Update Friday morning: Podcast & details from the townhall coming this weekend.

A rather alarmist flyer has been taped to the front door of my apartment building, which apparently once upon a time long ago served some purpose for nearby Grady High School, urging residents to visit the terribly long URL DontLowerOurPropertyValues.com to file a complaint and protect our rights.

Apparently, the Midtown Neighbors’ Association is contemplating the establishment of a Local Historic District, and the anonymous website registrant with a PO Box at a UPS Store doesn’t like that idea. According to the all-caps shout on their page, our property values will plummet if the activist associations put historic regulations on our personal homes.

I can see their argument; a number of tycoons have driven up their property values in these neighborhoods by buying small, old (but charming) little bungalows, flattening them like a pile of toothpicks, and throwing up McMansion monstrosities. It’s all about location, location, location, right? So just because you want to live in our quaint little neighborhood doesn’t mean you need to be stuck with a 3/2 from the 1930’s. Establishing a historic district I imagine would change that dynamic to something more like buying a Saturn: what you see is what you get, take it or leave it.

However, I really don’t understand the anti-historic activist’s marketing strategy in taping such flyers to the doors of apartment buildings, where a bunch of working-class stiffs have settled for no dishwasher, no central air shoeboxes just to live in this part of town. The page that cites examples of the stagnant price of homes in nearby historic neighborhoods (that are also primo places to live) shows some lovely homes in the mid-200’s that I’d be thrilled to live in, and then asks us the goofy rhetorical question, “When was the last time you saw ANY house in Midtown or Virginia Highland sell for under $400,000, let alone $300,000?”

Um, what kind of answer do you expect from people who would love to own property in Midtown but can’t afford $300,000, let alone $400,000?

There’s a townhall meeting about this tonight, and I wonder if our anonymous property rights advocate will have the nads to be there — and whether it’ll be worth me skipping the Atlanta Press Club event to be there. (To learn about or to commit citizen journalism, that is the question….)



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