Take a Look at Langston Park Today!
Building a Community Takes Building Community
Atlanta Habitat has been building new construction in Sylvan Hills since 1994, but Langston Park called for something different. With nearly eight acres to develop, the questions were bigger, the impact would be greater, and the importance of community trust was clear from the start.
That is where Director of Engagement Tia McCoy came in.
As Atlanta Habitat began thinking about what this larger development could become, Tia helped lead the work of showing up, listening, and creating space for honest conversations. She attended neighborhood association meetings, sat down with members of the Sylvan Hills Planning Committee, and made it clear that Atlanta Habitat wanted to engage with the people who already called Sylvan Hills home and to be a good neighbor in the process.
Atlanta Habitat held six community design sessions where residents were invited to help imagine what Langston Park could be. She also helped create other ways for Atlanta Habitat to show up in Sylvan Hills, from a neighborhood cleanup to regular updates at neighborhood association meetings and on the community Facebook page.
In June 2025, she helped organize a neighborhood kickback at Langston Park so residents could come onto the site, ask questions, and hear directly about the vision for the development. In March 2026, she helped bring neighbors back again for a community chit chat, where they could see framing and foundations in progress and begin meeting some of the future homeowners who will soon call Langston Park home.
That steady presence has helped shape what Langston Park means today. This is the result of years of listening and planning, collaboration, and care. It is the product of people like Tia, who understand that building community, and building with community, must go hand in hand.
And now, after years of groundwork, the next chapter is almost here.
In two days, volunteers will step onto this site and help kickstart something that has been years in the making. It is the visible beginning of work that Atlanta Habitat and the Sylvan Hills community have been moving toward together for a long time.
For Atlanta Habitat, it is special because a long-held vision is finally taking shape. For Sylvan Hills, it is special because the future rising here has been shaped not only by construction plans, but by community voice, trust, and time.
And for every volunteer who shows up, that means this work carries even more weight.
A Home is Only the Beginning for Phileena
A future homeowner at Langston Park and the owner of Clever Beauty Braids, Phileena speaks about this season of her life with the kind of clarity that can only come from having lived through obstacles and still choosing hope. Her story is not about just building a house, but building a new future for herself, her son, and the life she knows they deserve.
"God really had this written in my story for me," she said.
That sense of purpose carries into every part of her journey.
Phileena has been braiding hair for nearly a decade. What began as something she learned by watching her mother and other women in her family, gradually became a craft, then a business, and now a dream she is ready to grow with intention. After recently winning Atlanta Habitat's Vision. Goals. Action! (VGA) Pitch Competition, she received a $5,000 investment in Clever Beauty Braids. This support has helped strengthen the business with branding, products, a website, and the tools she needs to keep growing.
She is proud of how far she has come, but she is also clear that she is only getting started.
For Phileena, this future home is part of a dream. A dream of a stable place to live, a place to create, and a place where business, motherhood, and peace can exist together under one roof. A place where her son will have something he has never had before: a room of his own. That matters to her deeply.
As she reflected on her journey, Phileena spoke openly about the difference between surviving and living. She shared memories of helping her mother pay bills while still young, walking to the store for food, going without hot water, and learning early what instability can feel like. Those experiences shaped her, but they did not define the end of her story. Instead, they became part of the reason she is so determined to build something different now.
"I gotta do it differently," she said, speaking of the future she wants for her son and the generations that will come after him. That determination is matched by joy.
When Phileena talks about Langston Park, she does not only talk about walls or finishes; she talks about neighbors and community. She talks about knocking on doors, borrowing a cup of sugar, planning block parties, and creating the kind of place where people really know one another. She lights up at the thought of building alongside others during Carter Work Project and seeing the neighborhood taking shape as a real community.
That is what excites her most.
She says this season of her life can be summed up in three words: ready, risk, redemption.
Phileena sounds ready. She has taken the risk. And now, step by step, she is building something redemptive for the life she is creating for her and her son.
At Langston Park, she is building a life where thriving, not just surviving, becomes the new normal.
