Scott M. Larson

In a middle-class neighborhood off Skidaway Road, residents are angry about the possibility of a low-income development being built nearby.

As Yvonne Pryor and Shvokeia Green chatted Wednesday morning, surprise crossed their faces when they learned a 96-unit low-income development might be built in their back yards.

That’s not good for their Planters Common subdivision off Skidaway Road between Eisernhower Drive and Montgomery Crossroad, they said. Could it devalue their property? Could it unravel the close fabric of their middle-class neighborhood?

“I’d sell my house” if it’s built, Pryor said.

Although not as extreme, fierce opposition to the project from surrounding neighborhoods is pressuring city of Savannah elected officials as they vote to give the project a blessing today.

Representatives from more than six neighborhoods brow-beat the developer, the Paces Foundation of Atlanta, at a Monday meeting of the Bacon Park Neighborhood Association.

“I’ve never been so insulted in my life as the treatment that I got from this community,” said Paces President Mark du Mas. On the same day, the company had a grand opening for a similar project on the westside called Montgomery Landing that so far has received great reviews from neighbors.

He wasn’t able to give his full presentation, he said.

The neighbors say that such a development – du Mas calls it “mixed-income” – is not compatible with the mostly single-family homes around it. It would cause too much traffic and some don’t think low-income residents can take care of their homes.

The Savannah City Council made increasing affordable housing options a priority. But now it seems to face another question: Where does that housing belong?

Currently this property isn’t categorized by the state or federal government as low income.

“Every neighborhood should have a range of housing, single, multi-family, elderly, yes, some affordable, and those are best done with best sites and good designs compatible with the neighbors,” said City Manager Michael Brown. “That’s what makes neighborhoods work. You don’t need all poor people. You don’t need all rich people.”

Paces’ development

Paces has developed mixed-income properties all over the state using low-income housing tax credits from the U.S. government. The 144-unit Montgomery Landing development was built on what was vacant land near the Chatham County Fairgrounds.

“We love them, we truly do,” said Betty Jones, president of the Feiler Park Neighborhood Association, where the development is located. “I haven’t had any complaints.”

She was initially opposed to the idea until she started working with Paces.

“It was not a problem about low income,” she said. “We just want to make sure we had people in here that were compatible with us and not a criminal element.”

Paces found land near Eisenhower and Skidaway and approached the city. Brown has recommended the city donate about three adjacent acres to Paces and give the company a $150,000 loan at 3 percent interest.

With the city land, Paces could build up to 96 units, du Mas said. The project will cost about $10.5 million.

Smaller single family homes surround the land and residents fear that Paces will build a multi-story complex – similar to Montgomery Landing – that towers over them.

Not so, du Mas said. But because people were so vociferous Monday, du Mas said he couldn’t explain the actual plan.

On roads next to current homes, Paces plans to build single-story duplexes and four-family dwellings, du Mas said. Two-story structures would be built in the center of the property. If not, Paces wouldn’t build anything two stories next to single-story houses without talking to the residents first, he said.

To be eligible for the tax credits, Paces must reserve 80 percent of the rental units for households making 60 percent or less of the median income. In Savannah that is $32,880.

“That’s your fireman, your policeman, clerks at the office, your school teachers,” du Mas said. “Do you want to call those people low income? Go ahead and call them low income if you want to, but that is the reality.”

The rest of the units can be rented at market value.

Because it isn’t in a designated low-income area, du Mas said it will make it harder to get approval from the state agency that allocates the tax credits.

The opposition

When Elizabeth Scott, executive director of the Bacon Park Neighborhood Association, heard about the development, she picked up the phone and called her neighbors and other associations.

She is one of the many who are concerned about the development’s compatibility – both in size and economics.

She’s afraid of being labeled as someone who is afraid of low-income residents because there are many fixed-income people in her neighborhood. It’s not that simple, she said.

“We have had such an influx of (low-income program) Section 8 it’s just taken our neighborhood down,” she said. “It’s not just the low income, it’s the impact of Section 8. A lot of times there is no accountability – from the housing authority or the landlords.”

Nottingham Woods Association President Sabrina E. Greene-Kent has similar feelings. The neighborhood is right next to the proposed site, but is actually located in unincorporated Chatham County.

