The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development late Wednesday gave its OK to the Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA) to tear down the city's final four major family housing projects.
The projects slated for demolition -- Hollywood Courts, Thomasville Heights, Herndon Homes and Bankhead Courts -- have more than 1,200 units. The demolition of a fifth project, Bowen Homes, with 650 units, was approved last week.
"History has been written today," said Renee Lewis Glover, AHA president and CEO. "These approvals mean the end of the 73 years of housing projects in Atlanta. We have become the first major city in the nation to completely eradicate these areas of government-sponsored concentrated poverty, crime and low educational achievement."
Glover added that AHA remains focused on serving the housing needs of Atlanta's poorer citizens.
"In the 1930s, public housing was an amazingly far-sighted approach to the nation's critical shortage of housing," Glover said. "But in the 21st Century, a new approach is necessary -- one that integrates the families into the mainstream economy. Isolating poor families apart from the mainstream is wrong. The costs, financial, human, and social are staggering."