Jesus Raves

I recently ventured around Athens to photograph a few boarded up houses from a list of 200 or so abandoned properties. The pictures ran with a story about the Athens-Clarke Commission voting to create a land bank, which is an authority with the power to buy up broken down properties that are put up for auction to pay back taxes or demolition costs by flipping them to affordable-housing nonprofits. Read the story here. At one property I saw what seemed to be the crash pad of a homeless person. There was a mattress and a few articles of clothing tucked into a corner of the porch hidden from street view. I couldn't help but wonder where the person will stay once this property is auctioned off and flipped.  I imagine several of these eyesores around Athens, the third poorest city its size, are secret shelters. 

"Jesus Raves" is spray-painted on the boarded up windows of a building on Hancock Avenue near downtown Athens. Athens-Clarke County is starting a land bank, an authority that will buy up properties that are sold at auction to pay back taxes or demolition costs, then flip them to non-profits that build affordable housing for redevelopment.