Fairmount Avenue Apartments will be the first public housing site in which all the residents will be enrolled in the Chattanooga Housing Authority’s family self-sufficiency program.
“We want to encourage people not always to depend on public housing,” CHA board Chairman Eddie Holmes said.
Housing officials still are finalizing guidelines for the new Fairmount, an 18-unit site in North Chattanooga, but so far officials agree that all residents will have a job except the elderly or disabled. And instead of remaining in public housing for decades, all residents will participate in a plan to make themselves more financially stable within five years.
Families also may work toward obtaining a car or accumulating money to continue their educations.
“People will have to come up with family goals over a five-year plan … with the hope that at the end of the five years they will be fully self sufficient and able to move to homeownership or a market-rate rental unit,” said CHA Executive Director Betsy McCright.