Affordable housing has long been a concern for Atlanta’s mayors. As the building boom on Atlanta’s westside continues, Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms recently announced the Anti-Displacement Program, providing $4.6 million to offset rising property taxes in poorer neighborhoods.
In October 1974, then newly-elected Mayor Maynard Jackson opted to get more familiar with the subject by spending the weekend in public housing.
The Journal’s Hank Ezell noted in his Oct. 15, 1974, front page story that “[Jackson] will live in the 500-unit complex to observe and to report to the city on living conditions and to assure metro area residents ‘it is a safe place to live and to drive.’”
But the mayor’s experience changed his perception.
“Bankhead Courts is saying something to Atlanta,” Jackson stated after his visit. “It is saying that the conditions under which they live are not acceptable.”
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In Journal reporter John Head’s Oct. 19 story detailing the mayor’s weekend at Bankhead, “Jackson charged that some of the problems he found were the same he found shortly after the complex opened in 1970, when he, as vice mayor, conducted [his] own inspection tour.”
Apartment units prone to flooding, drain sewers backed up and breeding insects, scattered piles of trash in the complex – Jackson “asked questions and made suggestions about these and other problems,” but pointed out at a press conference that the Atlanta Housing Authority, in charge of the city’s public housing, shouldn’t expect more funds.
The Journal’s Nov. 13, 1975, follow-up took readers back to the Bankhead Courts complex, where little had significantly changed since the mayor’s stay.
“There are still drainage problems. Several apartments remain boarded up and unavailable for occupancy because of flooding,” Chet Fuller wrote. “And though garbage service to the complex has been increased and dumpsters are kept closed, rats still run and bits of paper, trash, old car tires and discarded bicycle parts litter the grounds.”
Residents’ reactions to cleanup and improvement efforts were mixed.
“They were doing fine long as they were out here working,” one unidentified woman told the Journal. “[Flooding] used to be so bad that the children would swim in this big puddle in the middle of the street.”
Another man said of workers tasked with repairs at Bankhead, “They do things when they want to do ’em.”
“Mayor Jackson needs to come back out here now,” a mother of six told the Journal. “Nothing has changed.”
Atlanta, the first city to build federally-funded public housing in the 1930s, began tearing down its complexes in favor of mixed-use developments in 1994. Bankhead Courts was demolished in 2011.
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