential in building

the Beloved Community. All of us are
required to live with civility and respect for
our fellow human beings. We are required
to develop our strategies and policies and
to take actions that create a kingdom that
benefits everyone equally. Our mission is
to strengthen the people we serve so that
they are empowered, educated and enabled
to tap into their own God-given human
potential.
I further believe that high expectations
and standards of personal responsibility
are required of everyone. We are expected
and required to educate and train ourselves
I was struggling with some personal challenges, but the move to this new apartment community
gave me a new lease on life. Now I am thriving at my job and my children are succeeding in school.
- Janice Thompson, former public housing resident
24
and to support and encourage our fellow

human beings so that we can all live a
decent, full, and productive life. Failing
to teach and train with excellence and
integrity is not an option. Education is
the language of life, civility and humanity.
So, what have these faith-informed
expectations, standards and policies
yielded?
AHA determined that as part of
this restoration process, it needed to
invest in each family impacted by AHA
transformational activities by providing,
through professional counselors, family
based human development services for
almost three years.
As a result of our new direction, the
outcomes of assisted households have
been stunning. More than 56 percent of
the assisted, non-elderly, non-disabled
households that reside in mixed-use,
mixed-income communities are engaged
in the work force , and that number would
be higher if not for the recession.
W hen AHA adopted a work
requirement for non-elderly and nondisabled households who resided in its
traditional public housing developments
not undergoing transformation in 2004,
only 16 percent of those households had
working members. By 2005, 80 percent
of the households were compliant with
AHAs work program, although that
number has decreased to 56 percent during
the current recession.
Moreover, the families have been able
to continue working (including finding
new employment) during the current
economic recession. Families are becoming
homeowners, children are graduating from
high school and going on to college, and
individuals are becoming entrepreneurs.
Our work has demonstrated that if
we are faithful, there is no obstacle that
cannot be overcome.
we learned
What we learned
The principles that evolved
cattered across Atlanta, 16

healthy mixed-income, mixeduse neighborhoods are bustling
with successful residents, highperforming schools, exciting recreation
facilities and economically robust
retailers. The miracle is that such
vibrant communities thrive on land that
in past decades had been marred by

deteriorated housing projects. That
physical renovation is obvious. But as
the Atlanta Housing Authority pursued
its paramount goal to deconcentrate
the poverty of the housing projects,
another type of renovation was underway: a renovation of human spirit.
25
At the heart of AHAs work are

several core principles that have driven
the changes of the past 15 years. One
of those core beliefs is that selfsufficiency and self-empowerment are
immensely important goals for families
receiving housing assistance. Bricks
and mortar are one thing, but the
heads and hearts of residents are
entirely another. After all, if their lives
arent measurably improved and if their
children arent welcomed into the full
opportunity of the American Dream,
then AHAs work would be meaningless.
If families are not successful, AHA
is not successful, says Barney Simms,
chief external affairs officer of AHA.
Our mission from the mid-1990s
onward has been guided by a commitment to families, and especially to
children. Getting the redevelopment
right was important, but you must ask,
Why was it important? The answer is
that peoples lives are measurably and
dramatically improved by leaving the
projects and stepping onto the
escalator to the middle class. And
26
within the families, those who will

benefit most are children. They no
longer will be steeped in failure, but will
now have the same opportunities as
every child in Atlanta.
Fortunately, former housing project
residents lives have been transformed.
The past decade and a half have seen
enormous strides in that direction
by encouraging pride, enabling residents to become less dependent and
to move toward the satisfaction that
comes with competing, creating and
succeeding on their own.
We know human development services are key to family success, says
AHA CEO Rene Lewis Glover. As
families find a location, they get settled,
folks get comfortable, theyre in their
new jobs, as long as their lives are
improved by a whole bunch, families
often choose not to come back. Many
did not want to come back because
the memories of the place were so
harsh, some people had seen their
children killed on that plot of ground. It
makes no sense to facilitate a person
moving from one bad arrangement to

another.
Residents can and should become
competitive in mainstream society,
Simms says. This is a dramatic shift
in policy and worldview from the early
1990s, when the prevailing philosophy
across the nation was that public
housing residents were somehow
flawed and that society needed to care
for them. That paternalism has
smothered potential for generations.
Everyone man, woman and especially
the children should have the same
rights and opportunities to compete
as anyone else. The economic, racial
and educational islands of isolation
that AHA properties had become over
the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s have
been replaced by economically diverse,
mixed-use, amenity-rich communities.
This dramatic shift, mobility counseling,
has taken thousands of people from a
dearth of opportunity and moved them
into the mainstream of American life.
Glover often speaks of unlimited
human potential, and the guiding ideal
WHAT WE LEARNED
for all of AHAs work has been removing

the chains of the failed public housing
model so that families potential would
be unfettered. Flowing from that ideal
are a series of principles (see Page 29)
that, in turn, are embodied in the
policies that have evolved at AHA.
Motivating residents was a paramount goal. Economic independence
for residents is at the heart of AHAs
mission since the mid-1990s. Personal
responsibility was a concept that had
gone out the window in the decades
leading up to 1995, and it was something that needed to be brought back
inside. The goal became providing a
means of self-sufficiency and selfempowerment for residents who had
very little of either.
To achieve that goal, AHA provides
almost three years of intense coaching
to arm former housing project residents
with the tools theyll need for successful
mainstream lives. Life skills arent
inherited they must be taught and
nurtured. Hope Boldon, CEO of the
Integral Youth and Family Project, which
works to ease the transition from

public housing and into mainstream
life, says she is constantly amazed how
much residents accomplish with just a
little help. Boldon has worked at
making the Integral Youth and
Family Project successful for the past
15 years. A representative from the
Integral Youth and Family Project visits
each family two or three times a month
for almost three years until the transition is complete. Families receive visits
at their homes and at their jobs, all in
an effort to integrate them into a
better life.
Because of Renes vision, she
made a decision that many other
housing authorities have not made, and
thats a decision to invest significantly
in people, Boldon says.
That investment begins with sessions
six months before the families move
out of their old homes and into their
new homes. Each client and family is
helped to reach their full potential with
one-on-one sessions at home, school,
work, wherever the family happens to
be. The goals include:

