Federal housing officials Friday approved the Atlanta Housing Authority's request to demolish Bowen Homes. The demolition will take place in about 12 to 18 months. Built in 1964, Bowen Homes is a sprawling complex of two-story, orange-colored duplexes, with an elementary school and a library. Most tenants in the 603 occupied units are African-American women with young children. The authority will help Bowen residents find new homes and give those who fill out the proper paperwork vouchers to help pay for their rent and utilities. The key question is whether the tenants will fare better in their new surroundings.

Housing authority officials say yes, citing a study by Thomas Boston, an economics professor at Georgia Tech, which found most tenants who left the authority's developments between 1995 and 2001 improved their social and economic standing. Skeptics disagree. Lindsay Jones, an Emory Law School professor who has been helping tenant groups, said tenants are moving to neighborhoods with higher percentages of poverty than the city's rate of 23 percent. "The AHA has simply pushed families from one ghetto to another while allowing private developers to build new communities to the exclusion of the displaced low-income families on the site of the demolished
public housing," Jones said.

ince the mid-1990s, the housing authority has torn down much of its housing stock and has worked with developers to rebuild the properties as mixed-income communities. In February 2007, the authority announced its "Quality of Life Initiative," a plan to demolish a dozen public housing developments with about 3,000 units and 9,600 tenants. The agency has started or completed the relocation process in six complexes and is awaiting federal approval for six other developments.

Shirley Hightower, president of the Bowen Homes tenants association, is less enthusiastic about the plan.Hightower, 53, has lived in Bowen for 16 years and wonders how some families will manage once they're relocated. Tenants currently must pay 30 percent of their adjusted gross income for rent and utilities. Those costs, she said, will be higher in their new homes. "They're giving [tenants] an illusion," Hightower said of the authority. "They're taking away a safety net for a lot of people."

SOURCE: Atlanta Journal Constitution