Blighted A story of people, politics, and an American housing miracle

Stagmeier, founder of a real-estate investment firm and an affordable-housing nonprofit, outlines the process of turning around a blighted apartment complex in Atlanta. After purchasing the complex from an absentee landlord, her firm begins to address many issues that accrue in a crime-infested community: phantom tenants who provide a front for drug activity, pests, mold, and negligent management. One of Stagmeier's goals is to improve the outcomes of the local elementary school. Doing so will require working with legacy tenants who provide social capital in the community rather than simply evicting everyone and raising the rents. Stagmeier can occasionally get bogged down in detail related to getting everything up to code, including endless back-and-forth with the city of Atlanta. While this level of detail may deter the lay reader, policy makers will likely find it instructive. At a time when affordable housing is increasingly out of reach as private-equity-backed firms take over large apartment complexes, this book provides a valuable model for how to reduce transience by offering sustainable rents and investing in the local community.

Stagmeier (Real Estate Asset Management), a real estate investor and affordable housing activist, documents in this dense if uplifting account her efforts to restore a rundown apartment complex in a crime-ridden neighborhood in southeast Atlanta. Drawing on law enforcement data, socioeconomic statistics, and interviews with residents, building managers, and police officers, Stagmeier details how the Summerdale Apartment Community deteriorated over the past few decades, as the surrounding neighborhood was plagued by criminal activities, and the apartments were overrun by mold, bedbugs, rodents, and squatters. When her company bought the property in 2017, Stagmeier's goals included offering affordable rents for families living near the poverty line; sustaining high tenant retention rates; helping to improve the local elementary school; and establishing partnerships with community healthcare, after-school programs, and other social services. She documents the hard work and coordination among nonprofit agencies and local officials that led to these and other improvements, including more reliable internet access and a new playground. Stagmeier's forthright descriptions of ousting problem tenants, financing renovations, and untangling bureaucratic knots make this a valuable how-to for community organizers and real estate developers looking to improve poverty-stricken neighborhoods. This is an inspiring portrait of progress in action. (July)

A real estate developer rehabs an apartment complex--and a community, somewhat. Stagmeier is co-founder of a real estate firm that specializes in improving Atlanta-area low-income apartment buildings suffering from poor maintenance, poverty, and crime. Rather than clear out the residents and gentrify, she instead strives to address crime, improve neighboring schools, and keep rents affordable. In deep, at times microscopic detail, the author shares her experience with Summerdale, a "severely blighted 244-unit apartment community." In 2017, when Stagmeier first explored the property, it was overrun with drug traffic, and units were often filthy. By ramping up security, cracking down on "phantom tenants"--renters with clean records fronting for drug dealers--and making structural improvements, Summerdale was set on a better path, with a connected nonprofit providing additional supports. This approach is all the better, argues the author, for being done largely without the paperwork and onerous restrictions of federal housing subsidy programs like Section 8. But if Summerdale is a success story, it's a limited one. Stagmeier doesn't dig into America's systemic affordable-housing problems, particularly those relating to race. Given the amount of attention Summerdale's revival required--staffing needs, regulatory compliance--it's hard to see the author's approach as scalable, though she endeavors to promote it as such. The narrative veers among profiles of community members, deep dives into the complex financial mechanics involved, laments about setbacks, and boasts about improvements. Stagmeier reports that an Atlanta police officer told her that "the violent criminal activity moved west and the dealers are now about two miles away," but she doesn't question whether she's solved a problem or just relocated it. The author's work is commendable, but a tighter narrative package and more thorough wide-scale analysis would allow the book to reach a wider audience. A tale of community revival with lots of unexplored territory. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.