Learning from the past
To create a better future

Atlanta Way = tradition of cordial interactions between the city’s key businessmen and the city’s policy makers to create an economic opportunity through informal public/private collaboration.

 

Atlanta model = a theory that arose out of the actions of the AHA under the leadership of Renee Glover. This “theory” was applied by other public housing projects to create public/private partnerships and federal housing funds to demolish large scale family directed public housing and replace it with privately held “mixed-income” housing with the agreement to provide a percentage “affordable housing” units to those who qualify for government assistance.

 

 

 

The Atlanta Model, close but distinct from the “The Atlanta Way” was an ad hoc tagline used to describe the transformation of government subsidies housing in Atlanta from 1994-2010. This transformation was made possible by the leadership of a single person. Although she was appointed to represent the interests of the city’s most vulnerable. This one person claims ownership of “The Atlanta Model.” Her name is Renee Glover.

When she was appointed as CEO of the Atlanta Housing Authority BOD, giving her final policymaking authority over the AHA and vested her with the responsibility of providing housing the city’s impoverished dependents. When appointed in 1994, the AHA had the largest number of dependent households of any major U.S. City. The AHA was also labeled by the U.S. Agency of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) as a “troubled agency” due to the bloated budget and mismanagement of properties.

When Ms. Glover came to the city she fully embraced “the Atlanta way” and immediately took the first steps of what would be come to be known as the “The Atlanta Model.”

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The origins of “The Atlanta Way” are deep within the history of the city though the bold embrace by Ms. Glover, certainly is noteworthy, it is also merely an iteration of a long evolving framework. Another example of a single person who can claim a prominent role in the scheme of urban renewal. This key actor fits into the opposite side of the paradigm as Ms. Glover. Charles Forrest Palmer, fittingly named after a confederate general, like Glover—played a key role in the “slum clearing” of predominantly Black communities; “progress” for the city.

Both Palmer and Glover gained national acclaim for their innovative use of federal funds to subsidize private projects and “uplift” blighted areas of the city. The other side of that acclaim, however, are the stories of the allegedly “uplifted” communities. Through this long and complicated story of federal funds, private contracts, and lucrative economic opportunities, there are also the stories of thousands of people’s lives. The impact of large-scale projects of development/redevelopment, change and “progress” is often represented in numbers, costs-figures-budgets are the numbers that get remembered when it comes to the history of “renewal.” The numbers that get less attention, are the numbers of removal.

The two primary phases of change in Atlanta, the Palmer and Glover eras, were both periods of massive displacement and removal—deemed necessary for “progress.” While progress might require change, the communities where the removal happened, the people who have and continue to experience displacement for “progress” in Atlanta are the same. The Atlanta Model, means the removal of poor Black populations, the “change” necessary for “renewal” in Urban Atlanta under this framework requires improved infrastructure and investment but before those can be obtained it first requires removal. The most dramatic “progress” for infrastructure, housing and economic uplift through the history of Atlanta has only been made possible once the people occupying the area targeted for uplift have first been removed.

 

The unifying thread of both of these period of “progress” is the leadership. During both the Palmer and glover Eras, the change would not have happened without their leadership. Palmer used his political connections to lobby for and pitch his idea of “slum clearing” and the concept of public housing. Glover used her legal training and unchecked authority at the AHA to begin clearing thousands of homes, continuing on a scale never before thought possible to demolish over 10,000 homes in less than 10 years. Two people responsible for so much change, how many lives have they collectively touched?

Should this be how such large scale wide-reaching “projects” are approached? Palmer used the city of Atlanta to pilot his idea of “slum clearing”, which he later wrote about in his book, “Adventures of a Slum Clearer.” Likewise, Glover used the HOPE VI funds to pilot the destruction and private/public partnership that would come to be known as the “Atlanta Model.” These ideas, advanced from the minds of two individuals, are responsible for so many of the social conditions present in Atlanta today. So many lives were impacted by “slum clearing” and the impact on generational wealth alone cannot be understated. The trauma of being cast of out the housing projects that many Atlantans had called home for decade is not often discussed when praising the “progress” made possible through the “Atlanta Model”—but it still happened and it is still being carried by the men and women of our city.

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An alternative perspective posits that when it comes to urban renewal, public housing and any other issue being felt by such a wide audience—the decisions on how to proceed should from come from the people being housing or the inhabitants of the place being renewed. Giving a voice to the people before looking to the “potential” of the place they inhabit would make possible a New Atlanta Way. Preserving the character and history of the people of our city should not be an afterthought in this new era of change in Atlanta. Affordable housing is not a self-correcting problem; gentrification is driven by “hands off” economics. Without a dramatic reversal of the past “Atlanta Way” of prioritizing private/public partnerships, and an affirmative policy of involving the perspectives and priorities of those “at the bottom”, someone else will be telling this same Atlanta story with a third chapter forty years down the road.