Casey’s New Project Has a Familiar Focus: Maintaining Safe, Affordable Housing in Atlanta

In Atlanta’s Adair Park neigh­bor­hood, devel­op­ment pres­sure and revi­tal­iza­tion are putting afford­able hous­ing out of reach for many families.

Enter the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion and its part­ners, who are work­ing to trans­form a local apart­ment build­ing into mod­ern, afford­able one- and two-bed­room apart­ments for low-income families.

The project is one of sev­er­al Foun­da­tion-led efforts to ensure that res­i­dents on Atlanta’s south­side have access to safe, sta­ble and afford­able hous­ing options. Capi­tol View Apart­ments — orig­i­nal­ly built in the 1940s — is locat­ed just four miles from down­town and near a pri­ma­ry entrance to the Atlanta BeltLine’s West­side Trail. Pitts­burgh Yards, a 31-acre mixed use rede­vel­op­ment project, is also close by.

“As progress on the Belt­Line con­tin­ues, it’s more impor­tant than ever to inten­tion­al­ly cre­ate and pre­serve qual­i­ty, afford­able hous­ing options for exist­ing res­i­dents,” says Natal­lie Keis­er, a senior asso­ciate at the Casey Foundation’s Atlanta Civic Site.

Casey’s part­ners in this effort are:

• Colum­bia Res­i­den­tial, a real estate devel­op­ment and man­age­ment com­pa­ny that spe­cial­izes is pro­vid­ing qual­i­ty, afford­able hous­ing to low- and mod­er­ate-income families;
• Enter­prise Com­mu­ni­ty Loan Fund, a non­prof­it that pro­vides loans to devel­op afford­able hous­ing and com­mu­ni­ty facilities;
• Invest Atlanta, the offi­cial eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment author­i­ty for the City of Atlanta; and
• The Geor­gia Depart­ment of Com­mu­ni­ty Affairs, a state agency that intro­duces and sup­ports pro­grams to help com­mu­ni­ties real­ize growth and development.

The project — which will incor­po­rate new build­ing sys­tems, inte­ri­ors, ameni­ties and spaces that main­tain the facility’s his­toric char­ac­ter — is still in the plan­ning stages, with con­struc­tion slat­ed to begin in mid-2019.

Read more about Casey’s hous­ing efforts in Atlanta