By Terri M. Lee
An Atlanta that everyone can afford to call home is possible when we prioritize affordable housing products and our people.
This is not conjecture or platitude. It is the principle upon which we are building one of the city’s most significant affordable housing redevelopments.
Situated on Atlanta’s Westside, Bowen Homes was erected in 1964 to provide homes to low-income families displaced by urban renewal. In 2009, its deteriorating infrastructure and unsafe living conditions forced its demolition. The deserted 74-acre remnants of a once-bustling community were, at-once, both the manifestation of an audacious vision for how a city could house hundreds of families and a cautionary reminder of the unintended consequences of concentrating- and even isolating- poverty. Today, as the Westside is currently experiencing rapid revitalization, through the combined efforts of Atlanta Housing, the City of Atlanta, residents past and present, and numerous community partners and stakeholders, Bowen Homes is having a renaissance of its own.
On July 26, 2023, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded Atlanta a prestigious Choice Neighborhoods Implementation Grant, contributing $40 million toward the transformation of the former Bowen Homes public housing site, along with portions of the surrounding neighborhoods of Carey Park, Almond Park, and areas along Donald Lee Hollowell and James Jackson parkways, collectively known as the Bowen Choice Neighborhood. The award leverages more than $520 million in funding and other resources from public, private, and philanthropic investments to seed a community-driven transformation plan that will grow to a $1 billion investment.
The Bowen Choice Neighborhoods program is catalytic because it is a bold response to one of the most pressing challenges that we, as a city and as a nation, grapple with related to housing affordability, economic mobility and quality of…
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