Due to the lobbying of Charles Palmer, an Atlantan real estate developer, Atlanta had been the site of the first public housing project in the country in 1936, Techwood Homes.

Charles Palmer became the AHA's first chairperson, and under him and his successors, the agency continued to clear slums and build public housing complexes.

During the 70s and 80s, the AHA came under increasing criticism, such as from The Great Speckled Bird, over its management of its complexes, as violence and physical deterioration began to grow.

When Atlanta won its bid to host the 1996 Olympics, city leaders worried that the public housing complexes would be an international embarrassment.

Under chairperson Renee Glover, the AHA won Federal HOPE VI funding to tear down many of the public housing complexes, including Techwood.

After the Olympics, the campaign to tear down Atlanta's public housing continued, and by 2011 all traditional-style units were torn down or sold to private entities.

Charles Palmer, a conservative real estate developer, became concerned with the threat to property values posed by shantytowns so close to downtown.

[3] Similar concerns were being expressed among the African-American elite, who disliked the physical proximity of Atlanta University to the slum known as Beaver Slide.

[6] Techwood Flats was a mixed-race community located between Georgia Tech and downtown Atlanta, with buildings that often lacked running water or electricity.

[4] Charles Palmer claimed that he selected Techwood Flats specifically because it lay on his commute from northwest Atlanta into downtown.

This set a precedent of public housing in Atlanta being used to shape the racial and economic composition of communities in areas of interest to the elite.

With the passing of the Wagner-Steagall Act, this was moved to the newly created United States Housing Authority (USHA) under the Department of the Interior.

The Board of Aldermen granted the AHA the power of eminent domain and tax exemption, and later delegated to it the task of overseeing urban renewal.

This was especially emphasized by US Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, who saw slum clearance as a positive good in itself, regardless of whether the units were replaced with public housing.

The AHA announced that Harris Homes would be its "last low-rent project", as it was redirecting its efforts to urban redevelopment, which was to replace public housing.

Criticism from the left, such as from the underground newspaper The Great Speckled Bird, focused on the shoddy construction of recent projects, and the lack of funding for basic maintenance.

[3] The "moderate" coalition of businessmen and wealthy elites that dominated Atlanta politics had realized that they could continue slum clearance and urban renewal without needing to build adequate replacement housing.

The Integral Group and McCormack Baron Salazar together won the contract in 1994 to demolish Techwood and build its replacement, Centennial Place.

[20] When Centennial Place opened, the concept had changed to that of a mixed income community, with only 300 of the previous 1100 units remaining for low-income residents.

As of 2007, Centennial Place had a math, science and technology-focused elementary school, a YMCA, a branch bank, a child-care facility and retail shops.

After its completion, she began to work towards demolishing the rest of Atlanta's public housing, with the goal of replacing them with "Mixed-Income Communities", or MICs.

The agency offered residents who qualified a variety of relocation options and long-term assistance that included federal rent-assistance vouchers good anywhere in the country.

12 communities are owned by the AHA and overseen by private property management firms, including 10 senior high-rises and 2 low-rise complexes for families.