HELPING HANDS REACH OUT

The west Athens neighborhood known as Henderson Extension may have its
share of crime, poverty, blight and other serious problems, but that does
not mean its residents have been forsaken by the larger community. In
recent years, government agencies such as the Athens-Clarke County Police
Department and Athens Housing Authority, as well as church and grass-roots
organizations, have been developing ideas for breathing new life into the
neighborhood, to make conditions better for those already living there and
attract new residents.

During a recent walk through the neighborhood, also known by many as
''Rocksprings'' for its proximity to the Rocksprings Homes public housing
complex, one man at the forefront of improvement efforts pointed out the
lone business the neighborhood once had, a grocery store at the corner of
Henderson Avenue Extension and Columbus Street, now boarded up and under
slow assault by encroaching kudzu.

''We're hoping to talk to Publix or some other grocery chain to see if we
can convince them to open a satellite store,'' said Alvin Sheats, director
of the Hancock Community Development Corp., a non-profit organization
established in 2000 with a mission to revitalize Henderson Extension and
other neighborhoods of an area of west Athens known as the Hancock
Corridor, encompassing parts of West Broad, Baxter, Rocksprings, Pulaski
and Old West Broad streets, as well as Hawthorne and Prince avenues.

Surrounding the former Justin's Grocery, which closed its doors earlier
this year after operating for only several years, are vacant, boarded-up
houses, some of which police said are used as crack dens and for
prostitution. Half a block up, at the corner of Henderson Avenue Extension
and Paris Street, loitered a small group of young men referred to by Sheats
as ''street pharmacists'' - his term for street-level drug dealers.

Noting a lack of job opportunities in the area, in a community where 43
percent of children fail to finish high school, Sheats observed, ''These
guys are out here hustling, and while I don't condone that, I understand it.''

Successful strategies

During that walk of just a few blocks, Sheats was able to point out the
three major problems plaguing the neighborhood: poverty, crime and lack of
job opportunities.

Sheats is hoping that the Hancock Community Development Corp. will be able
to help Henderson Extension residents pull themselves up by the bootstraps,
by mirroring successes a similar group has enjoyed in a problem area of
East Athens. Created in 1993, the East Athens Development Corp.'s mission
was to revitalize the Triangle Plaza area, a neighborhood surrounding the
site where Vine Street, Nellie B Avenue and Gressom Street come together.

The area was once known as the ''Iron Triangle'' because of its reputation
for extreme poverty and a high crime rate.

One of EADC's success stories has been its outreach center, which provides
a referral service to educate neighborhood residents about programs that
are available to help in areas such as housing, employment, child care and
health care. The center has also coordinated neighborhood watch groups,
neighborhood cleanup and recycling efforts, free legal advice from
University of Georgia law students and job-training seminars.

In its first 10 years, EADC has developed three basic types of programs:
housing, education and finance.

Sixty-five people have taken business classes offered by the non-profit
group, spawning 33 new businesses, according to the EADC. The U.S.
Department of Agriculture awarded the corporation $50,000 to continue the
classes, recognizing the success of a program that teaches how to write a
business plan, develop a marketing strategy and draw a budget.

Sheats said his group had begun providing some career counseling, although
not at the same level as EADC, and is just getting its feet wet in the area
of developing affordable housing. Economic development is still a ways down
the road, he said.

Learning to crawl

According to Athens-Clarke County Commissioner Tom Chasteen, the Hancock
group is still taking baby steps, just as the EADC did a decade earlier.

''They are trying to collaborate with the (county) Department of (Human
and) Economic Development and the Athens Housing Authority, but they are
not quite at that point where they can carry the load,'' Chasteen said.
''That's how things started for the EADC, and given time it will be
tremendous what they can do when they are able to deal with grant-writing
and focus specifically on that area.''

The Hancock Community Development Corp. is primarily funded by HED, which
reduced its last year's contribution of $115,000 to about $78,000 this
year. Chasteen said it was decided to provide just enough funding for HCDC
administrative salaries until its personnel become fully trained in
providing career counseling and grant writing.

''We had gotten a little ahead of the game, so we decided to step back and
allow them time to become qualified and certified to be counselors,''
Chasteen said. ''Mr. Sheats is within a few hours of where he can be
qualified to hold classes to help people manage budgets and that sort of
thing so when they have opportunities to move into a house they will have
the knowledge they need, about things like utilities, general upkeep, etc.,
in order to own a house.''

Businesses wanted

The small patch of land on which the former grocery store stands, at the
corner of Henderson Extension and Columbus Street, is the only area now
commercially zoned in Henderson Extension. Sheats said that is why bringing
business into the area remains a long-term goal while the HCDC and others
work to address the immediate problems of housing and job training.

Whether the neighborhood is rezoned in the future to allow in more
businesses ''will have to be weighed against the elimination of housing''
it would cause, according to Chasteen.

''The first thing you have to do to bring businesses in is to stabilize the
community to make it a safer community for people to live in and for
businesses to thrive in,'' he said.

