Tag Archives: housing

Atlanta, Inc: How to Fail Your Constituents

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Atlanta Police

Last year when I returned to Atlanta, I began participating in seminars, conferences, and public hearings. In many ways, the city I returned to looks shinier and hip. Yet, I find myself trying to make sense of Atlanta and why it operates less like a city and more like a corporate playground. As a practicing attorney, I often realized that the legal system is grounded in preserving the interests of the haves over the have-nots. In Atlanta, I see that the city’s actions and policies also have this same predisposition. Community activism and concern for the public good first took me to law school. It inspires me to write, advocate and elevate dissent to this day.

 

Regarding housing and public safety, I find myself woefully embarrassed by Atlanta, Inc. While Atlanta claims to be “a city too busy to hate,” this is essentially trite lip service. The former home of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. overwhelmingly has forgotten the message of economic and social justice. In the decade since I have lived in the city, Atlanta housing has become increasingly expensive, police abuses have escalated, and corporations are continuously placated. Together, these concerns have brought me to re-double my activism in demanding more from city officials.

 

On Housing

Atlanta Affordable Housing

 

City Kick Backs to Corporates

While Money magazine concluded that Atlanta is the best place to live in its 2022 list, it also pointed out Atlanta’s failures in housing. At a multi-disciplinary seminar on Atlanta, I heard from globally renowned Urban Studies scholar and Georgia State Professor Dan Immergluck. His new book Red Hot City highlights various LOST opportunities to improve the availability of affordable housing in Atlanta. Consequently, over two decades, Atlanta has intentionally grown whiter and wealthier. Thanks to ill-conceived incentives for developers, Atlanta has deprived its public coffers. City leadership has lined developers’ wallets with unnecessary incentives like tax credits and kickbacks. To add insult to injury, Atlanta fails to tax commercial properties effectively. In doing so, they deprive the city of funding for well-publicized affordable housing promises. By and large, the product of these stupid policies has been to impoverish public finances, gentrify historically black neighborhoods, and intentionally attract only higher-end developments.

 

Georgia and the Love of Corporate Landlords

 

To make matters worse, the largely Republican-backed Georgia legislator is cozy with real estate interests. As a result, Georgia has some of the worst tenant protections in the country. As Georgia is considered largely landlord-friendly, it has attracted institutional investors looking for the easiest way to make money with the lowest overhead. Consequently, the Atlanta housing market has seen an uptick in displacement in neighborhoods targeted by out-of-state investors. Since local jurisdictions are pre-empted from rent stabilization and other tenant reforms, the state has one of the highest rates of evictions in the country. With the changes in the housing market post-pandemic, the situation has gotten worse. There are not enough units available at either affordable or gouging prices. Altogether, Atlanta is a tough rental market for a newly transplanted employee due to its costs and few tenant protections.

 

 

On Public Safety

Behind Bullets and Bullshit

Stop Cop City

George Floyd’s murder in 2020 brought a global reckoning for changes in policing. Not long after Black Lives Matter rallies were held across the country, in June 2022, an officer of the Atlanta Police Department (APD) killed Rayshard Brooks, a black man who was trying to sleep in his car at a Wendy’s. Atlanta erupted in righteous protest afterward. The Wendy’s was burned to the ground; the police chief stepped down. Such actions are not new. The APD has consistently eroded the public trust and undermined or neglected to provide for the safety of black and brown residents of Atlanta. Even regional policing authorities have used illegal tactics and excessive use of force without substantive consequences.

 

In the wake of Rayshard’s murder and the countrywide cries to reform policing, Atlanta responded to #DefundthePolice with the exact opposite. Through the Atlanta Police Foundation and corporate backers (see Mainline for an excellent summary of the Atlanta police-prison industrial complex), the creation of a police safety training center was announced. Behind closed doors, in an undemocratic and widely criticized process, police supporters and the Buckhead community agreed to a perverse plan to build this facility on a former prison farm and in a tract of lush forest. This project, dubbed ‘Cop City, ‘ would use millions of precious public funds to build a state-of-the-art facility without addressing how the police will remedy their abuses on black and brown communities.

 

Since Cop City plans were announced, a broad coalition has coalesced in contesting these plans. Environmentalists, abolitionists, and community advocates have taken to the forest to protect it from development. Tensions have escalated since the plan was announced in 2021. Police-led raids of the forest have intentionally destroyed a community kitchen, campsites, and a mutual-aid operation. In December 2022, a protestor was murdered by police in the Atlanta Forest. While some agencies wear body cameras, no agency has provided the public with body camera footage. Despite training and equipment, the police again have failed Atlanta’s citizens.

 

In response, Cop City protestors held a rally in downtown Atlanta. In one of the country’s most surveilled cities, the police grabbed up random protestors and charged them with being `domestic terrorists.` The state agencies charged and funded to protect the community are working to terrorize the public. While it is unlikely the domestic terrorism charges will stick, they may have quelled some first-amendment dissent. In light of the repeated failures of policing in Atlanta, it is comical that Atlanta police agencies should deign to train other police officers.