Basic motivation and life skills
Education, training, and employ ment opportunities
Career development and increased
employability
Entrepreneurship promotion
Community and family
responsibility
Disability connections
Youth education and character
building
Senior health and recreation
The goals may appear lofty, yet
Boldon says most families say they just
needed that extra push to help them
improve their prospects and their lives.
Eva Davis, an AHA commissioner
who was the resident president of one
of the worst housing projects, East
Lake Meadows, observes: Lots of
people got a chance to get out of the
wilderness. They had the option and
opportunity to be free from slums, and
when I say slums it means we lived in
an overcrowded, drug-infested community. The reason we had so many
(left): Tomekia Dunn, mother of 4, took

advantage of human and relocation services
and moved her family from Hollywood
Courts to a new town home community,
(middle): Hope Boldon
(right): Residents received much support
including this brochure on how to empower
your S.E.L.F.
EMPOWERING YOUR
S.E.L.F. FOR SUCCESS
A Comprehensive Vision for AHA Clients
27
My sons and I lived in

public housing before
we got the opportunity
to live in a mixed-income
community.
I love where we live now.
Our apartment is larger
and we have all new
appliances. Im minutes
away from my sons
school and my job.
Latasha Kendrick
Former public housing resident
28
WHAT WE LEARNED
(adjacent page): MTW flexibility

helped Latesha Kendricks family
move to a healthy mixed-income
community.
(left): Ambassador Andrew Young
supported an early CATALYST
direct mail campaign.
problems in East Lake Meadows

because people didnt have nothing to
do with themselves except sit around
and look at soap operas all day, and
smoke marijuana, and keep up the
devil. They didnt have no jobs and
didnt keep their homes clean. They
were able-bodied people!
And, Glover recalls the testimony of
a woman, who having started working
for the first time in her life, said: Now
that I am working, my children respect
me and my pride has been restored.
Another woman, who had recently
earned her GED, told Glover that she
loves the joy in the faces of her
children now that she can read to
them.
Today, the principles of opportunity,
achievement, education and work are
embodied in what is called the
CATALYST Program, AHAs adaption of
the federal MTW program. AHAs
activities under CATALYST are focused
on using MTW flexibilities to achieve
three strategic goals:
Quality living environments
provide quality affordable housing

in healthy mixed-income
communities with access to
excellent quality of life amenities;
Economic viability maximize
AHAs economic viability and
sustainability; and
Self-sufficiency facilitate oppor tunities for families and individuals
to build wealth, reduce their
dependency on subsidies, and
ultimately become financially
independent.
AHAs vision is to promote Healthy
Self-Sufficient Families and its mission
is to provide quality affordable
housing for the betterment of the
community. The vision and mission
serve as the foundation for the
agencys five Guiding Principles:
End the practice of concentrating
the poor in distressed, isolated
neighborhoods.
Create healthy communities using
a holistic and comprehensive
approach to assure long-term
marketability and sustainability of
the community and to support

excellent outcomes for families.
Create mixed-income communities
with the goal of creating market
rate communities with a seamless
affordable component.
Develop communities through
public/private partnerships using
public and private sources of
funding and market principles.
Support residents with adequate
resources to assist them to
achieve their life goals, focusing on
self-sufficiency and educational
advancement of the children.
Children pointed the direction for
AHA, and childrens success will be
the measure of AHAs success
29
Lesson Learned No.3

Children Face the Greatest Risk

Fifteen years ago, we knew that we must
abandon the model of concentrating
poverty in public housing projects and move
in the direction of creating economically
integrated, market rate quality, mixedincome communities. We knew that the
concentrated poverty of traditional public
housing projects was having an insidious
and corrosive impact on the lives of the
residents, the surrounding neighborhoods,
and the entire Atlanta community. What
we had not fully comprehended was the
negative impact these concentrated poverty
residential arrangements were having on
the neighborhood public schools and the
educational outcomes of the children who
attended those schools.
As my dear friend Dr. Norman Johnson,
a former professor at Georgia Tech,
Carnegie Mellon and Florida A&M,
and a former Atlanta public school board
member, puts it, If you concentrate
poverty in the residential arrangement,
you cannot help but concentrate poverty
in the neighborhood school. And, if you
concentrate poverty in the school, it
doesnt work.
The nation for decades has been divided
about education reform. Progressives are
blamed for merely wanting to throw money
at schools. Conservatives are accused of
30
wanting to undermine public schools in

favor of private education. Whats often
missing in this debate is a clear strategy
towards proven success. Those extremes
arent the answer. A pragmatic approach
that is based on proven, successful
strategies is what is needed.
The educators, sociologists and
economists who have extensively studied
education issues have all concluded that
concentrating low-income children as a
sociological design in schools does not
work. This is not a statement about the
ability or capacity of low-income children
to learn. It is, indeed, a statement about the
sociological environment that is needed to
facilitate learning and great educational
outcomes for children. We all know that
education is the language of life and
civilization and education is the great
equalizer.
While engaged in this debate, the world
has changed and the educational challenges
have become more urgent because we are
now engaged in global competition. In
order to sustain our globally competitive
posture, we must resolve to better educate
a larger percentage of our population.
David Rusk, the former mayor of
Albuquerque and one of Americas
foremost urban thinkers, has written a
paper titled Housing Policy Is Education
Policy. This paper should be a primer for
everyone engaged in national housing and
education discussions. As the title implies,
it makes little sense to talk about housing
policy unless you factor in education or
to talk about education policy unless you
factor in housing policy.
Rusks central thesis is that if you
deconcentrate poverty among school

