David Holder feels the city of Atlanta is foisting apartments for unhoused people on Mechanicsville without the neighborhood’s blessing.
“There was no community engagement process,” the Mechanicsville Civic Association president said in an interview. “It was just, ‘Get ready. This is happening.’”
The city plans to use two vacant acres at 405 Cooper Street for the next phase of its “rapid rehousing” initiative for unhoused Atlantans, which aims to create 500 permanent supportive housing units across town by the end of 2025.
At the end of January, Mayor Andre Dickens’ administration opened its pilot shipping container village, The Melody, at 184 Forsyth Street downtown to rapidly rehouse 40 previously homeless people.
The city’s working plan is to build out the Mechanicsville site just south of Interstate 20 with a mixed-use, mixed-income complex that will include 100 units for people experiencing homelessness, along with about 250 market-rate residences and perhaps restaurants and retail.
When the Atlanta City Council earlier this month approved legislation authorizing Atlanta Public Schools to swap the Cooper Street site for city-owned land in Old Fourth Ward, Holder and his neighbors’ concerns came into sharp focus.
“The city decides that when something doesn’t fit in another neighborhood, they dump it in our community,” he said, wondering why city officials chose the lower-income, predominantly Black neighborhood for the project, rather than somewhere else. “We can’t keep doing this.”
The controversy raises questions about what constitutes NIMBYism (a “not in my backyard” urban planning mindset) and what qualifies as reasonable community pushback.
Holder said he understands Atlanta faces a mounting housing affordability crisis, and he believes unhoused, low-income people deserve safe, stable places to live.
But as the city endeavors to accomplish an entire 20% of its rapid rehousing goal in one fell swoop with the Mechanicsville project, he said, it feels like salt in the wounds for a neighborhood that has long struggled with disinvestment, violent crime, and other quality of life issues that have gone largely unaddressed.
“Help us get to a steady state,” Holder said. “Help us get to an area where we have a place to walk to get groceries, a place to walk to get coffee, to go get something to eat.” There are no grocery stores in Mechanicsville — just some convenience stores that sell sodas, beer, chips, and candy, but no fresh produce.
“We’ve been promised so many things,” Holder said. He too wants to see the Cooper Street property developed, but ideally with mixed-income housing, a grocery store, a hotel, and maybe 10 or 15 permanent supportive housing units for unhoused people — not 100. “That’s too much,” he said.
City response
Joshua Humphries, Dickens’ chief housing advisor, said the Mechanicsville rapid rehousing project is still in its infancy — and the city intends to conduct a robust community engagement process before any groundbreaking.
“We are working to address the broader issues facing the neighborhood, and to determine what the best version of that property looks like,” he told Atlanta Civic Circle.
Humphries pointed out that the recent city council legislation merely tees up the land-swap between the city and the school system; it doesn’t set in motion any real development plans. That could take months, at least.
But one way or another, the city will move forward with the plan to rapidly rehouse unhoused people at 405 Cooper St., he said. Right now, the property is overgrown and occupied by unhoused people who’ve set up a small tent city.
“One of our goals is to ensure a safe Cooper Street,” Humphries said, noting that’s only possible with substantial community input.
Humphries said he’s heard the community’s pushback about the rapid rehousing proposal and their concerns that it could materialize akin to the Melody, with cargo containers repurposed as low-income apartments.
The top priority, Humphries emphasized, is to create housing for unhoused people as quickly as possible — and what that looks like is still being determined.
Wanda Sutton, one of The Melody’s first residents, said that if people could see how nice and safe her complex is, they wouldn’t be so critical of the shipping container model. “It feels really good to have a place to rest, and I feel like a normal human being,” she said.
“The Melody is one example of what this could look like,” Humphries said. “But that’s not going to work in every neighborhood.”
For Mechanicsville, he said, that could mean shipping containers or perhaps modular construction — homes that come off assembly lines in pieces and fit together like gingerbread houses.
As for Holder’s complaint that the city intends to knock out a fifth of its 500-unit rapid rehousing goal in one neighborhood, Humphries insisted: “We are spreading this out across town.”
“At the end of the day, this is not a situation where we’re trying to make one neighborhood carry the burden,” he said. The city is also eyeing property on Northside Drive, not far from the Westside Reservoir Park, for another rapid rehousing project.
It will take the city months to close on financing for the Mechanicsville project. In the meantime, Humphries said, city officials will meet biweekly with community members to iron out plans for “what the sweet spot is” for the number of permanent supportive housing units.
Holder, however, said, “We’re going to continue to fight.” He and his neighbors intend to lobby the Atlanta City Council during its June 3 meeting and protest the current plan at upcoming public engagement meetings.
We’ve gotta stop describing the homeless as a “burden”
I dont know if this guy has taken a walk around mechanicsville lately but theres a huge unhoused population already there that could benefit from this project. Its odd that hes concerned over the number of units planned for the rapid housing when there are easily more than that number in need already on the streets in this very neighborhood.
Yea idk who that guy is but he’s obviously not from the neighborhood as there was a whole public housing project in Mechanicsville back in 2006/7 they tore it down it was huge 700 units… then they built the new Mechanicsville apartments on top and a lot of ppl went homeless after that. So I disagree on the guy’s opinion which seems to come from a judgmental standpoint and not the fact there trying to rehouse natives back in their neighborhoods