Part of Atlanta Forest

Atlanta: Rooms for Improvement

 

Atlanta has some new bikeable paths and a few posh multi-use developments. Still, it seems that the city is more interested in boosterism for developers and corporations than the fate of its public. Instead of falling into despair, I focus on hope and a vision to work on progressive changes in Atlanta. In my attempts to jump into opportunities to improve the city, I have found unique and exciting opportunities to contribute.

In my return to Atlanta, I found many more ideologically aligned organizations doing good work. These inspire me to collaborate and create a path for a better city. For example, the Housing Justice League does community empowerment training for eviction defense and follows legislative reform at the state level. Beyond that, Atlanta is rewriting its zoning code. This is just one of several steps to help solve the housing affordability issue.

 

On the issues of public safety, there is no good reason to build YET another police training facility. Various interests compound to illustrate why Cop City should never be built. Instead of diverting funding from police, my hometown wants to eliminate a precious green space for a corporate-funded police playground. To that end, numerous organizations are fighting for justice. Community Movement Builders, a group aligned with the dissent against Cop City, recently trained legal observers with the help of the National Lawyers Guild.

 

Advocacy for sound policy and justice requires the courage to lead and take chances. Atlanta has always been a city of hustle and corporate climbing. I am reminded that the premise behind governance is the public good. Occasionally our public officials need to hear the citizenry to remind them. Only in this way can we expect accountability for the work of providing for all its citizens.

 

If you are interested in following along in my activism, please follow me on Twitter.

 

A Place in Paradise: Housing in Hawaii

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           While the beaches and scenic vistas on Hawaii Island are unparalleled, in between those lovely views, the country’s more significant housing issues are playing out in paradise. In my few weeks here, I am learning to see a few systemic problems just under the surface. My perspective comes from my ability to choose where I would like to stay. As I get to know the island, I see the truth to the classic complaints about this island. Housing is expensive, and there is little public infrastructure.

              The old adage, “it is who you know NOT what you know,” goes quite deep in Hawaii. I initially spent two weeks at the home of an acquaintance, introduced to me by our mutual friend in Tokyo. From there, I began to search for my own place to rent. Getting started here required me to call upon a lifetime’s worth of patience and resourcefulness. I found both my current home and my car privately through a circle of acquaintances.

Between Luck & Charm

              My studio rental is a convenient sub-lease from another traveler. With a gorgeous garden setting, fully furnished, and entirely solo, it is a pleasant change from my first two weeks here, in the acquaintance’s home with five other housemates. Though my temporary studio is beautiful, it includes a cat, traveling geckos, and barking neighbors. As I explore homes in this area, I know people like me are part of the problem. I have some savings to work from and can work online.

              The influx of computer-clad techies is pushing the cost from residents beyond control. A new friend and fellow slow-traveler is renting an off-grid cabin (hear, no running water, solar-powered electricity, and 10Mbs speed internet) for $1,300 a month in Puna. For her, this is a good option. A helicopter pilot rents a furnished single bedroom with no kitchen and no internet for $900 a month in Kona. He has running water and hot showers. I think he got a deal. For the locals, these rates are beyond reach.

Poverty in Paradise

               The town of Hilo, for example, is densely packed and rainy. Poverty is all around. I cannot help but notice the people pushing worn-out shopping carts from corner to corner. The Landless Lot, my free-verse poem, was written in Tokyo but echoed here. Affordable housing for working people is often in poor condition, if even available. Many city-side homes have upwards of 5 cars parked outside, a tell-tale sign of house-hacking when some share a home with multiple renters (much like my acquaintance’s home).  

              Though I am in a decent position to look around my limitations go beyond my budget. (I do not have the F-U money to buy a $3 million condo with thousands in monthly association fees. For anyone interested, there are some of those available in the posh North Kona.) For creative solutions, I have considered buying land and building on it. Two immediate hurdles are (1) permitting and (2) wastewater management. 

Delays & Cesspools

              If I were to buy land and build on it, there are multiple avenues for delay. First, the best contractors, builders, and architects are booked up through the following year. Second, getting a building permit could still take over six months with housing plans drawn up. The slow-moving housing and building departments remind me of Japanese bureaucracy. A labor shortage further compounds these delays. Most surprisingly, while I have been looking around Hawaii Island, I learned about cesspools. A cesspool is essentially a hole in the ground where you let wastewater drain. Cesspools are a popular option when a home cannot connect to the sewage system or won’t go through the expense of a septic system. The cheap solution: a cesspool that barely leads off your property. Later, it will drain into a lava tube on someone else’s land. The consequences are enormous public health concerns. Guess where the wastewater goes? When there is a lot of rain in the areas around Hilo, the beaches get runoff from turbid water. Locals know to check for water quality warnings. Though the EPA has committed Hawaii County to eliminate commercial cesspools, residential builds have a longer leash.  

Why Bother?           

   Hawaii County still manages to pull a lot of potential residents from the mainland. By comparison, cheap land prices in remote areas have their draw. Of course, incoming mainlanders create more cost competition for the islanders. Here, I have only part of the picture; the federal government’s program for native Hawaiians still has not delivered on many promised homes. As I pop around and everywhere, I see that Hawaii Island is a microcosm of the country’s housing crisis. The crisis here is compounded by a few active volcanos and poor infrastructure. Thank you for following along on my adventure!