“Oh honey you don't want to be making frequent tripes over there!” The real estate agent laughs as she says it. She's discussing my plan to buy and flip a cheap home in the Vine City area of not yet gentrified Atlanta. I didn't call it Vine City growing up. I called it the bluff; a crude acronym used by locals to describe the violent aspects of growing up on the westside of Atlanta. When I decided to flip a house I looked in my own neighborhood first, gentrification had been spreading through Summerhill like wildfire since I moved there in 2005. However as I browsed through the listings I quickly understood my home was far and above my price range, (bemused, I noticed my own parents would not be able to afford a home anymore in our neighborhood either). I moved my searches to the westside, the proud home of many classmates and friends. I remember specifically one Saturday afternoon driving through the neighborhood, nestled just below the brand new Mercedes Benz Stadium. I took photos of the countless abandoned homes plastered with “We buy cheap homes!” stickers and tagged with gang names. The day was successful, but when I drove home, list of potential properties in hand, I didn't feel excitement; I felt overwhelming and conflicting guilt. I was striving to be strong and self sufficient. But looking around all I felt was the crushing guilt of aiding in the displacement of impoverished families, who watched with dismay as the local barber shops turned into hot yoga studios and the ice cream parlors became gluten free bakeries. Struggling with this, for a long time I just stopped looking for homes to flip. Almost a year later I have returned to the search after meeting a young woman who had grown up in my house before my parents bought it from hers, she shared the importance of a family making memories in the same home she did. I thought about her a lot when I decided to return to Vine city to search once again for homes to flip. Im looking, this time, for homes owned by families in the community, Im promising to them, and to myself, to rent to locals, hire local workers to fix up the properties, and sell only to families who would get the chance to make there own memories in the home.