Decatur replacing old public housing; most tenants staying put

By Ty Tagami

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

The heavy equipment parked along one of Decatur’s main streets will soon tear into the city’s biggest public housing project.

Allen Wilson Terrace along Commerce Drive has sheltered some of Decatur’s poorest residents since 1941. City housing officials say they’ve done their best to maintain the buildings but that now must be replaced.

The destruction of old public housing is nothing new. For years, the Atlanta Housing Authority has garnered national attention for its policy of razing old projects and replacing them with higher-end private condos. Many of the old tenants were dispersed into neighborhoods across metro Atlanta using Section 8 vouchers, in an effort to eliminate concentrations of poverty.

But Decatur is bucking that trend. The little city — it’s only four square miles — has promised a home in the rebuilt project for every tenant.

“Why should we take families who have limited incomes and force them out of a situation that truly meets their needs?” said Paul Pierce, the executive director of the Decatur Housing Authority.

He plans to replace the cramped two-story brick units with larger buildings that will house the same number of people on less land. The reconfiguration, with new three- and four-story structures, will open space on about a third of the site for a private condo development. The private portion will contain some subsidized worker housing but will mostly offer units that sell — or rent — at market rate, Pierce said.

Allen Wilson Terrace, named for a minister, houses 200 families. When it is rebuilt, there will be public housing for 190. About a fifth of the campus has been vacated. Tenants were given a choice of waiting out the construction in vacant units elsewhere in Decatur or leaving for good with Section 8 vouchers. About 40 families chose to leave.

Linda Lewis decided to stay. Her family moved to Allen Wilson Terrace when she was 11. Now, at 57, she said the place is special to her.

Unlike the notorious East Lake Meadows project in nearby Atlanta, which was so dangerous before it was razed that tenants called it “little Vietnam,” Allen Wilson is safe, Lewis said.

She sat on her front porch Thursday afternoon with the 3-year-old son of her sister’s friend. The boy played with a toy fire engine while she reminisced.

Lewis, who cleans offices in Decatur, said the housing authority has tried to maintain her unit, installing new cabinets, sinks and floors. But she said it is an old building.

“It’s sad that this is going down,” she said, “but it’s not sad because they’re doing something better.”

Another tenant, Stephanie Pride, complained about cockroaches and mold in her unit. “Anybody who walks into my apartment, that’s all they smell,” she said. Yet she will not leave.

The housing project is within a block of a MARTA station, so she can ride the train to her job at a grocery store deli. And she knows her 9-year-old daughter is safe while she works because the city runs a recreational program after school next door.

“The schools are great for my kid, it’s convenient for me to get to work and they have all these programs for us,” Pride said.

Decatur can ignore the trend set by Atlanta because of its compact layout and its high-end demographic, said John O’Callaghan, the president and CEO of the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership.

Many of the projects in Atlanta were “projects of despair” — isolated from services and located near poor quality schools, he said. But the Decatur project is within walking distance of just about anything one could need — food, shopping, transit and even firefighters, he said. Plus, the local affluence creates employment opportunities for residents of modest means, he said.

“There are jobs there. There are amazing schools there. They are surrounded by residents with dollars for goods and services,” said O’Callaghan, whose group advocates for affordable housing and economically diverse neighborhoods.

Many of the Atlanta projects that were razed were rebuilt with a smaller number of public housing units, he said. The public housing was displaced by market rate private housing, but in many cases, he said, the old tenants wanted to leave because the locations were so bad.

In that case, he said, it made sense to bring in new, upscale residents and boost the local economy.

“Decatur’s a different market,” he said. “You’re fighting gentrification, you’re fighting forces that start to drive poor people out.”