Deborah Arnold waited patiently in the back of a meeting room inside the Dunbar Neighborhood Center Wednesday night. She and a couple of dozen of her Mechanicsville neighbors were there for what was supposed to be an information session on a proposed housing project hosted by City of Atlanta District 4 councilman Jason Dozier. The session quickly turned into a hour-and-a-half long listening session with the citizens of Mechanicsville playing host to Dozier and a trio of City of Atlanta staffers.
Dressed in a white Tennessee State University t-shirt and wearing red eyeglasses, Arnold proceeded to share her thoughts on a new development being built for the unhoused near where she lives at 405 Cooper Street. After sharing a story of a homeless woman standing outside of her apartment threatening to burn down the door with a lighter and what looked like a bottle of lighter fluid, Arnold said. “We don’t need any more stress in our community.”
This meeting was less about what the project is, a collection of tiny home-like structures that will be used to house homeless people at what is now a vacant lot on Cooper Street in the heart of one of Atlanta’s oldest historic Black neighborhoods, and more about what the people of Mechanicsville want. Mechanicsville has been without economic and major residential development for decades and residents attending the meeting Wednesday night don’t want what the City of Atlanta wants for that site.
“You need to listen to what the people want instead of telling us what you want,” said Jasper Grissett, who along with his wife attended the meeting.
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