Mayor Andre Dickens and Atlanta Public Schools have announced plans to exchange two key pieces of publicly owned land to advance their shared affordable housing goals and consolidate APS facilities.
Legislation introduced to City Council by Councilmember Jason Dozier on Monday would authorize the city to transfer ownership of property at 70 Boulevard, adjacent to Hope-Hill Elementary School in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood.
Transferring the 1.5-acre parcel, which includes the gym and greenspace that the school already utilizes, will allow APS to consolidate on-campus facilities and improvements into a single contiguous, safely secured campus.
In exchange, APS would transfer to the city a two-acre vacant property it owns at 405 Cooper Street SW, which the mayor envisions as a critical piece of his strategy to holistically address homelessness.
The Atlanta Board of Education is expected to consider this matter at its regularly scheduled September meeting.
The announcement comes after over a year of close coordination between APS and the city through the Mayor’s Affordable Housing Strike Force, a partnership between local government and non-profit actors with a shared goal of activating public land to support affordable housing.
The proposed land swap also comes on the heels of an executive order from Dickens to implement the first phase of his Rapid Housing initiative, allocating $4 million to Partners for HOME (PFH), the city’s Continuum of Care provider, to deploy new quick-delivery housing for individuals experiencing homelessness.