Children Found In Fewer Than 1% of Decatur Condos
May 5, 2009 | 3:27 pmIn case you can’t wait for the hard copy, the May Decatur Focus is now online.
As is often the case, the must-read section this month is Lyn’s “Focus on Downtown Development.” This month she answers some of the most common questions heard from residents lately.
One of those questions addresses something we’ve been batting around here for months.
Q: Aren’t all of these multi-family developments generating a lot of children that will over-burden the school system?
A: Of the more than 600 new units built in downtown, fewer than six house children. [emphasis mine] More than 60 percent of the residents in these units are empty-nesters and the remaining 40 percent are primarily young professionals. Households with school-aged children are generally drawn to single family housing and Decatur hasn’t added a significant number of single family units since the development of the Sycamore Ridge subdivision in the early 1990s.
In 1970, national figures showed that 44 percent of all households had children and only 17 percent of them were singleperson households. In 2006, roughly 35 percent of American households had children while 26 percent were single-person households. In Decatur, only 25 percent of our households have school-aged children. Baby Boomers will continue to drive the housing market for the foreseeable future and they are opting for smaller housing units in an urban setting. We believe this will continue to support the condominium market, which provides signifi cant tax revenue for school operations without adding to the student population.
Wow. Apparently the yard is as important a feature for Fido as it is for little Sally.
Click over to page 2 of The Focus to read the rest of Lyn’s FAQ.
I hope the respective Boards of Education from Atlanta and DeKalb see the results of this study. In the past, DeKalb in particular, the Boards of Education have been reluctant to support TAD financing for fear that the school system will lose revenue. I don’t know if the Decatur condos were TAD funded and suspect they were not. Never-the-less these multi-family projects have not resulted in additional children being added to the school system, and they have added greatly to the quality of life in Decatur.
When Andres Duany was recently in Atlanta he stressed the fact that density is our friend. It promotes walking and makes transit feasible. Density also provides the rooftops to support vibrabt retail. Duany’s line was, “density makes the doughnuts freesher.” The other point he made that this study supports is that density doesn’t add to the traffic. Traffic is the result of a road system that is an open network. Cars are coming from everywhere, not just these condos.
Oh no! No children! No traffic! And lots of taxes for Decatur’s coffers!
What red herring can I use to make my NIMBY arguments at planning meetings.
Hi,
We’re one of those families with kids in a downtown condo. But I have to say, there are four other families in our building with children. Can it be that 5 out of 6 are just in our building? I wonder when the data was collected. We have been here about a year, and a couple of the families have toddlers.
I moved from my house on Superior (after my divorce) to a condo on Northern Ave. Which I lived in until we rented a house on garden then bought our current house on Wilton. I was once a single mother living in a condo with two young boys – and I was not the only one (even back in ‘94).
I’d would like to know how they collected this data – because it seems to me that we have several condominiums in Decatur that would work very well for a single parent who wanted to remain in this school district. To think that won’t continue to happen seems foolish.
I live in Talley and the neighbors across the hall have kids, but that’s the only family with them I’ve seen so far. You could probably run an informal survey through the Decatur Condo Alliance.
I checked with downtown condo association folks late last year to get the number of condo units with school-aged children. I did not go door to door. After the census next year, we’ll have exact numbers but the bottom line is that the percentage of families with school-aged children living in downtown condominiums is very small and the percentage of families with children overall is decreasing as the number of childless households and single occupancy households continues to grow. It certainly isn’t unheard of for families with school-aged children to live in downtown, multi-family buildings and in fact, we may begin to see more of that as people become more comfortable with alternatives to single-family housing lifestyles. Because Decatur is relatively small and playgrounds and parks exist within walking distance of downtown, downtown living should be an attractive alternative for families with children. Still, the number of families with children who choose this life-style will continue to be a very small percentage of the total number of downtown residents.
I think the condo building managers should put something in the water in their buildings to render the residents sterile so we don’t have to worry about any more little rugrats (or, pehaps, carrera-marble-rats) in the downtown area.
condo family, I took Bob’s comment as a joke pointing out the intense amounts of worry some people have about student-age kids in condos and certainly not a personal attack on you or any condo dwellers.
I live in a condo but all my kids are “free range”, they don’t tend to show up in the city census. I know they are around somewhere since the School Tuition/City Tax bill keeps showing up…
There was not TAD or any other government sponsored funding for any Decatur condos.
The police will end up spending all their time breaking up hot tub swingers parties and arresting people for drinking Pinot in clear public view on their balconies. Meanwhile, there will be anarchy in the streets.
These downtown condos are a scourge.
Perhaps Lyn was specifically referring to the number of households containing CSD students.
Your scenario may not be all that uncommon, Stacy, but you’re talking about a change of address for existing students. It doesn’t add new kids to the system. Altogether different.
Bottom line, whatever the exact number, our downtown multifamily isn’t generating a significant number of new kids, period. It’s true in national trends and it’s true on the ground here. I know, for their own reasons, not everyone in town is a fan of Decatur’s downtown projects, but they need to find a different boogey man. This one’s a non issue.
You are definitely right that we are a small minority regardless of numbers, esp. when talking about school-age children. Though my older daughter will be starting kindergarten in CSD this fall, and there is another kid her age down the hall who will be attending private school. I agree that more families will be drawn to the condos here, for the reasons you stated, and more. It’s working out great for us so far. We never had a yard in the first place, and there is so much we can walk to and do right outside our door. And the pool is a lot of fun too;o)
I agree families probably won’t be moving here in droves, but with regard to a comment above regarding single parents — two single parents recently moved in, and their kids are here part-time. I definitely get how this would be a great option for them.
(And as far as a yard, our family does have a plot at the community garden! My kids love going there. I wish we had more of this kind of garden space in Decatur. It would definitely be used.)
Uh, wow. That’s really an awful thing to say. You don’t know me or my family.
OK, thanks, and sorry. I can see that. Sometimes it’s hard to get sarcasm via the printed word. I would much rather believe it was a joke than that it was serious!