Vacant Homes Near Schools Targeted

A tour of Atlanta usually doesn?t include crack head haven in Mechanicsville or the vacant property when a teenager was sexually assaulted across the street from a middle school.

In Neighborhood Planning Unit V (NPU-V) near Turner field in downtown Atlanta, there are a recorded 1,296 vacant and unoccupied houses. That?s 42 percent of all properties.

?It?s almost to epidemic proportions,? Ronnie Galvin with the Center for Working Families said.

Dirty Truth Campaign workers took 11Alive's Julie Wolfe on a tour of their dirty hit list: vacant properties near schools and parks.

"Other children at other schools near vacant properties are at risk for assault, including sexual assault,? Yanique Redwood said.

A recent study by the National Vacant Properties Campaign justified those fears. In their study, blocks with open, vacant properties attracted three times as many drug calls to police and twice as many violence calls.

Neighbors call the building just 100 yards from Dunbar Elementary a crack head haven. After 10 years of neglect, it is finally slated for development.

The vacant house where a teenager was sexually assaulted near W.L. Parks Middle School has finally been razed, but now Dirty Truth workers worry what will take its place.

"The proximity to the downtown area of our community has been very attractive to developers and speculators," Dirty Truth worker, Semira Ajani, said.

It?s already happened in Peoplestown. Columbus Ward, a longtime resident and un-official mayor of Peoplestown points to a row of huge news houses. All of them empty, all of them backing up to Stanton Elementary.

?It?s really just adding to the crime rate of the neighborhood. It?s really not helped the neighborhood at all,? Ward says.

The homes are selling for $250,000 to $400,000. ?Oh, yeah, there are plenty of families who would love to live right here, close to school. But they can?t afford that! And people who can afford it, aren?t moving here,? Ward said.

The hoses are already beginning to show signs of neglect: peeling paint, missing fixtures, boarded windows. Unless the prices are lowered, neighbors fear the houses will never be sold. Even in the current uncertain mortgage market, Ward is optimistic: ?Always continue to hope. Don?t give up. Don?t give in.?

The Dirty Truth campaign has latched into that hope by launching a grassroots effort to stop the cycle. They?ve created a dirty hit list. Now, vacant houses near schools and parks are targeted for smart rehab.

?A major focus is on code enforcement. How to we get properties boarded up and cleaned up?? Yanique Redwood explains. ?The second strategy is to move families into these homes.? "A major focus on... those homes."

As they work from house to house, trying to build a better future, the Dirty Truth campaign is also trying to build better city laws.

"What we've discovered is that our code enforcement officers are understaffed. Their technology is either outdated or nonexistent,? Galvin said. ?I would encourage residents to be in touch with the city to do their own advocacy work around helping to reform code enforcement.?