Macon nonprofit announces $1.2 million investment for new homes in Tindall Fields

Alberta Holloway sat in the shade on her front porch late Thursday morning, curiously peering out across Plant Street at the vacant dirt lot where a small crowd of professionally-dressed people was clustered around a podium listening to voices on a loud speaker.

The 85-year-old couldn’t hear what was being announced, but her expression brightened upon learning about plans for new homes to be built in the Tindall Fields neighborhood where she’s lived for the past half century. 

“I think it’s great. I’ll tell you, I do,” Holloway said of the Macon-Bibb County Affordable Housing Fund’s plan to spend $1.2 million on building 10 new homes and rehabilitating the shell-of-a-house directly across the street. 

The faded emerald green structure facing Holloway’s home has been unoccupied for years. She’s watched people she doesn’t recognize come and go from it. In the next three months, the gutted structure — which is more than 100 years old — will be transformed into a three-bedroom, two-bathroom single-family home.

“That’s going to be nice,” Holloway said of the prospect of getting new neighbors and eliminating the eye sores in view from her porch.

MBCAHF Inc., the Macon-Bibb County Affordable Housing Fund, is a private nonprofit that operates a revolving loan program for developers and lenders funded with some $7.5 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars county commissioners voted to donate to it in January 2023. 

The organization’s 11-member governing board includes the mayor, executive directors of the land bank, housing authority and urban development authorities, and other nonprofit and community leaders, but its leadership has said its meetings and records are not open to the public.

“We meet on a regular basis and we’ve been doing some great work behind the scenes,” Mayor Lester Miller said to about two dozen people at the empty lot at 854 Plant St. where a new home is slated for construction. “It takes a lot of people working behind the scenes to make things happen. … What we’ve been doing is trying to make sure we have a strategic plan to get people into houses.”

Miller said affordable housing is a dire need across Macon, the state and the country.

“I’m excited about building houses. For a long time this last year, we’ve been tearing down houses,” Miller said. “Now it’s time to rebuild those houses.”

Tindall Fields is one of four neighborhoods the nonprofit identified as a target area for affordable housing development. The other three areas targeted include East Macon near the Ocmulgee Mounds, South Macon east of Houston Avenue and Pleasant Hill. 

Allen Wells, managing partner of Investment Group Development LLC, a newly-formed company that will hire contractors to build the 10 homes and rehabilitate one in Tindall Fields, said the plan for the property and house across from Holloway’s home “is basically to have them ready for someone to move into within this year, so by the end of the year.”

Wells said the aim in building single-family homes is to “basically disrupt the subdivision market” and provide housing that is “not only affordable but attainable.”

“We will start these two houses and as we find homeowners for these homes, we’ll move to the next house,” Wells said, adding that vacant lots on Emory Avenue and Jeff Davis Street are among other properties slated for new homes. “Hopefully, we’re looking at a 18-24 month project in this area.”

The company will work with lenders, Truist Bank and HomeFirst Housing Resource Services Inc., a nonprofit that aims to increase homeownership and offers credit counselling, to ensure the property is affordable for median income homebuyers, Wells said. The price of the homes will range from $180,000 to $250,000 and downpayment assistance will be offered to qualified buyers. 

Investment Group Development, a business which registered with the state in August 2024, is owned by Wells, Carl Tims, John Herring, Rashad Wynes, Richard Vaughn and Rodney Jackson, MBCAHF Executive Director Natalie Bouyett said.

Bouyett said MBCAHF has been working on the plans for new housing in Tindall Fields for about a year, but the concept of the revolving loan fund has been in the works for about six years. 

“To date the housing fund has committed $5.5 million, leveraging about $80 million from other funding sources like federal, state and private funding, and these investments are expected to bring in about 285 new affordable housing units in the next three years,” Bouyett said. “We’re bringing housing options to people who once thought housing ownership was out of reach for them.”

Bibb County has a homeownership rate of 51.5% and a median household income of $50,747, according to U.S. Census data. 

Everett Verner, executive director of the Macon-Bibb County Land Bank Authority, said the 11 homes will be restricted to buyers earning 120% or below the county’s area median income.

“The idea is, if you’re interested in the property, you go talk with HomeFirst, they’ll be able to help make sure you’ve got your credit together, help line up all that down payment assistance, and then hopefully it’s pretty straightforward,” Verner said. In an “ideal situation, we get (the homes) presold. It’d be great to get someone to come look at this and see the floor plan.”