ATL Demolishes Last of Large Public Housing

During the Great Depression, Atlanta was the first city to build public housing. Today, it took a step towards becoming the first major city to completely eliminate it. A demolition crew began tearing down the city’s last large public housing project called Bowen Homes.

When Bowen was created 45 years ago, it started as a model development, but later become an enclave of poverty, drugs and crime.

Renee Glover, the president of the Atlanta Housing Authority, says, "On reflection, there's no question that this is the right direction, and Atlanta, the families will be the better for it."

Bowen's 900 former residents have found new housing. Most use a voucher system where they pay the same as they did when they lived here.

Today’s demolition is symbolic of what’s happening with public housing in major cities across the state. It’s a national effort to get rid of large stacks of rows upon rows of the 1960’s buildings and to create mixed income developments in their place. Georgia is one of the pioneers in this effort. Atlanta wants to be the first to do away with all of them by 2010.

Historic Public Housing Demolition

Atlanta Housing Authority officials have set a date to begin demolishing the last of the city's large public housing developments. Officials will begin the first phase of the demolition of Bowen Homes next week. Officials will mark the occasion with a ceremony on June 3. The destruction is part of a city plan to erase concentrated poverty by demolishing what officials say have become crime-infested public housing developments. Atlanta was the first city in the nation to create public housing during the Great Depression. The city is on course to become, in 2010, the first to have eliminated all of its large public housing projects.

(Associated Press)

Economy hobbles aid to homeless

Beneath the glowing red Coca-Cola headquarters sign, case worker Hylda Jackson bargains with one of Atlanta's homeless.

Jackson wants to know if Harry Byrd would like his own apartment. If he says no, he'll remain among the 750,000 homeless sprinkled across the nation's streets and shelters each night.

In Atlanta and other cities, a sense of urgency has settled over the efforts of advocates such as Jackson.

The recession is catching many of the nation's largest cities in the middle of pioneering 10-year plans to drastically reduce the number of chronically homeless and channeling them into apartments with built-in case workers.

"It's the start of tough times," said Protip Biswas, executive director of United Way Atlanta's Regional Commission on Homelessness.

Biswas is asking his own case workers to nearly double their load.

Atlanta's 5-year-old program is considered one of the most successful - it's created 1,600 units of supportive housing for the chronically homeless. Of 750 people recently tracked through the program, 90 percent remained housed after a year.

In turn, chronic homelessness is down 16 percent in the metro area.

(AP)

Click here for more GPB News coverage about homeless issues statewide.

Fed money to help public housing computer access

Over $400,000 in federal grant money is on the way to a pair of public housing authorities in Georgia--its aim is to help get better computer and internet access to those residents. Carrollton’s housing authority will get $150,000--an authority in Gainesville $300,000. The funding is part of the federal Public Housing Neighborhood Network Program. The money on the way to Georgia is part of more than 10-million dollars in grants distributed across the country.