populations, the success rate goes up.
However, deconcentrating poverty in
neighborhood public schools has proved
to be difficult and many large urban public
school systems are broken and troubled.
Policies that favor concentrating families
in public housing projects only exacerbate
the problem of poverty-dominated schools.
Sadly, academic failure under these
conditions has been almost a certainty.
By contrast, in schools with a mix of
income groups, we know that average test
scores go up as the percentage of middleclass students increases. Ah, you say,
thats only because if you put low-income
children in a middle-class school the
blended rate of success, such as test scores,
is likely to be higher than the average test
scores at a predominantly low-income
school. Not the case!
Rusk found a stunning trend in his
research:
In an Albuquerque study of 1,108
students, the average pupil from a
public housing household showed a
0.22 percent increase in a basic skills
test for every one percent increase in
middle-class classmates.
In Baltimore, the average basic skills
test scores for low-income students
went up 0.18 percent for every one
percent increase in the middle-class
classmates.
A study of 186 Texas school districts
showed that for every one percent
increase in the number of middle class students in a school, low-income
students improved their chances of
passing state exams by 0.27 percent.
Rusk also cited two schools in Buffalo,

NY, to illustrate his thesis. The school
with the smallest class size and greatest
per-pupil expenditures was not the school
with the highest achievement rate. Why?
As Rusk explained, the more successful
school, with larger classes and lower
funding, had a poverty rate of only 7
percent of its students. The less successful
school, even with its class-size and
monetary advantages, had a poverty rate
of 81 percent.
Put another way, in those studies the
average scores of poor children attending
a predominantly middle-class school
will show a double-digit percentage
improvement over the average scores of
a poor child relegated to a largely lowincome school.
When there are significant socioeconomic disparities, the effects of poverty
and low parental education just wipe out
other factors, Rusk reported.
That opinion is echoed throughout
academic research. A 2004 Rand
Corp. study found the most critical
factors associated with the educational
achievement of children appear to be
socio-economic ones. These factors include
parental education levels, neighborhood
poverty, parental occupation status and
family income.
The impact of socio-economic
background of school-childrens families on
academic outcomes was first documented
in 1966 by renowned sociologist James
S. Coleman in Equality of Educational
Opportunity. He studied American
schools in depth and here are several of
his major findings:
The educational resources that a
childs classmates bring to school
are more important than the
educational resources that the
school board provides. [T]he
social composition of the student body
is more highly related to achievement,

independent of the students own
social background, than is any school
factor.
Poor children learn best when
surrounded by midd le-c lass
classmates.
In Atlanta, we have studies that mirror
these findings. Poor children who move
from schools embedded in, or captive to,
public housing projects to mainstream
schools do much better because of the
improved socio-economic environment.
Georgia Techs Dr. Thomas D. Boston,
in a 2005 paper, Environment Matters,

found that children who live in highpoverty communities do not receive
proper educational guidance, and miss
out on important early childhood learning
experiences, recreational and after school
activities, and/or other enrichment
programs which help their development
and lay the foundation for success or
failure in school and in life.
As administrators of housing programs,
real estate developers or professionals in
related fields, we know that concentrating
poverty in public housing projects or other
residential arrangements leads to terrible
human failure. We must never forget that
a huge percentage of the people living in
public housing projects are children. Thus,
the toxic impact of concentrated poverty
has had a disproportionate impact on our

children, setting the stage for generational
devastation.
When we began reshaping Atlantas
housing policies 15 years ago, we knew that
if we overburdened schools with children
of poor families, the failure would spread.
So, the goal was blending children of all
economic backgrounds in schools where
the positive sociology would support every
child.
The results of achieving that goal
were clear. At Techwood Homes, one of
Atlantas worst projects, Boston found that
in 1995 just 10 percent of the students
at the neighborhood elementary school
passed a basic writing skills test. By
2002, there was a new mixed-income
community, Centennial Place, with a
new neighborhood school, Centennial
Place Elementary. Boston found that 62
percent of the neighborhood children
passed the basic writing skills test a level
that was about 50 percent higher than all
elementary schools in the Atlanta system.
With the studies of Rusk, Coleman,
Boston and many others, we realize what
works best: schools with a healthy mix of
income groups, which optimally means
that low-income students account for no
more than 20 percent of the pupils.
Achieving goals for schools is a matter
of sensible policymaking. By adopting
and implementing policies that result in
the creation of economically integrated
communities, we can embrace a strategy
and a sociological design for the schools
that has a proven track record. With this
improved sociological design (coupled
with progressive school reform), our
nations public schools have a substantially
improved prognosis.
As the studies have shown,
deconcentrating poverty in housing and
schools is a great idea and even better
public policy.
31
We realized we
could save the children
32
33
oon after Rene Lewis Glover

took the helm of the Atlanta
Housing Authority in 1994, a
tragic and horrible event occurred in
one of the public housing projects: A
toddler died after choking on a cockroach. The new AHA leadership already
was focused on the plight of the
housing project residents. Indeed,
opening the doors to societys mainstream for the residents, and ending
their virtual imprisonment in concentrated poverty, was a much higher
priority than merely replacing the
decrepit and obsolete buildings they
lived in.
But that infants death, along with
many other issues that doomed
children living in housing projects to
lives of failure, crystallized AHAs mission. The compass to chart change in
Atlantas public housing had a needle
pointing in one direction to the
children.
AHAs leaders knew the task was
immense. Embedded in housing
projects across the city were elementary schools. The experience of those
schools underscored what studies
dating back to the 1960s have
shown: Classrooms overwhelmingly
dominated with poor children would
produce failure. Its not that the children
didnt have the raw intellectual material
to be successful in school and later in
life. Its the environment they grow up
in that counts most.
Spending more money and having
smaller class sizes in school A than
in school B would probably produce
somewhat better results for school
A when both pupil populations have
almost identical socio-economic backgrounds, says urban researcher David
Rusk. But when there are significant
socio-economic disparities, the effects
34
of poverty and low parental education

