East Point rejects investment for more rentals

East Point told Fulton County to leave town this week and take its $13 million with it.

It’s not, city leaders said, a question of whether the south Fulton County city wants that kind of investment.

What it doesn’t want is the county to pour state and federal dollars into rehabbing a burned-out apartment complex, only to create more low-income rentals at a time when East Point is overwhelmed by foreclosures and vacant homes.

“We have tons of affordable housing in East Point,” said councilwoman Sharonda Hubbard, whose district includes the Terraces at East Point building on Langford Parkway. “What we need is to get people into single-family homes.”

There is an overabundance of distressed properties in the city: 651 homes were in the foreclosure process in June according to RealtyTrac, which publishes the largest database of foreclosed, auctioned and bank-owned homes in the country.

That translates into one in about every six homes in the city of 43,000 people was in foreclosure.

The high incidence of foreclosures in East Point and the southern part of the county prompted Fulton to apply for federal and state grants last year to stabilize such neighborhoods.

The county’s plans include buying and rehabbing single-family homes in nearby College Park, Fairburn and Union City.

Only East Point was designated for creating new rentals. The plan for the Terraces at East Point called for using $13 million, including $3 million in federal stimulus money, to strip the 86-unit building down to its studs and remake it into a 50-unit complex that would be owned and run by its housing authority.

But beyond objections of adding more low-income housing, there was the matter of how Fulton County originally came to make its case for the project.

City councilmembers first got word of the county’s plans when Hubbard heard it mentioned on a TV news report last month.

The county did not realize it needed the city’s OK for the housing authority to close on a purchase. When it became clear that the city had to sign off on any deal, the city and county held several last-minute meetings, culminating with a specially called council meeting on Monday.

In that session, Troy White, the county’s housing and community development director, pledged to work with the city on a strategy to reduce the number of foreclosures in the future. But White told the council that there was no money now for any such programs.

Still, he and a vice president from NorSouth Companies, which was lined up to be the private developer of the project, defended the renovation as an opportunity for East Point.

“This is an opportunity to get rid of this blight and eyesore,” Jervon Harris said. “We have been hopeful that even if you felt slighted, you wouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water.”

City leaders responded with a rare show of total unity, insisting the offer was tantamount to the county trying to bulldoze East Point’s vision for its future. That vision includes encouraging more owner-occupied homes and continuing the gentrification that has helped turn older neighborhoods such as Jefferson Park into metro showcases.

Councilmembers also said they hoped the county’s offer to partner on those plans would be honored, if the city doesn’t want another affordable rental complex in its borders.