$40 Million-Dollar Plan

BY DONNELL SUGGS AND JANELLE WARD

Bowen Homes site to see second life with help of $40 million HUD funding

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced the distribution of a $40 million grant to the City of Atlanta and Atlanta Housing on July 26, for the reconstruction of the site formerly housing the Bowen Homes development by means of its Choice Neighborhoods Implementation program, an initiative dedicated to helping local governments bring their revitalization plans to life in order to better serve their communities.

The city plans to build more than 2,000 rentable and ownable housing units on the 74-acre site, helping to weaken the blow of Atlanta’s impending affordable housing crisis. Atlanta mayor Andre Dickens, Congresswoman Nikema Williams and U.S. Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock each contributed to securing the funding, which will add to the hundreds of millions of dollars already set aside for the project.

The $40 million award is the city’s second — and largest — from the HUD department’s Choice Neighborhoods Implementation program, the first of which was granted in 2015 to restore Vine City, areas surrounding the Atlanta University Center and other sections of west Atlanta.

“Bowen Choice Neighborhood will be transformative for northwest Atlanta, bringing affordable homes and a vibrant neighborhood back to the community,” Dickens said. “Atlanta Housing and all the members of our Affordable Housing Strike Force came together with community members to lay the groundwork for this funding.”

Eugene Jones Jr., president and CEO of Atlanta Housing, Georgia’s largest housing authority, said that the HUD department's funding will prove instrumental in redeveloping the area by helping provide necessary resources for the community when renovations are complete.

“Atlanta Housing and the City of Atlanta have demonstrated that we can leverage $40 million in Choice Neighborhood funds into more than $500 million to successfully transform the Bowen Choice Neighborhood,” Jones said.

History of the development

Bowen Homes was completed in 1964 and named after prominent local clergyman and community leader Bishop J.W.E. Bowen, the second African American to receive a doctoral degree from an American university in the United States’ history.