Creating a Beloved Community

The power of this project has been key to the city’s success over the last decade.

June 30, 2025

Ben Young,

It’s hard to imagine a more powerful affordable housing effort than Atlanta’s Westside Future Fund. With over $100 million in philanthropic investment and impact funds to date, it could provide a model for similar initiatives, but it’s also difficult to imagine this happening anywhere else.

Continuing a legacy of giving back that has shaped Atlanta, it was the business community – primarily Chick-fil-A’s Dan Cathy and Home Depot’s Arthur Blank – who got the ball rolling with substantial funds when Westside Future Fund was formed by the Atlanta Committee for Progress in 2014.

Once a populous community of 40,000 residents, you could say the Westside, which includes English Avenue, Vine City, Ashview Heights, Atlanta University Center and Just Us sections, is one of the last of Atlanta’s great historic Black neighborhoods. Now it is sandwiched between the booming Downtown Atlanta and Midtown West districts, threatened by high crime and vacancy rates from within and gentrification and high rents from without. This is the area where Martin Luther King Jr., former City Councilman Julian Bond and former Mayor Maynard Jackson grew up. The AUC is home to three Historic Black Universities: Clark, Morehouse and Spelman.

Blank clearly has a stake in improving this area for the sake of the Atlanta Falcons, who play at Mercedez-Benz Stadium. (Blank owns the NFL team.) Part of the stadium’s appeal is the Vine City transit station and the bridge over Northside Drive that make it easy for people to take MARTA to games and concerts. But this effort is also a response to gentrification following the development of the Atlanta Beltline Trail. As the city took on the westside loop of the Beltline, it was clear that preventing displacement would be a challenge.

It’s hard to recognize the Old Fourth Ward district, which was most dramatically affected by the Beltline’s Eastside Trail. You could say, “good, it was a rough neighborhood.” But it still isn’t fair to price out longtime residents who helped build and pay for the community, forcing them to move.

John Ahmann, a native Atlantan who moved into Vine City, describes a “block by block strategy to transform [the] Westside by building trust, enforcing blight and code, and working with residents old and new to create a beloved community King would be proud to call home.”

In addition to the housing needs, there is the Westside Lead Superfund site encompassing 2,100 properties located on soil contaminated with oil and lead. Rosario Hernandez, founder of Historic Westside Gardens, received a Citizen Excellence in Community Involvement Award from the Environmental Protection Agency for her help in adding the site to the EPA’s National Priorities List in 2022.

Of the 1,600 households in the WFF footprint, half of the residents earned less than $20,000 a year in 2019. The fund now owns enough land to meet its goal of 1,500 affordable units as well as 250 new single-family homes in the Westside. The WFF is currently in its Next Chapter campaign to raise $10 million for 600 more residences, downpayment assistance and the Anti Displacement Tax Fund to help legacy resident homeowners stay in the community.

The Homes On the Westside program provides for sale and rental residences on WFF property. District residents receive highest priority, followed by those who work there, formerly lived there, attend Washington Cluster schools, and spend 50% or more of their income on housing.

WFF has received $6 million in free land, vacant buildings and HomeFlex rental assistance from Invest Atlanta and Atlanta Housing. Partners include the Fulton County Land Bank Authority, On the Rise Financial Center, Atlanta Police Foundation, CHRIS 180 and Quest Community Development Organization. Since the launch of the Atlanta Police Foundation’s Westside Security Plan, crime is down by 43%.

The Trust for Public Land, the National Monuments Foundation and the city of Atlanta, partnered to develop Rodney Cook Sr. Park, while Park Pride, The Conservation Fund and the city of Atlanta partnered to build Kathryn Johnston Memorial Park. Both parks have features to mitigate stormwater, to help prevent flooding.

Atlanta-born rapper T.I. is redeveloping the HN Liquor Store on Boone Boulevard. He plans for it to become a mixed-use development.

Westside Works, a workforce collaborative that offers job training, has funded more than $16 million in wages earned by its graduates to date. Atlanta Public Schools, Hollis Innovation Academy and YMCA Leadership and Learning Center are other partnerships that show WFF’s support for education. The power of this project has been key to the city’s success over the last decade. There is wisdom here that can show the way to the world.