By Angela Fields
Attention! There is an open house for new luxury downtown loft apartments in Atlanta. The lofts are specially designed to provide a magnificent living space. Apartments are equipped with floor-to-ceiling windows that open onto large balconies offering a panoramic view. You can enjoy the downtown skyline from the comfort of your living room. The sunsets are amazing.
These luxury lofts have stainless steel appliances, hardwood floors and towering ceilings. There is a private rooftop terrace. We offer secure off-street parking and a full-time doorperson. We also have an electronic gate that opens and closes at your command.
One more thing, we are located across the street from the largest homeless shelter in the state.
Pine and Peachtree Street in Atlanta is a hazy mosaic of wealth and poverty. You have to piece the story together section by section.
The first section has hundreds of homeless people zigzagging around a gray cement building. The building looks more like a run-down factory than a homeless shelter. Women with babies, unshaved men wearing rags and elderly people grumbling in pain line up outside the gray structure. More than half of them will be turned away.
On another corner, there is food, fun and laughter where balloons nearly cover the sidewalk. Management teams are welcoming young Emory Hospital practitioners into the community and their new loft apartments.
How perplexing. On one side of the street, volunteers are welcoming homeless people into a shelter for the night. On the other side, flourishing young professionals are being ushered into new luxury homes with free food and fun.
“Master-planned” developments are a hot item in an otherwise slow real estate market in metro Atlanta. They offer a “city inside a city” experience without the cookie-cutter detached houses of suburbia.
The developers of the Master Plan are selling dreams of increasing social activity in dilapidated neighborhoods to elected officials and young professionals. This Plan eloquently markets the revitalization of communities with coffee shops, storefronts and parks. Walkable and inviting neighborhoods encourage residents to spend their money in town.
Yay! Revenue! But what is the real cost? Has the local government really counted the cost of this Master Plan? There is a downside of living in a world where if it does not make money, it does not make sense. It implies that if one does not make dollars, one life is only worth a few cents? Is this really the Master’s plan?
The technical term for the massive movement back to the city is gentrification. Gentrification is defined as the return of the ruling classes or landlords.
Robert Lupton writes in his book, Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life: “Gentrification with justice … is what is needed to restore … urban neighborhoods. The people of the Kingdom have a unique mandate to care for …the vulnerable and the voiceless.… We cannot rightly take joy in the rebirth of the city if no provision(s) …are made to include the poor as co-(occupants).”
The impact of the Master Plan does not demonstrate the hopes of God, who is the true Master. Laissez-faire policy and money-grubbing developers have robbed the poor once again. Hundreds of people are being displaced due to property tax spikes and increased rental fees caused by luxury housing. The homeless shelter is being forced to close its doors. Aesthetics means everything in a world consumed with self.
It was that same selfishness that contributed to the present plight of urban neighborhoods. Did we forget about the flight of the wealthy from those areas in the 1950s and 1960s? How about decisions to insert highways and railways through urban neighborhoods? Those choices continue to contribute to the poverty within less fortunate neighborhoods.
Caring for marginalized people is God’s plan. God’s message is for us to care for the poor and needy. We must protect the widow and the fatherless as well as foreigners.
The church has the power to ensure that the vulnerable people in our society have a voice. The church must ensure that displaced members enter into a thriving neighborhood with spiritual and economic resources.
This requires intentional, concentrated effort and involves church planting or community service projects. New churches that are formed in gentrified neighborhoods must go into the city with a desire to embrace diversity.