"A BIT OF GOOD NEWS IN A DEPRESSING TIME"

 “A BIT OF GOOD NEWS IN A DEPRESSING TIME”

It felt sad and ironic to celebrate the 4th of July when Donald Trump is president, a man who cares little for the country and who cares only for himself and enriching himself at our expense.  I must admit, however, that the has had a disturbing run the last few weeks – the bombing of Iran and the passage of the “Big, Bad, Awful” (BBA) bill.  I will hold Lisa Murkowski responsible for the latter – though I was never a big fan of John McCain, I admired his courage in Trump’s first term when Trump tried to gut Obamacare.  McCain walked down to the well of the Senate floor and turned his thumb down to defeat the proposal.  Now that Trump is beginning the unraveling of Obamacare in the BBA, how I wish that Senator Murkowski had done the same as John McCain did.  It was not to be, however, and she and all the rest of us will be the worst for it.

In the midst of this depressing time, I want to acknowledge a note of hope on the local level.  On June 18, Caroline and I attended the ribbon cutting for new affordable housing located in Decatur’s Legacy Park.  Sixty-six units were dedicated for housing for people who make 30-80% of a living wage.  It is a partnership between the city of Decatur, the Decatur Housing Authority, Dekalb County, and the federal government.  At the same time, there was a ground-breaking ceremony for 66 more units, making a total of 132 units of affordable housing.  A bit of background is needed to understand this good news.

Legacy Park is the new name of what used to be the United Methodist Children’s Home, located on 77 acres of land on Columbia Drive across from Columbia Seminary.  The Home was started by the Methodists in 1877 as an orphanage for children after the Civil War, and it remained a home for orphans and children from broken or troubled families until 2017.  At that point, the Methodists decided to shift their focus from younger children to young adults who had aged out of the various public and private systems.  They did this with good reason – our state representative Mary Margaret Oliver noted at the ceremony that more than 40% of the young people who age out of foster care at age 18 will be homeless within 18 months.  The Methodists put the land up for sale, hoping to finance their new ventures with the money from the sale.  And, valuable land it is – 77 acres of undeveloped prime land.  When we heard that the land was up for sale, we knew that the developers were licking their lips in anticipation.

Many of us went to the Decatur City Council, urging them to consider a purchase of this land for public use and benefit, rather than allowing it to once again be gobbled up by private developers.  The city of Decatur has not always been receptive to the need for affordable housing, but this time the leadership, as well as numerous residents, felt the need to seek to keep this property as a good for public use.  Partnering with several governmental entities that I named above, they developed a $40 million package to offer the United Methodists for the property.  This was undoubtedly below the market value, but it also appealed to the goodwill of the Methodists.  It was an amount that would adequately fund the new ventures of the Methodists, and they accepted the offer.  The city of Decatur now owns those 77 acres and has developed a plan for its use to benefit the citizens of Decatur.

The next struggle came over what would be housed on the property.  While that is still a work in progress, many people, including our friend Mary Gould, attended many meetings to help the city of Decatur see the need and the possibility of using part of the property for affordable housing.  By this time, the city was open to the message, but it did not hurt that so many people turned out to support it.  There was also significant opposition, but the idea of affordable housing prevailed, and we give thanks for that.  

The opposition did not roll over, however.  After the environmental study indicated that the building of affordable housing would not be a further detriment to the environment, several residents asked for a second study in order to delay the beginning of construction of the affordable housing.  We attended the city council meeting last November and spoke our piece about the need for beginning the project.  One of the residents who opposed the project spoke and indicated that they had filed an ethics complaint against the council for what they took to be dishonesty and a lack of integrity on this process.  African-American Councilman and Mayor Pro Tem Tony Powers responded with an unusually frank answer, something like this:  “I hear your complaint, and I can guarantee you that we have approached this project with integrity, honesty, and transparency.  I will also add that I believe that your opposition to this project is not about trees or transparency but rather about your dis-ease with the possibility that Black people will be living in some of these housing units. I’m tired of hearing that, and I’m tired of white people masking their racial concerns by using other reasons.  So, we have been transparent about the need to use some of this land for affordable housing, and we intend to do just that.”  The city council then proceeded to vote unanimously to approve the environmental report and to authorize the construction of the first set of housing units.

It was noted at the June 18 ribbon-cutting that this project is just a drop in the bucket, but that it was a beginning.  Congressman Hank Johnson spoke, and other speakers included Housing Authority Director Larry Padilla, state senator Elena Parent, Columbia Seminary President Victor Aloyo, state rep Mary Margaret Oliver, and many others.  In a time of a torrent of bad news, it was good to be together and to celebrate a bit of good news.  Let us build on that and see if we can revitalize this sense of civic duty and responsibility for the common good.