just wipe out other factors.
A recent study by the Rand Corporation found: The most critical
factors associated with the educational
achievement of children appear to
be socio-economic ones. These
factors include parental education
levels, neighborhood poverty, parental
occupation status, and family income.
Poor children who move from
schools captive to public housing
projects to mainstream schools do
much better because of the improved
socio-economic environment. Georgia
Techs Dr. Thomas D. Boston, in a 2005
paper, Environment Matters, found
that children who live in high-poverty
communities do not receive proper
educational guidance, and miss out on
important early childhood learning experiences, recreational and after school
activities, and/or other enrichment
programs which help their development
and lay the foundation for success or
failure in school and in life.
Beyond education, the plight of the
children living in housing projects is
very clear to anyone visiting those
neighborhoods. Changing policies over
the decades undermined the original
concept of public housing as transitional housing for people moving on
and up. The unintended consequences
of new policies were devastating to
families, and produced generation after
generation of housing projects dominated by single women and children.
Without the influence of fathers and
without the positive socializing
influence of cohesive families, children
grew up with every disadvantage
imaginable. With constant exposure
to crime and criminals, many children
fell into the pit of gangs, drug dealing,
stealing and worse.
WHAT POWERED OUR MISSION
(top left to right)

Drew Charter School,
Dr. Norman Johnson
(bottom left) Children
at Centennial Place
Elementary School
While AHA couldnt solve all of those

problems, it was compelled to make
positive differences, especially with
schools. Schools situated in the
isolated pockets of poverty of housing
projects were failures when measured
against those that were not. Children
from Atlantas public housing, which
made up about 40 percent of Atlanta
Public Schools student population,
were clustered together and werent
mingled with students from other
socioeconomic backgrounds. The
result as researchers across the
nation could have predicted
was failure.
The solution? As AHA redeveloped
old housing projects, creating healthy
mixed-income communities, repositioned schools have the opportunity to
reflect the new mix of incomes in their
student population. Again, results were
predictable: All students will benefit.
Education will always be the great
equalizer, says Rene Glover, AHAs
CEO.
The educational improvements
are best seen at Centennial Place
Elementary School and Drew Charter
School at the Villages of East Lake.
Centennial Place Elementary
epitomizes the change needed. It
draws students from the revitalized
Centennial Place neighborhood and
its mixed-income residents.
Centennial Place Elementary opened
in August 1998, replacing the obsolete
Fowler Elementary, which had served
Techwood/Clark Howell Homes. Fowler
was just across the street from Georgia
Tech, yet it had been decades since a
child from Techwood had crossed the
street to attend the prestigious university that sat only a few feet away.
Test scores and graduation rates
35
rose as the new student mix flourished.

In 1995, only 10 percent of the students
at Fowler Elementary passed a basic
writing-skills test. By 2002, at
Centennial Place Elementary School,
62 percent of the students passed a
basic writing skills test. That is roughly
about 50 percent higher than all
elementary schools in the Atlanta
school system.
Did we deconcentrate poverty and
get children going in the right direction? asks Dr. Norman Johnson, a
former Georgia Tech professor and
former president of the Atlanta Board
of Education. Yes.
Cynthia Kuhlman was Centennial
Place Elementarys first principal.
We wanted to create a neighborhood
school that would prepare children for
attending Georgia Tech, she recalls.
There was a great deal of commitment
from the community, the planning committee, Atlanta Public Schools and the
housing authority and its private
development partner. Everyone stood
by their commitment.
Education achievement has driven
the overall success of Centennial Place,
now one of Atlantas most desired
addresses, and one that arose out
of the failed Techwood Homes.
The single most important economic
development engine in the entire
Centennial Place community is
Centennial Place Elementary, says
Egbert Perry, chairman and CEO of
The Integral Group, which developed
the neighborhood.
The health and safety of youngsters
are also improved by moving out of
areas of concentrated poverty and into
the amenity-rich communities. There is
far less crime today in Atlanta than in
1995, and police cite the elimination of
housing projects as a primary reason.
36
There is access to better food. These

are links in the chain that lead to better
health all the way around less hypertension, less diabetes, less obesity, less
tobacco use, and better mental health.
As the last of the old-style public
housing projects in Atlanta is demolished, one of the final chapters in a
failed public policy will be closed for
the city. As the first city in the nation to
raze its large family public housing
projects moves forward to healthier
communities built on these sites, it is
the children of the entire city who win.
For a decade and a half, AHA has
labored to make Atlanta a better
place for all citizens to live in. Looking forward to the next 15 years, we
see
(top right) Darrel Lightfoot and his

children have improved
quality of life in their new
amenity rich community
(bottom)2001 Senator Barbara
Mikulski (D, MA), a champion of
Hope VI ,visits
Centennial Place Elementary school
37
Lesson Learned No.4

The truth about AHA: Making a Better
Community and Strengthening Families
Editors note: Despite the documented success
of the Atlanta Housing Authoritys programs,
misperceptions and myths remained. AHA
Chief External Affairs Off icer addressed
those issues in this column. His statements
were evaluated and affirmed as true by the
Atlanta Journal-Constitutions PolitiFact
reporting.
By Barney Simms
Utter dismay.
That was my reaction when I read an
article recently in the Atlanta JournalConstitution (DeKalb Resists Unwelcome
Image, May 30, 2010) that quoted
someone I respect who was lambasting the
Atlanta Housing Authority. Steen Miles,
a former TV reporter and state senator,
told the AJC that many suburban counties
problems with crime, schools and falling
property values are due to low-income
blacks moving into the community. The
people dumped from the Atlanta housing
projects went to Clayton and DeKalb
counties, Miles stated.
Checking further, I found that Miles
had written in a DeKalb newspaper, The
Champion Free Press (The downward
spiral, April 9, 2010): Many of the
Atlanta transplants [to DeKalb] are
38
former residents of the housing projects.

