Kashira Martin always wanted a porch.
She didn’t have one when she lived in Bankhead Courts, formerly one of Atlanta’s most notorious housing projects. Nor did she have one at her former apartment, where she would have welcomed a porch to get away from the mold inside.
Now, she can sit for hours on the porch at her new apartment on Boulevard that used to be a burned out drug house. From her porch, Martin can watch her kids play across the street in the park.
“I love my porch,” Martin said Friday. “It is the size of a room. I can sit out there in the comfort of my home and see everything.”
The view looks pretty good, and city officials hope it will only get better.
Monday morning, Atlanta officials and Beacon of Hope, a community nonprofit, will celebrate the completion of two small apartment buildings recently renovated into apartments along the Boulevard corridor in the Old Fourth Ward.
The city has invested nearly half a million dollars into converting the old drug houses into affordable housing.
“To take an eyesore that was a threat to the health and safety of that community and make it a decent opportunity for a young mother and her children is amazing,” said Terri M. Lee, deputy commissioner of Atlanta's Department of Planning and Community Development. “It is more than just building another house. This adds to the community fabric, which involves building people.”
On Friday, in anticipation of Monday’s 10 a.m. ribbon cutting, there was a lot of activity at the two 70-year-old properties, located at 516 and 520 Boulevard. One man cut the grass, while another patched up an outside retaining wall.
Lydia Meredith, CEO and executive director of Beacon of Hope, was busy showing off the model apartment to a potential resident. Five of the eight units in the two buildings are occupied, she said.
“This is the celebration of the completion of a project that has brought together three sectors -- the public, business and nonprofits -- to redevelop a community that has had numerous incidents of death, crime and drug trafficking,” Meredith said.
In 2005, Beacon of Hope, which grew out of the Rev. Dennis Meredith’s Tabernacle Baptist Church across the street, was certified as one of the city’s seven Community Housing Development Organizations.
As a CHDO, the organization qualified for HUD funds to renovate dilapidated homes into affordable housing. The funds are part of HUD’s HOME Investment Partnerships Program, the largest federal block grant to state and local governments designed exclusively to create affordable housing for low-income households. Each year it allocates about $2 billion nationwide, with Atlanta getting between $3 million and 3.5 million.
“Our goal is to spend every dollar of it,” Lee said. “It adds to and enhances the quality of life for our citizens. Vacants become havens for drugs and crime. They become nightmares for code enforcement and police. They have a high probability of something happening in them.”
For the two current Beacon of Hope buildings, the city spent $432,000 to help renovate the eight three-bedroom units. Tabernacle purchased the properties and turned them over to Beacon of Hope to manage.
“When the church came to the neighborhood, all of the land owners were trying to sell to the church,” Lee said. “It was crack USA on those parcels over there.”
Slowly, Beacon of Hope has started to accumulate and identify boarded-up and abandoned properties in the Old Fourth Ward to renovate. The nonprofit owns five parcels, including the two empty ones next to 520 Boulevard. They are former crack houses that burned down.
“It was an embarrassment to the community,” Meredith said. “We had to get all of those. We had to clean it up.”
Meredith is slight, but tough. Although she was wearing a sharp red suit, she had on sneakers -- the better to get around.
As the CEO of Beacon of Hope, she is also the landlord of the properties.
On Friday, after a potential tenant looked at a model apartment, she ran down the qualifications: low-income family. Steady job. Background checks. No drugs.
"This is affordable low-income housing for working families," Meredith said. "Ain't nobody sitting around smoking crack and weed up in here. You go to work and take care of my units. You ain't gonna be up in my units doing nothing."
So every morning, after packing her kids off to school and day care, Martin hops on a bus and goes to work at a grocery store bakery.
In her 25 years, this is by far the best place she has ever lived, she said. Her kitchen, for example, is fully loaded, with granite tops, modern appliances and a microwave oven -- simple pleasures she had never known.
“I like everything. It is roomy. I like the way it is painted and it is convenient,” said Martin, who moved in on July 5. “I just like the whole apartment.”
That's a big change, considering where she came from.
First there was Bankhead Courts, where she and her children were the last ones to leave their building before the Atlanta Housing Authority demolished it. She got a Section 8 voucher and found an apartment that had failed inspection twice. It passed on the third try, but was still contaminated with mold and bugs.
“I hated it there. They never fixed anything. My apartment flooded three times. My kids kept getting sick. When we moved in, the sink was clogged with hair. It was horrible,” Martin said.
Based on her income and her Section 8 voucher, Martin is paying $86 a month in rent at her new place.
“This is a good deal,” said Councilman Kwanza Hall, who represents the Old Fourth Ward. “We want to attract people who want to bring something good to the community. It is exciting to see any new life happening in the Old Fourth Ward.”
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