Local efforts to prevent displacement in historically Black areas in metro Atlanta have just received a major financial boost.
The Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative and the Center for Community Progress announced Tuesday they have a commitment from JPMorgan Chase for a total of $1.7 million over the next two years for projects related to commercial real estate affordability for Black small business owners and housing affordability.
“We often don’t talk about small business brick-and-mortar and affordable housing in the same context, but we know both are vital to creating healthy neighborhoods and healthy communities, and both are vital to wealth building,” Suganthi Simon, JPMorgan Chase’s vice president of global philanthropy for Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative (AWBI) received a $700,000 grant that will fund a research project to define what is commercial affordability, particularly in historically Black neighborhoods in Atlanta, like Cascade and the West End, and how market pressures are displacing Black businesses.
The nonprofit plans to produce a toolkit and policy recommendations for officials in the public and private sectors to address affordability as the Atlanta real estate market continues to heat up, an issue that hit high-profile Black businesses like East Atlanta’s Hodgepodge Coffee, which closed at the end of last year.
“We’re learning that as it relates to staying in your space, negotiating lease terms and even potentially moving down the pathway to ownership, that there are fewer tools and policy guardrails,” said Alex Camardelle, AWBI’s vice president of policy and research.
He said he hopes that by defining affordability in commercial real estate, “we can raise the flags around like the market is not kind or friendly to small business owners, and we need to do something about it,” he said.
The Center for Community Progress (CCP) is approaching the issue of displacement through a residential lens.
The national nonprofit is headquartered in Flint, Michigan, but has had a Georgia-based program for three years. It received a $1 million grant and will use the funding to promote affordable housing partnerships between local minority developers, the Metro Atlanta Land Bank Authority, the DeKalb Regional Land Bank and other local experts.
CCP is setting up a cohort of 10 minority, small-scale developers from Fulton, Gwinnett and DeKalb counties. The nonprofit is focusing on smaller developers because they are likely rooted in their community and committed to “finding spaces and gaps and putting the right things there that will help that neighborhood,” said Odetta MacLeish-White, CCP’s director of engagement.
But small developers also face unique challenges because many affordable housing tax credits are aimed mainly at large-scale projects, she said.
The developers and land banks will meet over the next two years to work on redeveloping vacant, abandoned and deteriorated properties. Part of CCP’s grant will also be redistributed to the developers and they will also be connected to other sources of financing, Simon said.
Funding for both projects goes through the end of 2025. CCP aims to issue recommendations for policymakers at the end of that year. AWBI is hoping to release its toolkit in the third quarter of 2024.
Both AWBI and CCP hope their projects produce systemic solutions rather than individual stopgaps to the affordability and displacement crises percolating in the region.
“There are so many big things happening in the Atlanta area over the next several years that we’re really excited to be able to have these recommendations in place for, so that we can be considerate of potential displacement,” Camardelle said. “This is a long-term play.”
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