This Week at AHA: May 30th to June 3rd

It was a busy week at Centennial Place Elementary School as graduates from its first class, 1998, prepared for broad, exciting new horizons. The school’s 13th Year Celebration held College 101 – How to Survive the Freshman Year, its fifth-grade awards ceremony, and its all-class reunion. Many of these grads will attend top-flight colleges and universities. AHA is proud of these grads and Centennial Place Elementary, which is a crucial part of Centennial Place, a mixed-income and mixed-use community in Midtown.

AHA prepared this week for its Father’s Day 2011 Initiative, set for Saturday, June 18. AHA, in partnership with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta, will hold the event at the Harland Boys and Girls Club of Metro Atlanta, 434 Peeples St. SW, from 11am to 3 pm. The Fatherhood Initiative was developed by the New York City Housing Authority and adopted by HUD as a national model and shared with housing authorities. The day is designed to strengthen the bonds between fathers and their children and to make education, health care, and employment resources available to the fathers that may result in upward mobility for the entire family. AHA believes in these goals and has chosen to participate in the national Fatherhood Initiative. The day will be filled with many opportunities for the fathers in attendance to interact and create stronger bonds with their children. Additionally, there will be a service provider resource room available to the fathers in attendance. The purpose of the service provider resource room is to provide opportunities for the fathers to get connected with the services and resources that will address the issues and concerns acting as barriers to upward mobility and family success.

Renovations continued apace this week at the 13 AHA-owned communities receiving American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Capital Fund Formula money. The renovations are being made at 11 high rises that house the elderly and young disabled residents; the two other communities are designated for families. This week many of the community spaces were revealed, allowing the residents to use the new areas for the first time. At Georgia Avenue and Piedmont Road highrises, residents enjoyed gathering in the newly furnished lobby. The open floor plans allows for seating while residents wait for transportation services. The new outdoor courtyard at Piedmont was completed with furniture, lighting, and a flowing landscape plan that connects with the new community room. After a few computer training courses East Lake’s computer lab was revealed and quickly hummed with activity. At Cosby Spear, residents began using the completed outdoor patio, which overlooks the new vehicle entrance. Construction and landscaping will continue for a few more weeks. At each of these properties residents played cards in the new community rooms, a few matches at the billiards table, or a took leisurely walk through a fresh landscaped path to the patio seating area. Construction at the Peachtree, East Lake, Hightower, Barge highrises will be completed in June. There will be open houses for each of the properties later this summer when work is finished.

There will be a briefing on the evaluation of the McDaniel Glenn HOPE IV Revitalization, conducted by Emory University's Office of University-Community Partnerships on June 14 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm. The evaluation is a look at the revitalization process and its impact on the former residents of McDaniel Glenn, local schools, and the surrounding neighborhoods. The briefing will review the major results of the report and entertain questions from the community about the research and will be at The Center for Working Families Inc., 477 Windsor St. SW, Suite 101, Atlanta. You can register here.

AHA's demolition of obsolete housing projects and the construction of 16 new mixed-income, mixed-use communities has had a $1.67 billion economic impact on the city and has created more than 15,800 "person-years" of new jobs since demolition began about 12 years ago, according to a just-completed study by Georgia State University economist Bruce Seaman. MSG picked up the story this week.

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The Atlanta Housing Authority is the largest housing agency in Georgia and one of the largest in the nation, serving approximately 50,000 people. AHA is committed to delivering quality affordable housing and spurring community development.