Atlanta nonprofit helps areas hit by foreclosure

If all goes well, Mia Hicks won’t be alone.

In fact, the hope is that she will be part of a movement that will help restore neighborhoods distressed by foreclosure all across metro Atlanta.

Right now, Hicks is just enjoying her lease-to-own arrangement for the three-bedroom, two-bath home she shares in Venetian Hills in Atlanta with her son.

“I was just tired of living in an apartment,” Hicks said. “So far, this has been pretty good. It’s very quiet. And, I’m getting used to raking leaves and doing yard work.”

Hicks landed the house in October — after eight years of apartment living — through a deal with the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, a local nonprofit affordable housing organization which hopes to help repopulate communities hit hard be foreclosure.

Hicks is the first of what ANDP originally planned to be 50 new homeowners the nonprofit hoped to place in Atlanta and the Decatur area over the next few years.

ANDP began organizing its effort early this year with plans to use a combination of loans, grants and subsidies from private sources.

Now, they plan to expand their effort to more homes and more areas with counties across metro Atlanta soon to get more than $70 million in federal money to help neighborhoods suffering from the real estate collapse. Overall, Georgia expects to get more than $153 million from HUD.

“This is a great affordable housing opportunity and a great neighborhood preservation opportunity as well,” said John O’Callaghan, president of ANDP.

The nonprofit plans to apply to several counties to get Neighborhood Stabilization Program money to replace the money it would have had to raise through foundations and other sources.

There’s plenty available.

If their applications are approved by the federal Housing and Urban Development Department, Atlanta, Fulton and DeKalb counties within about 60 days will have more than $40 million to spend.

The program gives the jurisdictions just 18 months to have projects lined up or whatever’s left goes back to HUD. Each jurisdiction has only four years to spend its HUD money.

At a public hearing on Dec. 18, Atlanta housing officials said they are looking for “partners” to help the city spend more than $12 million — organizations with enough financial ability to bring their own money to deals to make the federal money go farther and make payments on projects up front and be reimbursed by the city.

Officials found an eager audience as well with representatives of more than a dozen neighborhoods and organizations in the crowd — all looking for money.

Still, there were lots of questions as well. Residents worried that the homes renovated under the NSP would not sell and that if they sold for discount prices they would further depress home values in the neighborhoods the program seeks to help.

Councilman Ceasar Mitchell questioned whether there was enough money to make a difference against a problem so pervasive. “It seems like it’s not even enough to be a drop in the ocean,” Mitchell said.

O’Callaghan said ANDP hopes make the money it eventually gets have impact by targeting areas that have declined but not slipped into free fall. He said the nonprofit is already making offers on properties in Sylvan Hills in Atlanta and the 30032 ZIP code just outside Decatur.

“We are in neighborhoods that are suffering from foreclosure and values falling,” O’Callaghan said. “We don’t have to buy every home to turn the neighborhood around.”