There Goes the Neighborhood

I bought our house in 1989, soon after I moved to Atlanta.  That summer there were frequent thunderstorms after several years of drought and it seemed like every time it rained trees came down and the power went out.  The first time I saw this house the electricity was out.  It was early evening and the only thing now that I remember from that first visit was the long living room with the picture window at the end of the room.  That appealed to me in a way that no other house I had seen did.  Only later did I realize that what I was associating with it was the house that I lived in as a young child, a house I barely remember.

I came back the next day to see the house again, this time with the power on, and sometime after that I made an offer and that's how I came to live on Wessyngton Road.  So there were several trips I made here with the real estate agent, whose office was nearby at the Coldwell Banker office on North Highland, just round the corner.  It was only after I moved in that I realized that every time she had brought me here that she must have come from the Cumberland Road end of Wessyngton, that she had never brought me by the apartments at Wessyngton and North Highland.  When I bought my house, I didn't know they were there.

That was more than 20 years ago, and the apartments didn't look good even then; since then, I don't think the landlord has invested much in upkeep.  The plan, at least since 2008 and probably longer, was to sell the property, evict the tenants, knock down the apartments, and build large expensive houses.  For a long time there was a sign there in the yard offering three luxury homes.  But the market for luxury homes wasn't great for a few years -- even in Morningside -- and nothing happened.

Until recently.  The housing market has picked up, the apartments have been sold, and Mark told us that all the tenants got registered letters telling them they have 30 days to vacate.  (Doesn't Georgia law require 60 days notice?)  So it's going to happen.  There are different "for sale" signs up, now, and I expect it won't be long until the tenants are gone and the apartments are razed.

Our friend Mark lives there, and we will miss him, although we hope he will not move too far away.  He's the one who has played guitar at so many of our neighborhood block parties.  So I'm sorry that the apartments -- ramshackle as they are -- are about to be demolished.  I'm also sorry for what it may portend for the street.  If intown property is now this valuable, I'm afraid that some of the other rental properties on the street will follow.  The house Angela used to live in has been vacant for months or maybe longer; we heard it's going to be knocked down and a new house built there.  One of the things that's special about our street is the diversity of people who live here, and a big part of that is the availability of at least relatively affordable rental housing.  Once that's gone, it's going to be less interesting to live here.

Yesterday when Iain and I were walking back from the farmers' market we saw a child's chalk drawings on the driveway at the apartments.  I don't even know if the child who drew this lives there, but if she does, I wonder whether she will have that apartment imprinted on her memory the way that house on 2nd Street in a small town in Oklahoma is on mine.