Trackbacked at basil’s blog:
Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin has ordered a temporary halt to the stampede of so-called McMansions altering the face of popular established intown neighborhoods in the city of Atlanta.
With an executive order, Franklin issued a moratorium on the construction of new, massive homes on lots where older, smaller houses once stood. It is the first time a government in metro Atlanta has tried to stop the phenomenon that is changing the residential landscape of urban neighborhoods. Franklin’s moratorium halts construction permits for infill housing in five of the hottest real estate markets in the city.
The moratorium will prevent real estate investors from tearing down older homes and building new, big ones while the council considers restricting the scale of houses in Atlanta’s neighborhoods. The infill-teardown trend has blazed across Atlanta and close-in suburbs during the “back to the city” craze of the past five years. Established communities changed almost overnight as 1,500-square-foot ranch homes and bungalows built in the 1950s were demolished and replaced with houses 6,000 square feet or larger.
But none of this really paints the whole story unless you also look at history. Mayor Franklin has, in essence, called for Atlanta to return to its “chocolate” status.
In the 1960’s Atlanta suffered through a “White Flight”. White residents started leaving areas close to downtown Atlanta by the hundreds, moving to the suburbs. Overnight small bedroom communities 10-30 miles outside of Atlanta experienced massive growth from former white Atlanta residents.
That left older homes in Atlanta suddenly vacant, and these were quickly bought by Atlanta’s black residents. If this was where the story ended, then Mayor Franklin would not have issued her moratorium. But these neighborhoods dwindled into ghettos, areas of crime and drug trafficing.
Property value and home value shrunk to nothing. Then, in the 1970’s, the gay community in Atlanta saw a wonderful opportunity. The gay community were already a persecuted group, a group that nobody wanted in their own neighborhood. So they began buying these cheap properties.
In the 1980s these run-down homes were repaired. Trashy properties were cleaned and made attractive. Crime disappeared. And property values started soaring.
Now we’re in the 1990s. Entire communities, formerly depressed and unwanted, were now appealing to both buyers and investors. Developers saw opportunities to purchase cheap land and homes, build something better, attract new buyers, and turn a profit.
Now heterosexual white families, the ones that left the area back in the 1960s, are finding quality homes in quality communities, and are moving back to Atlanta.
And therein lies Mayor Franklin’s problems. Black ghettos are being replaced by affluent white communities. The remaining depressed areas are being appraised at higher rates, thus increasing their tax rates, driving ghetto residents out of the ghettos, and making even more areas open for development. … And Mayor Franklin’s voting base is disappearing.
The McMansions are diluting Atlanta’s “chocolate” voting block, to use New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagan’s terminology. And Atlanta’s “chocolate” power brokers and elected officials are scared. Therefore developers are now refrained by the government from building anything that will attract affluent white residents to move back into Atlanta.
Back in the 1960s this action would be called racist. Today it’s called “preserving our neighborhoods”.
I say Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin could have simply re-phrased New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagan’s earlier statement:
“It’s time for us to come together. It’s time for us to rebuild Atlanta _ the one that should be a chocolate Atlanta. This city will be a majority African American city. It’s the way God wants it to be. You can’t have Atlanta no other way. It wouldn’t be Atlanta.”
Atlanta, Shirley Franklin, McMansions, chocolate
