EXCLUSIVE: Atlanta Habitat for Humanity Replaces CEO Alan Ferguson with COO Rosalyn Merrick

The Atlanta Habitat for Humanity board of directors voted Monday to replace CEO Alan Ferguson with Rosalyn Merrick, the nonprofit’s executive vice president and chief operating officer. Atlanta Civic Circle learned exclusively.

Ferguson announced his resignation from the board on May 2. He plans to stay until the end of the month to ease the transition for his successor, Merrick said. Atlanta Civic Circle in an interview.

Merrick joined Atlanta Habitat as director of development in 2020, after holding positions at the Georgia Community Foundation, United Way of Greater Atlanta and other nonprofits.

The news comes nearly a month after Ferguson announced Atlanta Civic Circle that the local arm of Habitat, long known for building affordable single-family homes for first-time buyers, would move into multifamily development “to facilitate more housing supply coming to the market.”

Atlanta Habitat will build its first duplex later this year in the Sylvan Hills neighborhood of southwest Atlanta, Ferguson announced in April.

These projects will come to nothing under the new management of Atlanta Habitat. The pilot duplex will be part of an eight-acre development, Merrick said, “which could include townhomes, duplexes and our traditional single-family construction.”

Planned developments

The Sylvan Hills project reflects Atlanta Habitat’s new ambitions to build entire neighborhoods filled with homeownership units, not just single-family homes scattered around the city. It all started with a groundbreaking last August for Browns Mill Village, a community of 134 single-family homes spread across 31.4 acres in the Orchard Knob neighborhood of south Atlanta.

“We built this strategy around higher density options as a way to serve more families with limited land resources,” Merrick said. “We cannot create more land. So, with the land we have, what is the best possible use that allows us to create more affordable homeownership to serve more families? »

The eight vacant acres that Atlanta Habitat owns in Sylvan Hills, near Tyler Perry Studios and the Lakewood MARTA station, are currently zoned for light industrial development. The nonprofit organization has asked the City of Atlanta Planning Department to rezone the property for residential construction.

Merrick said Atlanta Habitat has been discussing its plans for Sylvan Hills — the nonprofit’s second planned development, after Browns Mill Village — with community members for years.

She acknowledges that NIMBYism (a “not in my backyard” mindset) can pose barriers to affordable housing development, but believes Habitat’s talent for building high-quality homes that are virtually indistinguishable from homes at market prices, should allay most concerns.

“Like all affordable housing developers, we have encountered NIMBYism,” she said. “But I think we deployed two really effective tactics (to allay neighbors’ concerns).”

One of them comes in the form of Tia McCoy, director of neighborhood engagement for Atlanta Habitat. McCoy has long talked with Sylvan Hills residents “to start building that reputation with the community,” Merrick said.

The other aspect is the quality of Atlanta Habitat’s housing, she added. “We all have an idea in our minds of what affordable housing looks like. These are the famous projects, many of which were abandoned in Atlanta.

“That’s why Browns Mill Village is so important,” she continued. “We knew that creating this beautiful, master-planned mixed-income (rate) affordable housing community would go a long way toward changing that paradigm – changing the perception in people’s minds of what an affordable housing community could look like .”