Needed: Editor for Sembler Program
Sembler is talking a good game about their mammoth Briarcliff North Druid Hills Development, but talk is cheap… the question is whether the housing will be as well. They’ve promised 1000 units of lower income housing (BTW, they’ve created a new vocabulary term for these… they’re now ‘workforce’ units). The question is what does lower income mean in this case? Who gets it? Who gets to decide?
With real estate prices soaring, starter homes are in short supply. In the area around the development 850 square foot houses are being replaced with 5000 square foot McMansions. There is little or no rentable space left from $400 to $750 month left. Perhaps a means test is in order here. It would be great to create 300 new home owners all of whom have an income of under $30,000 per household.
The Dekalb County Commission to pass the Atlanta City Council for leadership here. To make this project work, schools need to be relocated, a major stadium will fall and low income housing will be lost. This is the time for the commission to require new development meet a public good. Instead of simply requiring low income housing (which they ought to do), the commission ought also require that 20% of the land be usable greenspace and that 20% of the non housing property go to non-commercial uses such as police stations, libraries, or arts centers.
They also need a traffic mitigation plan that will off-set the added vehicular traffic to the area. This project will be bigger than Atlantic Station and so perhaps an 18 hour shuttle running every 15 minutes to Lindbergh station might be an answer.
Development is inevitable. Added tax revenue is great, but when a project of this scale comes along, there needs to be a public good that comes with it.
The next master plan meeting is July 25 at Kittredge School, 2383 North Druid Hills Road, from 7 to 9 p.m. At the meeting, Alex Garvin & Associates will present their proposal for a master plan and zoning recommendations for the study area.
July 15th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Check out GoDeKalb.com, especially the comments section, for the best coverage of this. Sembler Jackass Jeff Fuqua had the gall to publicly state that this project will primarily draw from a three mile radius. A pure fabrication, and he is arrogant enough to think the public will buy it without calling him out on it. He’s proposing as much retail space as Phipps has, and Phipps says it draws from a 100-mile radius.
Sembler has Angelo Fuster as a consultant. The same Angelo Fuster who’s worked Vernon Jones political campaigns.
I’m not a NIMBY, but when officials make statements, they need to be true, like Fuqua in the AJC saying Sembler will spend $20 million on subsidizing workforce housing. Sembler wouldn’t subsidize a single penny for anything; that statement doesn’t hold water, unless Fuqua is getting some type of bond, HUD tax credit payback.
And connections like Fuster’s to Sembler and Vernon need to be made publicly up front.
Briarcliff and N. Druid Hills on a weekday afternoon rush hour is beyond brutal. Will probably be the worst in the entire metro area if Sembler, Fuqua, and Fuster bully DeKalb to get everything they want.
July 16th, 2007 at 7:30 am
I’m not a huge fan of the proposed development, but let’s be a little more accurate about the neighborhood. There are no 850 square foot houses and there haven’t been $400-$700 rentals in quite some time. I own a house in that area and at 1500 sq feet it is definitely one of the smaller houses in my neighborhood (compared to other original 50’s and 60’s houses, not compared to the mcmansions). As for rent in the area, about $450-500 per bedroom has been the going rate for a while.
July 16th, 2007 at 12:01 pm
“It would be great to create 300 new home owners all of whom have an income of under $30,000 per household.”
That’s a joke, right??? Semblers “workforce housing” will most likely be two bedrom units just under $200 grand.
Don’t drink the Sembler Kool Aid.
July 17th, 2007 at 9:24 am
“Workforce housing” is not Sembler’s creation, it is a term coined by city planners and the development industry in general. It had to be created, because when they say “affordable housing,” homeowners and business owners (people that vote) go bananas.
August 5th, 2007 at 12:42 pm
“Workforce housing” generally contains references to certain percentages
of it’units being set aside for persons of “Low to moderate Income levels”.
Whenever percentages appear in housing construction proposals, it’s
generally HUDSPEAK for investors in said housing. They’ve cracked the
HUDSPEAK code enough to know that it translates to lucrative Low Income
Housing Tax Credit tax write offs around April.
“Low to Moderate Income Levels” is also HUDSPEAK, generally meaning the
same thing (96% of HUD multifamily construction or refinance is tied to tax breaks).
“Workforce Housing” is the new darling of the National Association of
County Officials. They’re for more HUD, fewer cuts in federal housing funds, and their communities at large be damned .
Last year, I cruised their website for a story about a “workforce housing
success story” in Montgomery County, MD. The cited project had 70%
elderly tenants, 30% Section 8 tenants, zero percent county workforce tenants.