The City of Forest Park could soon increase taxes on more than 100 blighted properties.
In support of its broader Beautification Plan, the city council recently passed a new ordinance targeting neglected or abandoned sites. “The City of Forest Park has been on a move to address blight,” says Dominique Huff, who reports on Clayton County for the Atlanta Documenters program and his website, Home Rule News. Huff documented the meeting where the council discussed this new ordinance.
In every community that Canopy Atlanta has worked in, residents have shared concerns about derelict properties. But addressing that problem requires a balance of penalizing neglectful property owners without burdening low-income or senior residents who need help bringing their properties up to standards. City of Forest Park Mayor Angelyne Butler acknowledged that tension: “This ordinance is in no way an attempt to add extra financial hardships on our constituents. However, we will no longer allow ill-principled property owners to negate their responsibilities,” she says. “Comprehensive legislation like this sends a clear message that it is a new day in Forest Park.” What could that new day look like for the people of Forest Park? The city hopes it could be a cleaner, healthier, more cared-for version of the neighborhoods residents know and love.
Public information officer Javon Lloyd says the City’s effort to address blight picked up speed last May with the ONE Forest Park initiative, which focuses on operational efficiency, neighborhood sustainability, and economic development. “We started to find that a lot of properties within the city were either vacant or they weren’t kept up appropriately,” Lloyd said. “So we really wanted to try to come up with a strategic way to address those issues.” Today, Forest Park’s Code Enforcement team has more than 106 cases open concerning blighted properties—91 initiated by code officers and 15 by residents.
Here’s how the new ordinance works: A public officer (or five complaints from five different residents) kicks off the process. The Code Enforcement Department will then send an officer to investigate the property and complete an inspection report. After the report, the City will determine whether the property is technically “blighted” per ordinance standards. Blight can be used to describe properties that are uninhabitable, unsafe, abandoned, or “conducive to ill health.” It can also describe a commercial space where no business activity has occurred for more than three months.
If a property is deemed blighted, the City will increase its ad valorem taxes by 10 mills. Ad valorem is the percentage of property taxes that funds basic operations like public works and the fire and police departments. Cities have a specific millage rate, or tax percentage, that they collect. Property owners who violate code ordinances will see an increased millage rate. Once the property is remediated or redeveloped, the millage rate will revert to the original rate. Lloyd says the hope is that higher taxes on a blighted property could push owners to either stabilize or improve its conditions, sell it, or rent it out to help cover the increased taxes. (The ordinance does not apply to tax-exempt properties, such as churches, cemeteries, or land owned by charitable organizations; you can’t raise taxes on a property that isn’t paying them to begin with.)
Last month, Canopy Atlanta held new listening sessions in Forest Park to ask residents about blight in their community. None of the four people who responded on this topic knew about the new ordinance. One resident said penalizing owners for not maintaining their properties makes sense: “I don’t want to live in a blighted area.” He added that when an area is well-maintained residents may respect it more and contribute to its upkeep. Another resident was concerned penalizing owners might negatively affect seniors or those with limited resources.
Lloyd acknowledges this could be burdensome for people in those demographics and people living with disabilities. Struggling businesses unable to improve their properties due to financial constraints may also have difficulty adjusting to the ordinance. That’s why the city launched its Homeowner Maintenance Enhancements program to assist with essential home repairs or modifications. The program—funded with $1.3 million from the American Rescue Plan Act—will help cover the cost of eligible repair work, such as exterior painting, minor electrical work, and ADA improvements. “We actually launched [this program] during the holidays as kind of like our special Christmas gift to our legacy residents,” Lloyd said. “We call our seniors legacy residents.”
The application period for the program is closed. “As with most federally funded programs, funding is limited,” Lloyd said. “Once the thorough review is complete, if there is any additional funding, we will reopen the program.”
Lloyd says one of the biggest challenges in keeping this initiative effective will be contacting property owners to inform them of the violation, penalties, and potential solutions—especially when it comes to out-of-state owners. “It could be something like your grandparents passed away and they left you the house, but you live all the way in Connecticut. You’re not here every day, checking on the status of the house,” he explains. “You just know that you have a house in Forest Park, Georgia; you don’t know what it looks like.”
According to City Manager Ricky Clark, deteriorating properties cost the City additional resources, “whether it be through more services required from our Code Enforcement Department or even our public safety entities.” The hope is that the new tax will allow them to recover some of those costs. However, he and Lloyd maintain that this initiative isn’t a cash grab for the city. According to Lloyd, “[blight] impacts the neighborhood as a whole, it impacts property values, and it also impacts crime if you’re just leaving neighborhoods any type of way and not keeping them clean and safe.”
The new ordinance is part of the City’s Beautification Plan, launched in December. The plan includes a committee to lead projects like litter-management campaigns; increased cooperation between Code Enforcement, municipal departments, and community members to address graffiti, junk vehicles, park maintenance, and illegal dumping; enforcement of city ordinances, codes, and regulations; and demolishing dilapidated structures, specifically those that will be especially costly to rehabilitate.
Lloyd says, similar to how residents show they care by submitting complaints about blight, the City is showing Forest Park residents it cares by working to address them: “Neighborhood sustainability includes cleanliness, making sure that our neighborhoods are held to a certain standard, and doing everything we can to make sure our city is a place that everybody’s proud of.”
Forest Park’s Code Enforcement team has more than 106 cases open concerning blighted properties. The yellow dots on this map represent properties that are not up to code.
For more information about the ordinance or to speak with a member of the Code Enforcement Department, call 404-366-4720.
Editor: Heather Buckner
Fact Checker: Muriel Vega
Canopy Atlanta Readers: Genia Billingsley and Mariann Martin
