Rebuilding foreclosed communities a tough task

By Michelle E. Shaw

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Turning around neighborhoods ravaged by foreclosures will take a group effort, a panel of housing experts said Wednesday.

Figuring out who will step up and where the money will come from is the next piece of the puzzle, they said, but there is no shortage of neighborhoods that need the help.

Atlanta’s Pittsburgh community, which is more than 40 percent vacant, is home to 6 percent of the city’s foreclosures, according to research from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. The neighborhood has 1,152 parcels and more than 500 have been foreclosed, said Darin Hall, of Sustainable Neighborhood Development Strategies, in Atlanta.

“This neighborhood has been the perfect storm of unbridled development, mortgage fraud and predatory lending,” he said at a regional housing forum at Loudermilk Center in downtown Atlanta.

Available financing is one of the antidotes to the foreclosure disease that has ravaged neighborhoods across metro Atlanta, said John O’Callaghan, president of Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership.

To turn around neighborhoods like Pittsburgh, it would take private and public groups committed to the area and willing to buy the vacant, often dilapidated homes, fix them up and sell the properties to qualified buyers, he said.

“Private investors are our competition,” he said. “Not all of them are rehabbing these homes up to codes, they’re charging a high rent and not putting very much into the house and not helping bring the neighborhood values up.”

Once homes are repaired, there also must be an effort to make sure eligible homeowners know they are available, said Vaughn Irons, of Atlanta-based APD Solutions.

“There are people out there who might want to buy a house, but they are very afraid,” he said. “What we have to do is change the psychology for consumers where these properties are concerned and emphasize the value of these properties.”

Before most of these step can happen, there has to be a plan for a neighborhood and it should be a shared vision, Irons said.

“We’ve got to get beyond the silo effect and work together,” he said. “We’ve got to know what’s going on beyond out own interests to make this work.”