[M]ost of these low-income families
have not had adequate counseling on how
to adjust to living in single family homes.
Without serious counseling, how does
one adjust from living in cramped, crime
and drug-infested apartment complexes
to being integrated into middle class
neighborhoods?
Miles is wrong, very wrong on all points.
But the fault isnt hers. Its mine, as the
person responsible for explaining AHAs
work to the community.
AHA is in the midst of completing
a historic transition. In the mid-1990s,
Atlanta was pockmarked with more than
40 housing projects and had the highest
percentage of people living in public
housing of any major U.S. city. Of the
15,000 housing units, fully one-third
werent fit for human habitation and the
rest were only marginally better. Residents
had been condemned to never-ending
concentrated poverty. They were prey to
criminals and victims of isolation from the
mainstream community. The schools their
children attended were among the very
worst in the state. Residents faced lives
devoid of jobs and economic opportunity.
In 1994, when Rene Glover became
CEO of the Atlanta Housing Authority,
we set out to change that. This year, the
last of the big housing projects will be
demolished. We have ample proof from
academic studies and from our own
experience that families when integrated
into the mainstream either by living
in the mixed-income communities that
have replaced the projects or in housingvoucher assisted homes of their choice

become mainstream. Their employment
statistics mirror those of society at large.
Their children attend schools where
success is instilled. They no longer are the
most vulnerable victims of criminals.
Not all poverty has been eliminated in
Atlanta, but AHA has replaced the worst
pockets of despair and impoverishment
with healthy neighborhoods. Crime rates
have fallen dramatically, property values in
once-depressed areas have risen, and for
the first time in decades, citizens of all races
and income groups are clamoring to move
into the city. As the projects, which were
exempt from property taxes, were replaced
with taxable mixed-income housing, the
citys tax base was significantly augmented,
a financial boon to the citys homeowners
and businesses.
AHA deserves credit for its strategic
intervention in ending poverty and for
much of the civic regeneration that has
followed. Yet, misperceptions remain.
Chief among those are ones Steen Miles
asserted, plus one other, that in demolishing
the projects AHA has contributed to
homelessness in Atlanta.
Here is the truth about AHAs work:
Does AHA serve fewer families now
that the projects are gone? Absolutely
not. About 6,000 more families receive
housing assistance today than at the peak
of the projects.
Have the suburbs been inundated
with former residents of Atlanta housing
projects? Absolutely not. Families who
receive Section 8 assistance living outside

Atlanta is nothing new. Today 2,968
families live in 87 zip codes across the state
but since 2004, the year we announced
all the large family housing projects would
be razed, only 369 families have relocated
outside of the City of Atlanta. If every
one of those families had relocated to
DeKalb, as Steen Miles implied, they
would have had no measurable impact on
the demographics and certainly couldnt
have caused the problems she described.
The former housing project residents, by
an overwhelming majority, now pursue
productive lives and are indistinguishable
from most working families. All of the
families are required to comply with
the terms of their lease and the rules of
the program or else they will lose their
eligibility to receive the housing subsidy
and some do.
If not from AHA, then, from where
is the suburban poverty coming? Some
counties, such as Clayton, have encouraged
vast building of rental housing (the ratio
of rental to ownership is staggering),
attracting transient and low-income
residents from, for example, the Hurricane
Katrina exodus. It was reported that
thousands of families relocated from the
Gulf Region to metro Atlanta. In total,
fewer than 60 of those families received
housing assistance from AHA (suggesting
the balance moved to other, presumably
suburban, communities where the rents
were affordable like Clayton and DeKalb
counties).
In fact, according to a Brookings
Institute report issued this year, the Atlanta
metro area has the highest percentage of
its poor living in suburbs of any major
urban region about 84.5 percent of the
regions low income families live outside
the core city. Thats about 900,000 people,
of which former Atlanta housing project
residents constitute, at most, a negligible
one-tenth of one percent. Suburban

poverty has many causes, but AHA isnt
one of them.
Are former housing project residents
dumped into the community without
preparation? Absolutely not. AHA, in the
last decade, has invested $26.7 million in
coaching families to move smoothly into
the mainstream. That program engages
families for at least 27 months. AHA
also has implemented other programs,
such as one called Good Neighbor which
is administered through Georgia State
University, to ensure positive outcomes for
both families moving from the projects
and the neighborhoods into which they
move. No other housing authority in the
nation makes anywhere near that level of
commitment. Former residents of AHA
projects are now well-endowed with the
tools to be good citizens, workers, students
and neighbors.
Dont former project residents move
into neighborhoods just as poor as the
projects? Not at all. A Zip Code analysis
conducted this year showed that on
average, former Atlanta housing project
residents are now living in neighborhoods
27 percent more affluent than those
surrounding public housing. That means
better schools, better access to good retailers
and grocers, more good jobs nearby and
greater proximity to community resources.
In tearing down the housing projects,
hasnt AHA contributed to Atlantas
homeless population? Absolutely not.
AHA has fostered more quality affordable

housing in Atlanta than the city has seen
in decades. Moreover, working with the
Regional Commission on Homelessness,
AHA has entered into long-term rental
assistance agreements that support 500
units in concert with a variety of private
developers, faith-based groups and nonprofit organizations. The goal of this work
is to develop various supportive housing
communities with services to house the
homeless and give them the skills to
overcome homelessness. AHA recently
increased its rental subsidy to support
200 additional housing units. The group
responsible for monitoring homelessness
in Atlanta and Fulton and DeKalb
counties, The Pathways Community
Network, found in a recent report that
homeless count numbers from 2003 to
2009 were steady. There was no dramatic
change. Pathways also found that a
6.5 percent increase in homeless people
during the period was much less than
population growth of 17 percent. That
stability occurred during the very period
when the housing projects were coming
down.
No organization is perfect, and no
work in building a better community is
ever complete. But AHA, over the last 16
years, has cleaned up a great mess, one rife
with social injustice, and we have done so
with the mission of improving the lives
of children and families while at the same
time building a great city.
39
40
the future holds
Creating better,
healthier cities
In 1996, Rene Lewis Glover, who had
not yet completed her second year as
CEO of the Atlanta Housing Authority,
was asked by a documentary filmmaker
what she predicted her work in transforming the agency would produce. With
a mixture of boldness and introspection,
Glover responded to the filmmaker that
she envisioned seamlessly knitting
together the fabric of the community.
She foresaw that the city only can
benefit from AHAs pioneering work in
deconcentrating the pockets of poverty
that were synonymous with the
housing projects. Glover also predicted
that AHAs adaptation of the federal
governments HOPE VI program which
allowed housing authorities to replace
obsolete housing projects with innovative development would light the way
for several HOPE VI communities across
the nation.
A decade and a half later, Atlanta
is transformed. All of the major family
housing projects have been demolished.
Sixteen have been replaced by masterplanned mixed-use, mixed-income
communities. Most of the phases of
mixed-income multifamily rental
development have been completed and
are occupied, but additional phases of
41
Centennial Place has matured into a successful

