As a result of gentrification, neighborhoods like Lynwood Park have become prohibitively expensive for some families who've lived there for generations. Helping aging residents keep their homes is one of many ways the ABC program is helping Atlanta's low-income residents. "In some areas [property] tax increased by five times what it was," says Patricia Martin of the Lynwood Park Community Development Center. "We were thinking a lot of the older people who were living on fixed incomes were going to lose their homes."

Patricia Martin stared at her tax assessment notice last year in disbelief. In the year since she had received her last statement, her property taxes had tripled. And as Martin would soon learn, she was not alone.

Residents of Lynwood Park, Ga., a historic black community located just north of downtown Atlanta, were feeling the effects of gentrification as affluent homeowners were buying up property in and around the neighborhood. As a result, property values, taxes, and rental prices were snowballing-and with them, the hardships on low-income homeowners whose families had lived in the same homes for generations. "This community is a generational community dating back to the 1930s," Martin says. "It is not unusual for there to be fifth or sixth generations living here." 

Gentrification has become a big problem for many low-income residents in Atlanta, a city that underwent a population explosion during the roaring '90s. With corporate giants like the Coca-Cola Company, Home Depot, CNN, and UPS headquartered downtown, Atlanta's population grew from three million residents in 1990 to almost four and a half million in 2002. The shifts have put a huge strain on the aging, low-income residents in places like Lynwood Park, who were suddenly confronted with the unsettling notion of having to move far outside the city limits to afford comparable pieces of property.

"In many ways the problems that Lynwood Park is experiencing are very typical of what's going on in Atlanta," says Charles Gallagher, a sociology professor at Georgia State University. "As the upper-class gentry move in, they purchase housing in old neighborhoods, bid up the price of everything, and price people out of the renting market. Lynwood Park is not just an old neighborhood. It has an aging population-people who live on fixed incomes."

At the monthly meeting of the Lynwood Park Community Development Center (CDC) residents voiced their concern. "In some areas the tax increased by five times what it was," says Martin, the organization's executive director. "We were thinking a lot of the older people who were living on fixed incomes were going to lose their homes." 

Enter Jeff Plowman, a partner with the law firm of Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough, who began working with the Lynwood Park CDC through a pilot pro bono program called ABC (A Business Commitment) launched by the American Bar Association and the National Legal Aid & Defender Association a decade ago. The test project was introduced in 1997 in Georgia and Washington, D.C. Today, Atlanta's ABC program matches community-based organizations with business attorneys willing to help them with corporate and transactional legal work. 

When the property tax crisis reached its peak in 2002, Plowman was in the midst of trying to upgrade the CDC's business plan. He immediately switched gears. "Residents were facing a lose-lose situation," Plowman says. "In many cases the tax increases they would be paying were anywhere from 200 percent to 500 percent. Most of the neighborhood is low-income and about half is elderly, and they don't have the ability to pay higher taxes as a result of increased land value."

Recruiting other volunteer attorneys, Plowman helped the CDC file 120 tax appeals on behalf of the Lynwood Park residents. The hard work paid off, as most property owners received tax adjustments. Many of their tax rates have been fixed for the next two or three years, he says. "The neighborhood is still facing a very difficult challenge, and time will tell whether it will be able to salvage anything from this situation, but at least we're fighting this battle with them and for them," he says. 

ABC has been a boon to Atlanta nonprofits struggling to survive anemic philanthropic times. In Georgia, many community groups like the Lynwood Park CDC have urgent legal needs and limited budgets. Of Georgia's 14,000 registered nonprofits, 10,000 operate on budgets of less than $25,000. Many of them consistently forgo consulting attorneys because the cost of retaining counsel becomes prohibitively expensive, Plowman says. 

ABC has proved to be a cost-effective alternative, says Mike Monahan, Pro Bono Project Director for the Georgia Bar. He says ABC has provided more than $600,000 worth of free legal services to 75 community groups. ABC works because it takes advantage of the skills that most corporate attorneys already have-rather than forcing them to retrain in areas that are traditionally the province of legal aid. 

Plowman says before his involvement with ABC, he found himself doing whatever "pro bono work that just happened to wander my way." He says, "The ABC idea was intriguing. It was the answer for anyone who worked in the area of corporate law. It's helping organizations that help others."

Many corporate attorneys have reservations about trying to represent clients in family or housing law cases, or other areas in which they have little familiarity or experience, he says. 

"My observation over the years has been that a lot of pro bono programs have been geared to litigators and trial lawyers, where we as corporate transaction attorneys really don't have the competence or expertise to put our hands to the plow and really help out," says Justin Johnson (left), general counsel of Atlanta Life.

For companies like Atlanta Life-a successful local insurance company founded in 1905 by a former slave-ABC provides an opportunity for lawyers on staff to show their civic commitment by helping their own communities. "You want your employees to feel good about the community they live in," Johnson says, "and the only way you can do this is to actively make this community better."