“You can’t stick them in there and not teach them that there are rules and regulations unlike a project development,” she said. “They have become comfortable with someone coming to maintain their property and they are not used to doing it themselves.”

Council decision

The council is supposed to make a decision today on whether to endorse the proposal or not. Alderman Kenneth Sadler, who represents the area, said it could be delayed because everybody needs more information.

He said the city doesn’t have a policy that he knows about describing where low-income housing should go.

“Everybody wants it but nobody wants it in their neighborhood,” he said. “I think it’s really the city’s responsibility to educate the city about our comprehensive plan, how in every neighborhood it’s good to have single-family housing, commercial, light commercial, all kinds of stuff.”

But each development should be evaluated to make sure it’s compatible, he said.

Aldermen Ellis Cook and Jeff Felser said they will vote against it.

Cook said it’s not the right site.

Felser notes that the neighborhood isn’t designated as low-income by any government.

“Affordable housing is supposed to be lifting up the people within the low-income Census tracts,” Felser said. “Therefore I do not think this group should have low-income housing tax credits.”

Paces could go ahead without council’s approval, but that would mean it doesn’t get the city’s land or money. It also makes it harder to get state approval, du Mas said.

In Feiler Park, Jones urged people to give Paces a chance. Paces made her a member of its board.

“I just wish the others would kind of listen,” she said.

The options

The Paces Foundation of Atlanta and the city of Savannah are pursuing a possible 96-unit mixed-income development on a tract of land near the intersection of Skidaway Road and Eisenhower Drive. Residents in surrounding neighborhoods – the majority being single-family dwellings – say they don’t want the development near them. Much of it is contingent on governmental approval. The council will have a preliminary vote at 2 p.m. today at City Hall. Here are the options:

The Savannah City Council approves the project – including a property transfer and a $150,000 loan – and Paces applies to the state for low-income housing tax credits. The state will make a decision by Oct. 1.

The Savannah City Council does not endorse the project. Paces could still apply for the tax credits, but it would be harder because the state looks more favorably on projects with local government support.

The Savannah City Council does not endorse the project and Paces ditches the plan.

What are low-income housing tax credits?

To do this development, the Paces Foundation of Atlanta uses tax credits to get money for construction. Here’s how they work:

The federal government allocates a certain number of tax credits each year to property owners who reserve a certain amount of units for low-income tenants, according to the Georgia Department of Community Affairs. The DCA is the state agency charged with determining which projects get tax credits each year.

Developers sell those tax credits to raise money to build low-income projects.

The DCA gives out only a limited number of credits. As a result, each proposed development in the state competes with the others.

By Lisa R. Schoolcraft
Atlanta Business Chronicle
Updated: 7:00 p.m. ET March 12, 2006

Toll Brothers Inc. has a contract to buy 194 acres in Woodstock for a 361-home development.

The project signals the entry into the Atlanta market by the nation’s leading builder of luxury homes.

Horsham, Pa.-based Toll Brothers (NYSE: TOL) operates in 21 states, including the Carolinas and Florida, and sold $5.8 billion worth of homes in fiscal 2005.

For the three months ending Jan. 31, the Southeast was the company’s top-performing area, with sales up 152 percent over the same period last year.

The entrance of a national builder is a vote of confidence for the metro Atlanta housing market, said Roger Tutterow, dean of the Eugene W. Stetson School of Business and Economics at Mercer University.

The company likely chose to come to Atlanta because the metro area has escaped the big run-ups in housing prices in other markets that some call housing bubbles, because Atlanta is one of the nation’s leading markets for new-house construction and because it has a strong market for luxury housing, several experts said.

Toll Brothers would not confirm its plans. But the city of Woodstock has a development site plan from the company, and a vote to annex and rezone land for the project is scheduled for the March 14 meeting of the Woodstock City Council, said Woodstock Planning Director Richard McCloud.

The project will have houses priced in the $300,000s and higher, McCloud said.

With more than 72,000 single-family permits taken out each year, Atlanta is a market “many builders want and need to be in,” said Greg Lorenzetti, president of SterlingCrest Homes in Woodstock. “You can’t ignore this market.”

Atlanta has an advantage in attracting builders because it has remained affordable, while markets such as South Florida, California and the Northeast have seen huge spikes in housing prices.