mixed income community. Now the goal is to
attract quality retail development
development under the master plans

are yet to be done. Each of the master
plans calls for great parks and green
space, for-sale single family homes,
high performing neighborhood public
schools, world-class early childhood
development centers and upscale
recreational, retail and commercial
uses. Each of these communities has
been planned to offer a superior quality of life to the residents and to insure
long-term desirability and sustainability.
At the same time, AHA has greatly
expanded the housing opportunities
for low-income families in amenity-rich
mixed-income communities, which
serve thousands more people than
when all of the projects were operating.
The city itself has been a major beneficiary of AHAs work without the blight
of projects overwhelming Atlantas
landscape, an urban renaissance is
flourishing, and for the first time in
decades the population inside the
city is rising.
42
So, Glovers work is done, right?

Well, no. In many ways, we are at the
mid-point, AHAs CEO says.
Glover sees her future work focused
on two areas:
Re-energizing the community
building work to finish out the
master plans, when the economy
recovers, and planning the revital ization work at the recently
demolished public housing
sites; and
Pushing what Glover calls the
Third Wave of the Civil Rights
movement.
She says: Many people forget that
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke out
forcefully linking civil rights with poor
people achieving economic equity in
society. Eight months before he died,
in his Where Do We Go From Here?
speech, Dr. King stated, Of the good
things in life, the Negro has approximately one half those of whites. Of the
bad things of life, he has twice those
of whites. Thus half of all Negroes live

in substandard housing. And Negroes
have half the income of whites. When
we view the negative experiences of life,
the Negro has a double share. There are
twice as many unemployed.
Glover notes that King was pointing
to two things that became the hallmarks
of AHAs work in the last decade and a
half: quality affordable housing in economically vibrant neighborhoods and
economic empowerment. But while
AHA has pioneered programs that
address both areas, real success is still
a goal and not yet a reality.
Many would say that things have
improved and they are right, but more is
needed, Glover says. Yes, were proud
of our achievements at AHA, in housing,
employment, education, caring for
seniors and disabled persons and in
other areas. But poverty, especially
among people of color, is still a condition that holds back all of society.
The ultimate goal of our work is to end
multi-generational poverty. She notes
that, according to a study by New
York University Economist Edward N.
Wolff, blacks in 2004 held $11,800 in
net worth, or about 10 percent of the
$118,300 held by whites. The picture
has not improved in recent years. The
wealth gap was narrowest in 1992,
and even then, median total wealth
for blacks was only 16 percent of their
white counterparts.
The First Wave of Civil Rights was
ending slavery, Glover says. The
Second was ending Jim Crow
WHAT THE FUTURE HOLDS
segregation. People need to understand that public housing 50 years ago

in the South was conceptualized and
executed during the Jim Crow era, the
consequence of which was vast
populations of poor black people were
exiled from the mainstream of civic and
economic life in the cities. Thus, my
first 15 years at AHA was, in part,
finishing the work of erasing a vestige
of Jim Crow by eliminating the economic concentration camps of public
housing, which over time became
populated predominantly by AfricanAmericans.
The Third Wave, economic empowerment, will ensure that poor people,
especially African-Americans, gain
economic equity in America, equity
they have been systematically denied
through economically segregated
housing and poor education
opportunities for decades.
Our work at AHA starts with
housing, Glover observes. Make no
mistake, if we get the social design
wrong, everything else is unobtainable.
The measure of our work is how we
strategically unlock the human
potential of the many people who were
trapped in and stigmatized by public
housing. For example, one of the worst
aspects of public housing has been the
destruction of families by ill-conceived
public policies. As Dr. King observed in
1968, The dignity of the individual will
flourish when the decisions concerning
his life are in his own hands, when
he has the means to seek selfimprovement.
Meanwhile, despite the national
acclaim AHA has garnered by its work
in deconcentrating poverty and
replacing the projects with healthy
neighborhoods, We can never rest on
our laurels, Glover says. Because the
work is complex and touches so many

aspects of the society and involves
structural and systemic change, it
inevitably comes under attack by the
advocates and persons who benefit
from chaos. In response to those
attacks, Congress is debating the very
aspects of the policies and programs
that have proven to be critical to successful outcomes. Fortunately, here in
Atlanta, we have had the political
support and, with that support, we
have conceived, developed and
applied strategies that have shown
they will strategically attack the roots
of poverty. We have evolved a model
that puts communities on a long-term
trajectory towards health health in the
sense of a better city, yes, but more
importantly providing people long
trapped in poverty with the means to
move up in society.
To understand Glovers vision for the
next decades, its essential to recall the
past 15 years. At the heart of Glovers
early work at AHA was confronting the
awful failure of public housing. No one
was under any illusion that life in the
projects was an acceptable way for
any American to live. Despite claims
that public housing somehow constituted a community, the people who
actually had to live in the deteriorating
projects knew better. For example,
Sylvia Porter, a tenant leader, told
WAGA-Channel 5 in 1992: We are
not going to continue to tolerate the
dungeons we have to live in. Ironically,
public housing had become a dismal
echo of the early 20th Century slums
that government-subsidized housing
had been created to replace.
With decades of public housing failure handicapping Glovers ambitions
to reform AHA and transform the lives
of the people who depended on the
agency, how well did her predictions in

