When I was preparing to move back to the metro area in 2013, I spoke to anyone who would listen about how affordable Atlanta was compared to Washington, D.C. I went on and on about the spacious two-bedroom garden apartment with a deck and its own driveway that I used to rent in the bottom of a Decatur ranch house, just blocks away from the Avondale MARTA station. I paid $720 a month for it, less than half of what my portion of the rent was to share a mostly windowless, low-ceiling basement in D.C.
I had a job lined up with the city of Decatur. It will be easy to find somewhere cheap to live, I thought, the memory of the $720 a month two-bedroom from just six years earlier vivid in my mind. I’d changed a lot in those six years and as my apartment hunt grew more desperate, I realized Decatur had, too. (I did eventually find a place, but for considerably more than $720). Once back here, it seemed that all anyone could talk about were the rapid changes in Decatur and the loss of diversity and how expensive real estate was getting. No one seemed to have hard facts, just stories like mine. The more I heard and saw, the more curious I became: What did the data say?
The city hired a graduate student from the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies to spend a summer compiling and analyzing data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Together, he and I produced a report called, “Findings on the state of diversity in the City of Decatur.” The city is divided into four areas by the Census Bureau and this made it easy to compare changes in age, race, household composition, education and income levels and home values among the city’s four quadrants.
The data show Decatur is indeed changing, becoming less racially diverse and older overall as well as better educated, wealthier and a place of rising home values. This matters. During strategic planning processes of 2000 and 2010, Decatur residents expressed a diverse community as something they value and want to maintain. One of the 2010 strategic plan’s guiding principles is to “Encourage a diverse and engaged community.” So in the face of this data, what can a city government do?
First, Decatur can continue to listen to the community. Second, it can partner with organizations like Welcoming America that work to ensure cities are welcoming to all. And, finally, Decatur can provide a safe space for everyone who lives, works and plays in the community to come together and talk about how we are different and share ideas on how to not just accommodate our differences but embrace them.
On Aug. 29, Decatur will provide the first of many safe spaces for the community to engage as part of the Better Together initiative. I invite everyone who lives and works in Decatur to join us, especially those skeptical of the process. We need all voices to contribute.
The goal of Better Together is to produce a community action plan for the city commission to review and approve. This isn’t going to be an easy process. It’s going to take work. It will inevitably be messy. And sometimes, it may even hurt, as individuals in our community won’t always see eye to eye. But it is critical that we push through so that we can all have a say in what kind of city Decatur will be in the future.
Learn more at www.decaturnext.com.
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