Once funded for economic development, Sheats said, the search for a Publix
or other business to take the place of Justin's Grocery will commence.

''We need to bring in someone from whom people can learn to be
entrepreneurs,'' he said.

HCDC is just beginning to become involved in developing affordable housing
in the Henderson Extension area, a role now prominently played by Athens
Housing Authority.

Getting into the ACT

The Athens Housing Authority is using its ACT I Homes program as part of
its long-term strategy to aid in community efforts to develop affordable
homeownership opportunities in downtown neighborhoods. Working with the
HED, the authority receives federal Community Development Block Grant money
and other funding to purchase vacant lots or abandoned houses in East
Athens and the Hancock Corridor. According to agency literature, the
housing authority then constructs new homes in a style compatible with the
surrounding neighborhood.

To purchase an ACT I home, families must meet income eligibility
requirements, but earn at least $18,000 per year; be able to obtain a
mortgage; have some down payment funds available; be a first-time home
buyer and be residents of Athens-Clarke County, housing literature states.

''The concept behind this is neighborhood revitalization,'' said Rick
Parker, executive director of the Athens Housing Authority. ''When you have
dilapidated units and vacant land in in-town neighborhoods, that property
isn't generating much in tax revenues and not supporting the economic
revitalization of the neighborhood.''

In East Athens, three ACT I homes were bought and sold by the AHA some time
ago, Parker said, and another four recently came on the market.

Within the Henderson Extension area, he said, a total of nine properties
have been acquired for the ACT I Homes program, all of which have existing
houses on them. A review is under way to determine whether the houses
should be demolished and rebuilt, or rehabbed.

''Neighborhoods can be healthy with a mix, and that mix includes home
ownership,'' Parker said. ''Most people would believe having a homeowner in
their neighborhood rather than a (vacant) lot is a positive, so home is
something that in our community we certainly want to focus on.''

In its initial foray into housing rehabilitation, Sheats said, HCDC
brokered a deal for a dilapidated house on Henderson Avenue Extension for
rehabilitation under the ACT I Home program.

''That house was once a house of drug distribution,'' he said. ''There is
an ongoing need for housing rehab over here, which is something we at the
HCDC will be focusing on once we get the funding.''

Turning on The Light

Another person heavily involved in Henderson Extension improvement efforts
is Mary Redman, director of The Light, a ministry of St. James United
Methodist Church based on the corner of Paris Street and Henderson Avenue.

At The Light, area residents can pick up needed food items that are
distributed weekly and eat at a soup kitchen. But the Methodist mission is
concentrating its efforts on reaching the minds of children, through
computer literacy training and mentoring, Redman said.

''I don't know if people wake up one day and say 'I'm going to deal drugs,'
or whether it's just the environment they grew up in,'' she said. ''But I
think some of the problem stems from people not knowing what's out there
and available, or not knowing even what's inside themselves.''

Redman said with Henderson Extension's problems now under close scrutiny by
the community at large, ''agencies are coming into the area, and hopefully
we will see gaps being filled in.''

On the public safety side, a police substation is planned for next year at
the corner of Baxter Street and Collins Avenue, the site of a former bar
and grill that is just a few blocks south of Henderson Extension. Sheats
said he expected to see a drop in criminal activity from the increased
police presence the substation will bring.

''We still have concerns about our 'street pharmacists,' but I do believe
in time we can correct these concerns, especially with the upcoming police
substation,'' he said.

Athens-Clarke Police Chief Jack Lumpkin was scheduled to speak to residents
Saturday during a gathering at Rocksprings Community Park, to bring them up
to speed on the substation's progress as well as other efforts by his
department to combat crime.

''I will remind the group that, as long-term residents and business owners
of the area have known, the rate and severity of crime and order problems
have been less frequent and less noticeable over the last six years, and
thus, gentrification has become an option for many investors,'' Lumpkin
said last week.

''Also, as long-term residents know, Henderson Extension has at least a
70-year history of alcohol-dependent individuals frequenting that area,''
he said. ''National drug dependency studies seem to indicate that a
significant percentage of individuals that once became alcohol-dependent
currently are becoming crack cocaine-dependent.''

The police chief added, ''Of course we would like to see all drug sales
eradicated from that area as well as other areas in Athens-Clarke County.
Many of the individuals that frequent the area to sell drugs do not live
within miles of Henderson Extension. The ACCPD will continue to arrest
criminal and order violators in the area and seek their vigorous prosecution.''

Doug Bachtel, professor of housing and consumer economics at the University
of Georgia, commended the multi-pronged approach being taken toward solving
ills in what he called on of the most poverty-stricken areas of
Athens-Clarke County.

''They're providing hope, but equally important they're providing
structures so that folks can get jobs and stay in school, to provide the
means so that people can work their way out of that situation,'' Bachtel
said. ''Educational, vocational, housing, mentoring, transportation, day
care - in order to solve these problems it has to be solved as a total
package.''