1996 pan out? Pretty good. This year,
the last of Atlantas large family housing
projects will be demolished. Replacing
them, there are already 16 mixed-use,
mixed-income communities, with more
on the drawing boards. Glover
accurately predicted that when given a
chance, residents trapped in the
housing projects wanted out and
subsequent polls of the residents
vindicated Glovers forecast with more
than 90 percent of the residents saying
they wanted to move into mainstream
housing.
Rigorous academic studies show
dramatic improvements in the lives of
families after leaving the housing
projects from the education of
children to the economic security of the
families. People who once were written
off as failures are now indistinguishable
from societys mainstream. Moreover,
Atlanta has flourished with healthy
development and a growing population
things that would not have been
possible if the city was still cratered by
the old housing projects.
Weve made the radical changes,
and weve gone from being a liability to
the health of the city to being a tremendous asset, Glover says. Now the
mission is to mature, to use what weve
learned to do the job better, and to
assist other communities that face
similar problems. What weve done is
very exciting. What we have planned
is even more exciting.
With that record, we can understand
Glovers emphasis for community
building and economic empowerment.
Glover cites, as evidence of success,
the 2005 study Environment Matters
by Georgia Tech Economics Professor
Thomas D. Boston, which showed
significant improvements in
43
employment and educational success

among families who had left Atlantas
housing projects, as well as much
lower crime rates in the neighborhoods
around the former sites of public
housing.
Dr. Bostons research demonstrated
that we had achieved some strategic
goals, Glover says. Now our job is
to shore up the work, improve on the
improvements, make sure that gains
weve made fighting poverty arent
set back.
Through the past 15 years, the plan
has adapted as AHA learned from its
work. In the area where Grady Homes
once stood, for example, a new urbanoriented community is being built by
one of AHAs long-time private sector
partners, The Integral Group. Some of
the stunning attributes of what is now
called Auburn Pointe are advanced
green technologies, ranging from
geo-thermal climate control to solar
panels. The population is mixed in
many ways by income and age.
Some of the finest facilities for seniors
are essential elements of Auburn
Pointe. AHA is using the autonomy it
has gained from the federal government to invite supportive services
providers to offer a host of programs in
the senior communities. Other phases
of Auburn Pointe are built for university
students, professionals in the Grady
medical complex, and others who want
to live in a community linked to transit
a place where a car isnt essential.
People talk a lot nowadays about
sustainability, Glover says. Weve
incorporated that thinking into the heart
of our plans for future communities. It
takes time for the mixed-use, mixedincome communities weve sponsored
to mature. At Centennial Place, for
example, weve been successful in
44
building a community where there is

plenty of disposable income. Now, we
need to finish the job there by attracting quality retail development.
Also part of the plan for the future is
the continued encouragement of the
mixed-income concept providing the
foundation for true improvement in
Atlantas schools. For a half century
studies have shown that school populations that are overwhelmingly poor
doom students to academic failure,
Glover says. Our building of mixedincome neighborhoods changes the
dynamic of failure in schools. With a
healthy mix of all income groups, all
students have a chance to excel.
Glover also points to the encouragement of early childhood learning.
AHAs philosophy has evolved from
one that emphasized the physical
structures to one where it was creating
neighborhoods with children and
families as the focus. Glover says:
When your priority is children, all of
the rest of the equation falls into place.
That is something we will expand
greatly in the next years.
Beyond that, Glover sees AHA as
taking greater national prominence as
other cities wrestle with what to do with
their own obsolete public housing. In
broad terms, Atlanta will become a
national model.
In effect, well refine, refresh and
reinvigorate the model, Glover says.
And well be able to improve what we
do so that other cities dont have to
go through the same learning process
that we did. In the beginning, we had
inefficiencies. We didnt know where
the crisis would hit, but we knew that
something would go awry. We didnt
know what to be afraid of, and now we
do and can share our experience with
other communities.
An example of what AHA has

learned, Glover says, is the investment
in human capital. In the early days
of closing the projects and providing
housing assistance vouchers to families moving into the mainstream, AHA
found that many of the people werent
prepared to deal with the larger society.
Now AHA sponsors and funds almost
three years of professional familycentered coaching to families leaving
public housing.
When you tell the truth about what

public housing became, Glover says,
whats clear is that these awful
projects were dead-end reservations.
They were a never-ending and
inescapable cycle of poverty. People
were trapped, cut off from society. They
became impoverished not only in terms
of money but also spiritually. The
projects stripped families of their hope
and humanity, and removed values and
expectations from their lives. That is
what we will continue to change,

building better communities and
providing the opportunities and
expectations every American should
enjoy. That building of economic
equity in America for poor people
was Dr. Kings emphasis during his
last years, and it remains a cause well
worth fighting for today.
Columbia Crest at West Highlands
45
Appendix
MIXED-INCOME FAMILY COMMUNITIES WITH PROJECT-BASED RENTAL ASSISTANCE
46
COMMUNITIES
TOTAL UNITS
PBRA PARTNERS
Arcadia at Parkway Village
116
Auburn Glenn
108
Avalon Park Family
53
Centerline Capital Group
Avalon Ridge Family
89
Columbia Residential
Capitol Gateway II
16
Cortland Partners
Columbia Mechanicsville Apartments
35
Constitution Avenue Apartments
67
Crogman School Apartments
42
Gateway at Northside Village
40
GE Towers
81
Hampton Oaks
50
Heritage Green
44
Heritage Station I
88
Highbury Terraces
17
Mechanicsville Crossing
30
Mechanicsville Station
35
The Park at Scotts Crossing
54
The Peaks at MLK
73
Total
1,038
Ambling Companies
Atlanta Development Authority
Progressive Redevelopment Incorporated

Resource Real Estate
RHA Housing
The Integral Group
MASTER-PLANNED, MIXED-USE MIXED-INCOME FAMILY COMMUNITIES: COMMUNITY BUILDING

