Affordable Housing

The affordable housing crisis affects Athenians of nearly all income levels. Only the wealthiest among us are untouched by it.  

Thankfully, the Mayor and Commission in recent years have set Athens on a course to pursue creative, progressive solutions for the crisis. Forward-thinking commissioners, along with Mayor Girtz, have begun exciting work in inclusionary zoning, housing for the “missing middle,” and other strategies to correct decades of housing policy and zoning laws, much of it racist in origin, that have put us in this bind. 

I am excited to talk more in the coming weeks about creative, progressive tactics to address the housing crisis. What we cannot do is go backwards to allow our mistakes of the past further damage our future.

Economic Justice

Poverty and income inequality are a tragic stain on our community. For far too long, leaders in Athens simply accepted the desperate conditions for tens of thousands of Athenians stuck in poverty. We are lucky to have progressive members of the Mayor and Commission who have begun to look the crisis square in the face and begin to seek new routes toward liberation from poverty and economic precarity. 

Our crime problems in Athens are ultimately a poverty problem. We know that conditions of economic desperation lead to property crime, violent crime and ever more incarceration. Police and the legal system only address crime after it’s occurred; the only way to stop crime before it happens is to alter the material conditions in which people live.

Racial Justice

The area north of downtown has been a historically Black part of Athens essentially since Emancipation. The neighborhoods of The Bottoms and Lickskillet were thriving Black centers of life and commerce that previous generations of white leaders in Athens destroyed to make way for the prerogatives of the white, wealthy and powerful. But today we find ourselves with an opportunity to act reparatively in regard to future development north of downtown. 

It is believed that the redevelopment of the old Bethel Homes will spark a cascade of development in what will become an entirely new North Downtown area. The plan is that the eventual wave of development “will have built an entirely new section of downtown” extending from Dougherty Street north to the river. Clarke County government must take an active role in shaping that development to ensure that Black Athens has a place there. It is only right and just that the future of North Downtown should reflect its past. 

It is concrete initiatives like these that I want to pursue as commissioner. The time for empty promises is over. Progressives in our current government have taken concrete steps toward the enforcement of non-discrimination policies and toward correcting potential racial disparities in how the government allocates contracts. I am hopeful that a progressive Mayor and Commission can continue these necessary steps forward.

Development and Traffic on the Tallassee Corridor

Folks on Oglethorpe, Tallassee, Whitehead and Mitchell Bridge are all affected by the traffic conditions along the Oglethorpe-Tallassee corridor. With a large, 1000-bedroom apartment complex soon to introduce even more traffic to the corridor, along with increased development on Oglethorpe, the problems can only be predicted to worsen. 

I will make this a focus on the commission, putting forward plans to make the Oglethorpe-Tallassee corridor safer, easier to travel and less of a commuting headache.