Atlanta's Influence on Federal Public Housing Laws

Atlanta was both the first city in the United States to develop federal public housing projects, and the first to do away with them.  Following the great depression in the 1930's, the United States faced a housing crisis.  To recover from the depression, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt adopted the New Deal legislation.  In order to implement the legislation, the federal government created the Public Works Administration or PWA.  A central purpose of the PWA was to address the growing needs for housing and public infrastructure.  To address the need for housing, the PWA made grants to State and local governments to develop federal public housing projects. 

Techwood Homes, formerly located immediately adjacent to Coca Cola HQ, Georgia Tech, and I-75-85 was the first federal public housing project in the country.  Constructed in 1935, Techwood Homes contained 604 units within an array of two-story row houses and three-story garden apartments.  The buildings covered approximately six acres of a 22-acrere area,  and were surrounded by landscaped areas, playgrounds, park benches, an administration building, six stores, recreational facilities and a health clinic.  The project was intended to be occupied by low income families.  Units contained modern electrical appliances, and rents included heat, electricity and water.  

The Techwood Homes project was spearheaded by Atlanta real estate developer, Charles F. Palmer, who obtained a $2,375,000 grant from the PWA to promote redevelopment of Techwood Flats.  At the time, Techwood Flats consisted of dilapidated rental housing constructed in the 1880's after the end of the Civil War. Techwood Flats was occupied by working poor living in unsafe, unsanitary, overcrowded conditions, approximately 28% of whom were African American.  While construction of Techwood Homes created 200 jobs, and was completed in just 14 months, demolition of Techwood Flats displaced 1,611 impoverished families, replacing them with just 604 public housing units.  In addition to decreasing available housing by 63%, most residents of the Flats were not allowed to live in Techwood Homes, either because the project remained limited to white residents only until desegregation in 1968, or were disqualified by minimum income requirements. Upon its completion, Techwood Homes set the standards for federal public housing throughout the Country, leading to passage of the Housing Act of 1937 establishing a federally sponsored low income public housing program.

By  the mid 1970's, the concept of grouping low-income families together within a single public housing  project drew strong criticism, as drugs, crime, and gang violence became commonplace in America's inner cities.  A clash arose between local businesses and local politicians as to whether the low income housing was a good concept.  Local businesses, including Coca Cola, began to question whether Techwood Homes should be developed into a mixed income public housing  project, rather than restricted solely to low income residents. 

Facing political backlash, Atlanta's politicians rejected this concept, instead seeking additional federal grants to expand the size of Techwood Homes, doubling the number of low income units to 1,195.  However, doubling the density of Techwood Homes did nothing to fix the problems, but rather drastically increased the volume of drug trafficking, crime violence, and gang activity throughout the area. After Atlanta won its bid to host the 1996 Centennial Olympic Games, both politicians and businesses finally agreed the time to replace Techwood Homes had come. 

The Olympic Village Community Redevelopment District or OVCRD was formed to replace Techwood Homes. The OVCRD was managed by the Atlanta Housing Authority, Georgia Tech, and the Atlanta Committee for Olympic Games or ACOG.  This group devised a plan to demolish the existing low-income units within Techwood Homes and develop an entirely new mixed income development named Centennial Place.  As a practical matter, the 1990's Centennial Place development was just a refinement of the 1970's redevelopment of mixed income housing units proposed by local businesses. 

The OVCRD plan involved the demolition and replacement of the existing 1,195 low income units,  with a pair of 12 story residential towers and 800 units for mixed-income residents.  The towers contained seven apartment style residence halls, intended to house all 10,000 Olympic athletes, to be converted to student housing following the Olympics. The 800 residential units contained 2 and 3 bedrooms to be rented to low income tenants subsidized by federal monies to other tenants at market rates.  As with the redevelopment of the Techwood Flats project, very few residents of the Techwood Homes  (i.e. 78)  were able to return to the Centennial Place Development.

The transformation of federal low income housing projects into mixed income public housing developments has now become the norm.  Public planners have discovered that concept of confining large groups of low income poverty stricken individuals to a public housing project creates an incubator for drugs, crime and gang violence.  As the first city to develop a federal low income public housing project, Atlanta was likewise the first city to transform a low income public housing  project into a mixed income development.