Atlanta is running out of time. Across this city, affordable housing developments that should be moving forward are getting harder to build, harder to finance and harder to preserve.
The cost of building and preserving affordable housing has changed faster than the tools we use to pay for it, and unless we act with urgency, the homes we are counting on today may never open their doors tomorrow.
When affordable housing becomes impossible to build, the consequences do not stop at the doors of the families who need it most.
Workers are pushed farther from their jobs, seniors are priced out of the neighborhoods they helped build, children are forced to change schools, traffic gets worse, employers struggle to retain workers, and neighborhoods lose the very people and institutions that made them strong in the first place.
In recent years, Atlanta has made meaningful progress. Our group project has worked together to create and preserve thousands of affordable homes. These gains reflect years of successful coordination, investment and problem-solving, but progress should not blind us to the warning signs. The economics of affordable housing are approaching extinction in the city, and they are not waiting on us.
$350M funding gap threatens progress in the city
Credit: Atlanta Housing
Credit: Atlanta Housing
Atlanta faces a shortfall of roughly 22,000 affordable units, and we are losing at least 1,000 affordable units each year. At the same time, nearly every part of the development process has become more expensive. Land, labor, materials, insurance and even financing all cost more. For market-rate housing, rising costs are often passed on through higher rents. To keep rents within reach for families with limited incomes, affordable housing must absorb many of the same rising costs while bringing in less revenue to cover them.
As a result, affordable housing is rarely funded by one source, and one check hardly ever closes the deal. It takes layers of public investment, private financing, tax credits, vouchers, and local subsidy, and each layer has to do its part. When one piece weakens, the whole deal becomes harder. When several pieces weaken at once, the strongest projects can fall apart.
Today, even developers awarded 4% Low-Income Housing Tax Credit deals — among the most reliable affordable housing tools in the country — are now reporting multimillion-dollar financing gaps on projects in Atlanta without city-backed subsidy. When projects that already have tax credits, debt and equity in place still cannot move forward, the entire affordable housing ecosystem is in danger.
Over the next four years, the city projects a funding need exceeding $350 million just to support more than 5,600 units already in the pipeline.
These are homes Atlanta is already counting on, and if we fail to fund them, the cost of inaction will show up in longer commutes, deeper displacement, more instability and fewer working families able to remain in the city they help keep running.
Urgency is needed to avoid the bottom falling out
Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com
Credit: abbey.cutrer@ajc.com
While the gaps are widening at the exact moment this crisis demands more from us, the good news is Atlanta does not suffer from a shortage of solutions to address housing affordability. We’ve proved we know how to produce affordable housing at scale, and that those investments are stronger when connected to reliable transportation, good schools, healthy food, safe streets and economic opportunity.
However, lessons learned do not build homes, and proven solutions mean little if we cannot fund them at the scale this moment requires. Across the country, as costs continue to skyrocket, cities are watching projects stall, financing gaps widen and their developers quietly reconsider whether deals remain feasible at all.
Affordable housing only happens when cities choose to make it a priority and create the conditions necessary to fund it over time. Atlanta has made that choice before. We must continue making it now.
We should also be clear-eyed about the stakes. If we do not act with urgency, the bottom will fall out of affordable housing in Atlanta. Our city cannot afford to wait any longer.
We are still losing affordable housing faster than we can replace it. We are fighting to preserve existing affordability while also trying to create new affordability, and the financial tools available to do both are shrinking.
Too often, housing policy conversations get stuck in search of the perfect answer. While we debate, the market will keep moving, costs will keep rising and we will miss the window to protect Atlanta’s affordable housing future.
This is the time to act. If we are serious about affordable housing, inclusive growth and making sure working families, seniors and children have a place in Atlanta’s future, then we have to do more than agree on the problem. We must fund the solution.
Terri M. Lee is president and CEO of Atlanta Housing, the largest housing authority in Georgia and one of the largest in the nation.
This guest opinion is cosigned by the individuals below:
Rosalyn Merrick, Atlanta Habitat for Humanity
John O’Callaghan, Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership (ANDP)
Kerry Stewart, Atlanta-Fulton County Recreation Authority (AFCRA)
Darion Dunn, Atlantica Properties
A.J. Robinson, Downtown Atlanta Inc.
Carmen Chubb, Columbia Residential
Dr. Christie Cade, Enterprise Community Partners
Dr. Eloisa Klementich, Invest Atlanta
Sharon Guest, Radiant Development Partners
John Ahmann, Westside Future Fund
Marc Pollack, EQ Housing Advisors
John Majors, Atlanta Urban Development Corporation
Leonard Adams, Quest CDC
James Alexander, Mercy Housing Southeast
Egbert Perry, Integral Group
Richelle Patton, Collaborative Housing Solutions
H. Jerome Russell, HJ Russell & Company
Chuck Young/Edrick Harris, Prestwick Development
Joel Dixon, Urban Oasis Development
Robb Jones/Ralph Cook Jr., Cityscape Ventures
Grace Roth, Atlanta Land Trust, Inc.
Daphne Bond-Godfrey. ULI Atlanta
Christopher Norman, Metro Atlanta Land Bank
Amanda Rhein, City of Atlanta
Clyde Higgs, Atlanta Beltline
Cathryn Vassell, Partners for Home
Eddie Benoit, The Benoit Group
Send letters to the editor of 250 words or fewer with your name, city or town and contact information to letters@ajc.com.
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