By Kelcey Caulder
Rows of apartments, small and exactly alike, line Pauldoe Street in Athens, Georgia. White roof tops, brick bottoms, and narrow walks leading up to each door. Occasionally, a basketball might run across the street. A child runs after it, yelling over to his friends that he’ll be right back. A man comes home from work and makes his way up the narrow walk, exhausted after a long day at work. None seem to notice — or, if they do, it seems an unspoken rule that they don’t say it — that their neighborhood doesn’t look like the rest of Athens.
It’s older. Window air-conditioning units hang from shuttered windows and the bricks are faded with age. This is the place the people who live there call home. It is what Rob Trevena at the Athens Housing and Community Development Department labels ‘concentrated poverty.’
That is why, in 2012, the Athens Housing Authority (AHA) petitioned to receive tax credits from the state to transform the neighborhood, formerly known as Jack R. Wells Homes into Columbia Brookside.
Initially, some of the neighborhood’s residents worried that the renovations would permanently alter the culture of the area. Others, according to Marilyn Appleby, the Communications Director at AHA, were eager for something new and were supportive of the decision to update the property.
“Residents were asked that if it were possible, would they be more interested in renovations or tearing down the buildings and starting again. The residents as well as Housing and Urban Development approved of the idea of us working with outside parties to create a very different neighborhood than what had been there in the past,” said Appleby. “They wanted something more modern, something better taken care of.”
So, with assistance from the community and from the Housing and Urban Development Department, the AHA partnered with Columbia Residential, a leading Atlanta-based developer and manager of affordable and mixed-income housing, to develop a multi-family community of which a third of the apartments are public housing, a third are subsidized through tax credits and a third are market-rate. Several units would also be designated as senior living spaces.
Columbia Brookside will be the first mixed-income community in Athens. Units throughout the neighborhood will be divided among residents who can market-rate prices, ranging anywhere from $790 for a one-bedroom unit to $1,275 for a four-bedroom unit, those who qualify for a “tax credit” rate based on income and those who qualify for public housing whose rent will be the equivalent to 30 percent of their income.
When asked for her opinion about the mixed-income model, Commissioner Melissa Link said that it is the best way to ensure communities succeed.
“When you fill a community with only low-income individuals and those who have been in poverty, then you only get more concentrated poverty and crime,” said Commissioner Melissa Link. “I think Athens overall has switched over to this mixed-income model, like what will exist at Columbia Brookside, because it really does offer people the best chance of having the communities we all strive for and desire.”
According to Link, this type of mixed-income housing has been widely popular and successful across the country since the early 1990s because of the likelihood of increased investment in neighborhoods, enhanced security and higher management expectations. Link also stated a decrease in crime and an increase in property value as benefits to the mixed-income model.
Trevena also approved of the model, stating that the mixed-income units would be more sustainable than low-income units. He believes that developing Columbia Brookside as mixed-income would be a way to fight future blight, acting “almost like preventive medicine.”
“What we often find in my department is that when we renovate an area, it encourages the people who live there to keep renovating and renewing the area,” Trevena said. “One of the ideas is that, with mixed-income, people living in the community will be able to keep it up. And, hopefully, that will encourage other people living there to keep it nice too. After building is completely finished, which will be, I think, next year, there will be 372 apartments there. We want to see those last as long as possible.”
The 372 apartment units will replace the 125 housing units that existed at Jack R. Wells before renovations, more than doubling the amount of housing available on the property. But, for many who previously resided in the Pauldoe community, the number of houses doesn’t matter. Instead, they hope that the community spirit that existed there continues to survive.
Quintavious McCreed, a former student at Clarke Central High School who was displaced when renovations began on the Columbia Brookside project, spoke about what it was like to live in the neighborhood in Clarke Central High School’s Odyssey Online newspaper in 2013.
“When I first came to Pauldoe I was very quiet and stayed to myself. I would only go outside when I was playing with my little brother. In less than a month, though, that all changed. I grew a strong bond with those people. Everyday we hung out with each other, played ball and lived life. It was more than a bond like friends .We were all like brothers,” McCreed wrote.
Later in the same article, he describes leaving Pauldoe behind. “The thought comes through my head mostly every day: that was a big experience to be living in Pauldoe and being around everybody. But I think I can always keep it in my mind, in my heart.”
Today, McCreed is a graduate of Clarke Central High School. His family still resides in River’s Edge in Athens, the place they had moved into after leaving Jack R. Wells. He still remembers Pauldoe and how important that time was for him, how impactful it was to mentor and tutor kids at the Community Center and hopes that Columbia Brookside brings the same experience to other children and teenagers that will live there.
“It was a place that I really won’t ever forget and I hope that other people get to feel that too. It was known for being a bad neighborhood, but it was our neighborhood and it was really cool to be a part of it,” he said.
When asked, Appleby said that the AHA hasn’t spent too much time discussing how the culture of the area might change following the completion of the remodel nor about how it has changed since the senior living units were opened.
“All I can say is that we believe the mixed-income model will benefit the community and that we know it has worked in other communities and been very successful. Personally, I think if that holds true, the culture of the community will be just fine,” Appleby said.