Perhaps no other place in the region is plagued with more blight than west Atlanta’s English Avenue and Vine City neighborhoods.
Frustrated homeowners hope a new proposal could be a solution.
Far from improving, English Avenue resident Emily Hayden is seeing the neighborhood fall further into disrepair.
“It’s getting increasingly violent. We’ve actually had a bullet come through the wall of our home. I have two young children and I run a daycare here.”
It’s why Hayden is open to Atlanta City Councilman Ivory Young’s new plan. It would allow the courts to turn over a blighted home to an outside party so they can get it in shape and sell it. Anyone could buy it, but the delinquent homeowner would get priority.
Hayden welcomes the idea because she says what’s happening now clearly isn’t working.
“It just doesn’t seem like there is a focused, strategic, sustained response to doing anything about it.”
Several factors contribute to the problem including lax code enforcement and lots of abandoned property owned by investors and churches waiting for the market to turn around.
Demarcus Peters is an English Avenue resident and heads the neighborhood planning unit.
“I’ll see them, they may be out with a truck trying to shore up their property. And they’ll want to know, well, what’s going on with the stadium or what development activity is coming because they’re trying to figure out how long they have to wait and I always remind them it’s not going to change until you change.”
The proposal is still in the early stages of the legislative process and is sure to raise concerns among advocates for private property rights. Peters recognizes taking someone’s property is a drastic step, but he says the problem is big enough for a “aggressive, nontraditional approach.”
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