It is projected that by 2020 the population of the English Avenue and Vine City Community will double and the increase in economic activities, social and cultural interactions, as well as environmental and humanitarian impacts will pose massive sustainability challenges for affordable housing and infrastructure. This gentrification could result in dislocating residents currently living at or below the poverty level.
This blog will look at a variety of social justice issues affecting communities and people who are underrepresented and/or underserved. Beginning with affordable housing, I want to look at an opportunity for the church to reposition herself, to re-frame its existence as leader in a community’s economy by reassuming the position of community leader/voice it once was in the days of the civil rights movement. The information in this blog relative to affordable housing will be reflective of the challenges being faced by the English Avenue and Vine City Communities on the west side of Atlanta, Georgia. It is intended that Atlanta’s gentrification issues would be an example of other large metropolitan cities undergoing gentrification. The African American church in particular has an obligation to its parishioners to assume the task of creating Dr. King’s beloved community and create what Douglass Meeks refers to in his book, God the Economist, as God’s Economy. The manifestation of such an ecosystem could heal the community, revive the community’s social spirit and minimize the effects of dislocation.