Earlier by Paul Kersey: 3,000 Blacks Protest “Gentrification”—Code For Whites’ Making Washington D.C. Livable Again
For decades, large portions of Atlanta have been majority black and entirely devoid of legitimate economic activity.
Property values were shockingly low, reflecting the fair market value of these communities of color.
Guess what?
White people, who had long abandoned the city of Atlanta for the safe suburbs just Outside the Perimeter (living outside I-285, the massive highway circling Atlanta), decided to move back Inside the Perimeter.
By so doing, these white people bought inexpensive (often egregiously neglected) homes in majority black communities, acting as urban pioneers to return civilization to areas whose only economic activity consisted of drug deals and hookers turning tricks for a $20 bill.
This even includes the birthplace of Martin Luther King, Jr., an area now thriving due to the influx of whites via gentrification. Only 20 years ago, this same real estate was entirely occupied by black residents where “drug dealers once ruled.”
But white people moving back to Atlanta and resurrecting long economically dead communities (all almost entirely occupied by blacks) represents a great threat to black control of the city.
So the current black mayor has decided to issue a moratorium on development near Grove Park, a historically black community (currently 93 percent black), because white people moving into the community has the strange tendency to immediately raise property valuations. Once, when occupied almost entirely by blacks, neighborhoods across Atlanta had cheap property available for single-family homes because this real estate had barely any demand.
This lack of demand was a reflection of the majority black community and the conditions they created for social capital to flounder. But as whites move in, social capital strangely flourishes and houses start to appreciate.
Strange.
The Visible Black Hand of Economics at work…
Fearing gentrification, Atlanta mayor issues moratorium on development near Westside Park: Neighborhoods around the future park, particularly Grove Park, are seeing rapid rises in home values, 11 Alive, February 18, 2020
Following in the footsteps of neighborhoods such as the Old Fourth Ward and the West End, Grove Park would seem an obvious candidate to become the latest of Atlanta’s notorious gentrification stories.
The gleaming new Westside Park has a tentatively planned opening for 2021. Slated to become the largest greenspace in the city, it promises to transform the surrounding areas.
That could be welcome in Grove Park, a historically black neighborhood that borders the south half of the Westside Reservoir, where the park is being built, and was hit especially hard by the financial crisis – if its residents can stay there and reap the benefits.
Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced a moratorium on new development activity around Westside Park on Monday. It’s an apparent effort to plan ahead and curb runaway gentrification in the area before it hits, the way it has in other neighborhoods – particularly where the BeltLine has brought an explosion of development activity.
RELATED: Atlanta is rapidly gentrifying. Here’s where.
“A key pillar to the Administration’s comprehensive affordable housing plan is ensuring long-term residents are not priced out of the neighborhoods they have built,” Mayor Bottoms said in a release. “We know that every permit triggers some form of change in these communities, and it is of the utmost importance that development is carried out in a deliberate, fair and thoughtful manner.”
The moratorium is slated to last 180 days – about six months – and will apply to “new applications for rezonings, building permits for new construction, land disturbance permits, special use permits, special administrative permits, subdivisions, replattings, and lot consolidations for non-public project.”
It will not affect existing projects.
The mayor’s office says the moratorium will serve to allow time for identifying an “Immediate Impact Area” that will be most affected by development around Westside Park and developing an “Equitable Development Framework” for that area.
The mayor’s office released a map of that potential area, which includes Grove Park and two smaller communities, Rockdale and Knight Park/Howell Station, that are already relatively gentrified.
Grove Park is already starting to feel the strain of speculation. According to the Zillow home value index, the median home value in Jan. 2018 was $95,000. Two years later, it nearly doubled to $175,000.
The real estate company’s forecast has that number passing $200,000 by the end of the year.
It’s not clear how many projects are already underway in the city-designated Immediate Impact Area.
11Alive reached out to the mayor’s office for data on existing projects. The city said it did not have any specific information at the moment.
Yes, the black mayor of Atlanta is using her office to stop white people from moving back into the city, helping to protect black residents whose very presence for decades has been the primary impediment to economic growth in the area.
As white people turn “a troubled region full of rundown properties” into thriving communities (where once only black gangbangers roamed), the truth about race and real estate becomes clear. Especially when the black mayor of Atlanta works to use her office to stop economic progress because it disproportionately displaces blacks… the very people who have kept property values down and businesses from opening and flourishing in areas of the city where whites have gentrified and now thrive.