RENTAL UNIT MIX (#)
PARTNERS
TAX
MARCOMMUNITIES
KET
RATE
Brock Built
TAX
CREDIT
CREDIT
WITH
TAX
WITH
PUBLIC
CREDIT
ACC
HOUS-
WITH
ASSIS-
ING
PBRA**
TANCE*
ASSIS-
Creative Choice Homes
East Lake Redevelopment/ East Lake Foundation
H.J Russell & Company
McCormack Baron
Mercy Housing
TANCE
Ashley Collegetown
81
40
78
Ashley Courts at Cascade
96
113
116
Ashley Terrace at West End
44
34
34
Atrium at Collegetown
76
114
Capitol Gateway
167
100
138
16
Centennial Place
311
126
301
Columbia Commons
74
31
48
Columbia Creste
72
19
61
Columbia Estate
62
12
50
Columbia Grove
42
41
56
Columbia Mechanicsville Apartments
47
29
62
35
Former site of University Homes***
TBD
TBD
TBD
TBD
Mechanicsville Crossing
66
68
30
Mechanicsville Station
66
63
35
Columbia ParkCiti
73
19
61
Columbia Senior Residences at Mechanicsville
15
54
81
Columbia Village
70
30
The Gardens at CollegeTown
26
Magnolia Park
160
80
160
Veranda at Auburn Pointe
38
86
Villages at Carver
183
110
329
Village at Castleberry Hill
177
93
180
Villages of East Lake
271
271
Totals
1,996
932
2,300
400
RHA Housing, Inc

The Integral Group
* ACC Assistance refers to the public housing operating subsidy that supports a portion of the
communitys operating expenses.
* * PBRA is Project Based Rental Assistance
* * * The new community is in pre-development and has yet to be named.
47
Appendix
AHA-OWNED PORTFOLIO: 11 SENIOR HIGH-RISE COMMUNITIES AND 2 SMALL FAMILY COMMUNITIES
48
COMMUNITIES
TOTAL UNITS
Barge Road Highrise
130
Cheshire Bridge Highrise
162
Cosby Spear Memorial Tower
282
East Lake Tower Highrise
150
Georgia Avenue Highrise
81
Hightower Manor
130
Juniper & Tenth Highrise
150
Marian Road Highrise
240
Marietta Road Highrise
130
Peachtree Road Highrise
197
Piedmont Road Highrise
209
Westminster
32
Martin Street Plaza
60
Total
1,953
PROPERTY MANAGEMENT PARTNERS

Habitat Company
Integral Property Management
The Lane Company
MIXED-INCOME SENIOR COMMUNITY WITH PROJECT-BASED RENTAL ASSISTANCE

COMMUNITIES
TOTAL
UNITS
SENIOR/ HIGHRISE
PBRA PARTNERS
Ambling Companies
Atrium at Collegetown
114
Avalon Park Senior
81
Campbell Stone
Campbell Stone
201
Columbia Colony Senior
37
Cortland Partners
Columbia Heritage
124
Columbia High Point Senior
94
RHA Housing
Columbia Senior Residences at Blackshear
77
The Integral Group
Columbia Senior Residences at Edgewood
135
Columbia Senior Residences at MLK
122
Columbia Senior Residences at Mechanicsville
81
Columbia at Sylvan Hills
37
Columbia Tower at MLK Village
56
Heritage Station II
150
The Renaissance at Park Place South Senior
80
Veranda at Auburn Pointe
86
Veranda at Carver Senior
90
Veranda at Collegetown
90
Total
1,655
Atlanta Development Authority
KDTA Development, Inc

Mercy Housing
OLDER PERSONS 55 +
Ashton at Browns Mill
74
The Legacy at Walton Lakes
24
Park Commons/ Gates Park (HFOP)
130
Park Commons/ Gates Park (HFS)
110
Total
338
49

AHA 15year ProgressReport

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AHA 15year ProgressReport

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Atlanta Housing Authority 15 Year Progress Report

15 YEAR PROGRESS REPORT

That was then...

Atlanta Housing Authority 15 Year Progress Report

letter from the chairman

Why we did this:

The opportunity to turn failure into

Lesson Learned No.1

How we made things work

Lesson Learned No.2

Lesson Learned No.3

What powered our mission:

Lesson Learned No.4

What the future holds:

The toxic impact of concentrated poverty

A lot of flexibility and ingenuity

The road to restoring human dignity

The principles that evolved

Children face the greatest risk

We realized we could save the children

The truth about AHA: making a better community

Creating better, healthier cities

Atlanta Housing Authority 15 year Progress Report

(above): Photograph of Amari Dunn. Cover, photograph shot by Shannon McCollum.

15 YEAR PROGRESS REPORT

15 YEAR PROGRESS REPORT

And behind all of those problems were

Children being poorly educated

such as urban renewal or highway

WHY WE DID THIS

(above): Techwood Homes

15 YEAR PROGRESS REPORT

(above): Eva Davis, AHA board

WHY WE DID THIS

Crime around housing projects was as

with fresh produce and nearly

greatness because they died as

Lesson Learned No.1

(Editors note: In 2009, Atlanta Housing

By Rene Lewis Glover

minorities, primarily black people? Are

under-standing the root cause of the

A4 / Atlanta Housing Authority

No doubt, these questions are important,

15 YEAR PROGRESS REPORT

and standards is not a uniquely American

1990s as Little Vietnam there was a $38

we made things work

May 2009 demolition begins at Bowen Homes, the last of

here was no question two decades

15 YEAR PROGRESS REPORT

I knew that would never be enough, not

legal counsel. The law firm Naughton

(top left to right): Egbert Perry, Carol Naughton,

We felt that not only could we make

HOW WE MADE THINGS WORK

partnerships to create the new communities. The communities were to

15 YEAR PROGRESS REPORT

From resident community

HOW WE MADE THINGS WORK

the mixed-use, mixed-income

former public housing residents were

15 YEAR PROGRESS REPORT

AHA wasnt perfect at the beginning.