Cedartown team graduates from Ga. housing program
Local leaders in Cedartown are celebrating their recent graduation from the Georgia Initiative for Community Housing program, a state-led, threeyear course that focuses on community housing.
The Cedartown GICH team, comprised of government officials and active community leaders, graduated from the program last month at a conference in Athens, Ga.
What’s GICH? In short, it’s helped Cedartown sharpen its focus on eradicating blight and find ways to provide attractive and affordable housing to current residents. Over the last three years, nine blighted structures have been demolished, at no cost to taxpayers, one home has been brought up to code and two additional blighted structures are slated for demolition this year.
Cedartown Housing Authority, one of Cedartown’s GICH partners, began a $ 20 million- dollar rehabilitation project in 2015. That project included acquisition, rehab and equipping of a 100-unit apartment project and 140 housing units in Cedartown.
Vantage Development, another Cedartown GICH partner, began construction of a townhome development in 2015. The 62-unit development is slated to be completed this winter.
Launched in 2004, GICH grew out of Georgia’s experience with the National League of Cities’ Affordable Housing Program and the success stories that were celebrated at the annual Magnolia Awards for Excellence in Affordable Housing. Since 2005, sixty communities have directly benefited from the program — Cedartown is proudly one of them.
“GICH helps communities improve their quality of life and economic vitality through the development of locally-based housing and revitalization strategies,” said Cedartown City Commissioner Jordan Hubbard. “This is achieved through training, network- ing and technical assistance and a lot of elbow grease from our boots on the ground GICH team.”
Hubbard said that the Cedartown GICH Team represents many facets of the Cedartown community. “It took some time to build the solid core that we have, but we made it work for what best suits our community. We brought in bankers, realtors, investors, nonprofits, business owners, city employees, and citizens. With this knowledge base, along with the GICH program, we have a group that is well versed in housing needs and look forward to what we can accomplish in the coming years,” Hubbard said.
Though the Cedartown GICH team has completed the program, the group will still remain very active improving Cedartown’s housing stock. They plan to continue to meet and keep the public informed of their progress. The current team invites anyone who wishes to be part of the organization to call Cedartown City Hall at 770-748-3220 and speak with Public Information Officer Aimee Madden.
GICH is a collaboration of partners including: the University of Georgia’s Housing and Demographics Research Center, a unit of the Department of Financial Planning, Housing and Consumer Economics in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences; UGA’s Office of the Vice President for Public Service and Outreach; the Georgia Department of Community Affairs; and the Georgia Municipal Association, a voluntary, non-profit organization based in Atlanta that provides legislative advocacy, educational, employee benefit and consulting services to its 521 member cities.
The GICH program is funded by Georgia Power, as well as by the U.S. Department of Agriculture through a Rural Community Development Initiative grant. Additional in-kind services are provided by UGA Cooperative Extension and UGA’s Archway Partnership and the Carl Vinson Institute of Government, both units of the UGA Office of Public Service and Outreach.