Public commenter urges DeKalb land bank and property‑tax protections to shield long‑time homeowners from gentrification
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Summary
At the Oct. 7 meeting, a speaker urged the county to create a land bank to acquire abandoned properties and proposed a property‑tax freeze for long‑term, low‑income homeowners to limit displacement amid neighborhood change; commissioners later recommended transferring surplus county properties to a land bank for study.
Steven Binney, a resident who addressed the board Oct. 7, urged the county to adopt a land bank to acquire blighted or tax‑delinquent properties and convert them into affordable homeownership opportunities. Binney warned that gentrification in parts of south and central DeKalb could accelerate property‑tax increases and displace long‑term, low‑income residents.
Binney recommended two parallel approaches: (1) create a DeKalb County Land Bank to acquire and repurpose abandoned or tax‑deficient properties for affordable housing and community use; and (2) consider a property‑tax freeze for residential owners who have owned and occupied their properties for a specified period (e.g., 10, 20 or 30 years) to protect long‑term residents from rising property tax bills.
Why it matters: Binney framed the land bank and tax‑freeze ideas as complementary: a land bank could return vacant properties to productive use while a tax freeze could prevent displacement of owners who have lived in place for decades. He cited the Atlanta BeltLine Legacy Residential Retention Program as an example of displacement‑mitigation in adjacent jurisdictions.
County action: At a later committee meeting (PECS), commissioners recommended declaring 26 county‑owned vacant properties surplus and transferring them to the DeKalb County Land Bank. The board also recommended allocating funds for a DeKalb County Land Trust study to assess feasibility and structure.
Next steps: Commissioners asked county staff to tweak the proposed land‑trust resolution and return recommendations on scope and funding to the Planning, Economic and Community Services (PECS) committee for further work.