Winder officials and regional planners have scheduled a meeting in early November to find out how four older, but centrally located, neighborhoods could be revitalized.
The city government, the Winder Housing Authority and the Northeast Georgia Regional Commission are sponsoring the 6:30 p.m. meeting on Nov. 4 at White Oak Springs Baptist Church on East New Street just east of downtown.
“We want to hear from people who live in the neighborhoods,” said Hasco W. Craver IV, program manager for the regional commission’s local government services. “We are looking for suggestions from the community concerning how to revitalize and rehabilitate their residential areas, and we want to know what’s broken. We want them to tell us what’s broken.”
The meeting is coming on the heels of a “windshield survey” of the neighborhoods in which planners in late September took photographs of individual homes and are now in the process of pairing the photos with census and other data.
“There are things you cannot see with a camera,” Craver said. “The deck on the side of the house may look OK from the sidewalk, but what you don’t know is when that family is home, they can’t go out there because it’s not structurally sound.” In addition to specific housing issues, the planners are interested in knowing about the livability of the neighborhoods — whether there are sidewalks that link residents to services or if the water and sewer infractructure needs to be fixed.
“That’s why we are hosting the community meeting,” he said. “A house may look shiny from the outside but have sewer problems and other stuff we can’t see. We want to know what services are needed, along with housing, to enable people to better their condition.”
HOUSING INITIATIVE UNDER WAY
The effort is part of a three-year housing initiative through the Georgia Initiative for Community Housing.
The initiative’s long-term goal is to increase the availability of affordable housing in Winder by revitalizing the older neighborhoods off Broad Street, which have mostly smaller houses, many of them in need of repair.
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