Atlanta’s average home sale price rose just 5.4 percent over the past year, versus 13 percent nationally, according to Jeff Humphreys, director of economic forecasting at The University of Georgia’s Selig Center. Over the past five years, Atlanta’s home prices have risen 27.6 percent, while home prices nationally have risen 57.7 percent, he said.

That means there has been no overvaluation in the Atlanta market, and no threat of a housing bubble, Humphreys said.

If anything, said Lorenzetti, Atlanta is experiencing just a slight slowdown in the housing market. What may be causing it are high land prices and a run-up of construction materials costs, he said.

“If those come down or moderate, Atlanta will have a very strong year,” said Lorenzetti, who is about to start construction on SterlingCrest’s fifth community, Silverbrooke, in Cobb County in April. SterlingCrest has four communities under way in Paulding and Cherokee counties.

Other builders remain very active in Atlanta. In January, Atlanta home builders had already pulled 6,315 single-family building permits, compared with 5,059 permits in January 2005, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The only metro area to take out more housing permits in that month was Houston, with 6,495.

In 2005, Atlanta ranked as the top market for building permits, with 72,223 sought during the year. The second-hottest housing market was New York City, with 65,602 permits sought. Houston ranked third for the year with 62,217 permits sought.

In addition to showing confidence in Atlanta, Toll’s choice of Cherokee County for its first community also shows the maturing of that market, Tutterow said.

Fifteen years ago, Cherokee County was a “spill-over” market from Cobb and Fulton counties, he said, where homeowners found mostly entry-level product.

“Now Cherokee is building more into a high-end housing market,” Tutterow said.
© 2006 Atlanta Business Chronicle

By VIKKI CONWELL
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 03/02/06

During what could have been one of the most embarrassing moments of her life, Mashunté Glass possessed the poise and grace of a professional dancer.

As the young artist twirled on stage during a performance, her costume got caught in a fan. The audience erupted in laughter, but the brave teenager kept dancing.

“You learn to persevere over any obstacle, no matter how big or small,” said Glass, now 21 and a junior in college. “I had to pretend like it didn’t happen.”

Perseverance is one of the many skills Glass said she developed at Moving in the Spirit, a nonprofit after-school program that uses dance and movement to teach leadership and development skills. Moving in the Spirit recently was named one of 17 outstanding youth and humanities programs by the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities. It was the first program in the Southeast to receive the national honor, which came with a $10,000 award.

“I was able to be myself in dance,” said Glass, who joined at age 6. “It gave me much more confidence.”

Each year, the Grant Park/East Atlanta program instructs about 225 students ages 3-18 in various forms of dance. More than 1,250 students have participated in the program since its inception in 1986.

Students, most of whom are from inner-city neighborhoods, attend two-hour sessions two or three times a week, and daily during spring and summer breaks. The older students also tour the country during July.

Participants must audition to join the program and pay a fee ranging from $35-$60 a month, depending upon age group.

At age 22, Dana Lupton founded the program to build better relationships with youth. While other outreach efforts and ministries she had worked with removed children from their neighborhoods for short periods of time, Lupton wanted to develop a continuous and creative outlet for children within their communities.

“I had been so self-righteous, thinking I was coming in and saving these kids,” said Lupton, executive and artistic director. “I realized that my calling was to do things with kids and not for kids.”

Initially, Lupton brought dance instruction into community centers and children’s shelters throughout Atlanta before opening the current location. Through performances and choreography, she addressed issues such as social justice and racial reconciliation, while peer discussion groups helped teach love, respect and responsibility.

What began as an arts program evolved into a youth development center with 90 percent of high school participants attending college.

“Dance is a very powerful medium for expressing your thoughts and ideas in a constructive way,” said Lupton, who has a degree in business management and has a background in modern dance. “It’s about building mutual respect and a commitment to work together.”

For Jessica Scudder, who joined Moving in the Spirit when she was in seventh grade, the program has helped her trust and accept people of other racial and ethnic backgrounds.

“When you dance, you learn to share your space and adjust to different performing conditions,” said the college freshman. “I had to learn that everybody doesn’t understand us and our message, but I don’t let their ignorance change the way I am.”

Creating “ambassadors for social change” is the goal of the leadership training at Moving in the Spirit, Lupton said.

“They have a responsibility to stand up for those who cannot stand up for themselves and embrace tolerance … and make the world a better place,” she said.