$2 million more to help prevent Atlanta foreclosures

Federal officials said Friday that they will give $2 million to an Atlanta agency as part of an effort to aid the homeless and respond to the region’s mortgage foreclosure crisis.

The money to Recovery Consultants Inc., which provides substance-abuse treatment and other services, will be spread out over five years, according to Philip Mangano, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

The federal government said about a month ago that it is giving the city $12.3 million to address the foreclosure problem. Atlanta has until Dec. 1 to send federal officials a plan of action. The city can apply for more money from the state Department of Community Affairs.

Mangano said the money can be used to buy foreclosed homes, redevelop vacant properties or to demolish blighted buildings.

At a City Hall news conference, Mayor Shirley Franklin talked about her administration’s efforts to help the homeless and to limit the destructiveness of foreclosures to the city.

She said the city will look at how it can help working families, noting that an increasing number of homeless are renters who’ve paid their rent on time, but whose landlords had fallen into foreclosure.

“Our challenge is to demonstrate that this program can succeed,” the mayor said. “This is a way to stop the bleeding.”

Atlanta Planning and Community Development Commissioner James Shelby said his office constantly receives calls from residents complaining about abandoned homes, which create quality-of-life problems such as overgrown weeds and vagrants hanging out in the homes, often doing drugs or stealing materials from homes under construction.

Shelby said foreclosures have “become an epidemic in our city.”

Last year, city code enforcement workers put notices on about 1,200 vacant homes, alerting police that no one should be inside them. The city is on pace to double that number this year, according to Tenee Hawkins, Shelby’s spokeswoman.