The Avondale neighborhood in East Chattanooga has a surplus of duplexes – several of them vacant – and while the city of Chattanooga wants to help put homeowners and renters in them through its new “Owner-Occupied Duplex Program,” some residents have concerns about an increase of renters in the neighborhood.
At Monday’s Chattanooga-Hamilton County Regional Planning Commission meeting, commissioners approved requests to rezone four properties on Milne Street and Arlington Avenue in the Avondale and Glenwood neighborhoods to R-2 zoning, which will allow them to be used as a duplex. A 2004 ordinance created by the city states that any duplexes left vacant for 100 days or more are automatically rezoned from R-2 back to a single-family R-1 zoning.
Three of the properties – located at 2005, 2007 and 2009 Milne St. – are owned by the city and will be a part of the new duplex program that Mayor Andy Berke and city staff announced in late February. The vacant, blighted duplexes on Milne Street, and similar ones in the same neighborhood, were built in the 1940s and ’50s for returning World War II veterans and their families, but they now show years of neglect.
City staff has been working with the neighborhood leadership for the past year on how the city can help create affordable housing in the neighborhood and attract homeowners, said Donna Williams, administrator of the Office of Economic and Community Development on Monday.
Williams said the owner-occupied duplex program is the result of those talks, and the program would require that one side of the duplex is owner-occupied and the other side is restricted to a low-to-moderate income renter. The duplexes would not be torn down but refurbished, and the city has funds to provide up to a $20,000 homebuyer incentive for purchasers who want to invest in the neighborhood.