Articles

Metro Atlanta builds on plan for affordable homes

By Maria Saporta
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
September 17, 2007

The Atlanta region continues to have a disconnect of affordable residences, especially near its major work centers. As a result, that forces Atlantans into long commutes to their jobs from homes they can afford -- creating traffic jams along the way.

The Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership this week will release its latest comprehensive report on affordable housing that highlights several gaps in how we're growing as a region.

And while the new report points to some progress since ANDP's last review in 2004, results shows that the Atlanta region has a long way to go before it has a balance between jobs and housing choices.

For example, two-thirds of all new houses being built in metro Atlanta are single-family detached homes while 58 percent of the population either lives alone or with only one other person.

So we are building homes we can't afford as the recent foreclosure crisis painfully demonstrates. At the same time, many local governments restrict the development of apartments or multifamily residences, which would make their communities more affordable and viable to the general population.

The report, using research from Georgia Tech, also identifies the shortage of affordable housing near job centers. Not surprisingly, downtown and Midtown (69,471 and 30,770, respectively) have the greatest deficits of affordable housing -- largely because of the high number of jobs and the high cost of land.

But other job centers also have significant affordable housing deficits: Buckhead (27,488); Airport (25,611); Central Perimeter ( 22,268); Norcross (14,668); Six Flags/Fulton Industrial (11,997); and Chamblee/Doraville (10,792).

"We have to make sure there are a wide variety of housing choices near jobs so people won't have to commute so far," says John O'Callaghan, ANDP's president and CEO. "Disproportionately, the folks who have to drive the farthest are those who have the lower incomes. That's not efficient for the region. And it's not efficient for families."

In the study, ANDP identifies the number of undeveloped or underdeveloped acres near each of the job centers to show the potential for new residential development.

When looking at countywide numbers, the picture is not any prettier.

The Chicago-based Center for Neighborhood Technology, a contributor to ANDP's report, looked at the number of jobs with an average annual wage of $35,000 or less compared to the number of affordable housing units for people making that amount or less.

The biggest deficit is in Gwinnett County. It has 118,841 jobs earning $35,000 or less but only 58,202 affordable housing units. That means that 60,639 people must commute into Gwinnett for those jobs instead of living in the county.

In the total 10-county Atlanta region, there's a shortage of 174,582 residential units affordable to people earning $35,000 or less.

Interestingly enough, DeKalb County has the closest match with 96,563 jobs at $35,000 or less compared to 93,359 affordable housing units.

The issue is extremely complex because each community has different needs to achieve a healthy balance of housing choices. The upper-income communities -- such as Buckhead or the Perimeter -- need more housing options for middle- and lower-income families while Clayton County needs to attract more upper-middle income families to reach a healthy balance.

The latest ANDP report also includes testimonials from developers who argue that it's financially safer to develop communities with a variety of housing choices.

Rick Porter, founder of Richport Properties, shows two development scenarios -- one with just high-end homes and the other with a variety of housing choices with slightly greater density. It turns out that the mixed-income development is more profitable than the high-end scenario.

"The development community hasn't looked hard enough at the opportunities to build mixed-income housing," O'Callaghan says. "You vary the risk when you build mixed-income communities."

When looking at progress in the past three years, the report refers back to the 2004 recommendations, which included establishing a Regional Housing Resource Center. That center was launched in February as a partnership between ANDP, the Atlanta Regional Commission and the Georgia Department of Community Affairs.

The 2004 report also recommended that jurisdictions pass inclusionary zoning (voluntary or otherwise) to make sure that all new developments include an affordable component.

The report shows that Fulton County, DeKalb County and the city of Atlanta were leading the region with such policies.

Another key recommendation was for local governments to establish housing trust funds that would help subsidize affordable units in their communities. Atlanta, once again, was leading the way. It has set up $75 million in "housing opportunity bonds" that will help provide affordable housing options for 3,000 workers in the city. The city also is calling for 15 percent of the revenues from its tax allocation districts to go toward affordable housing. In the Beltline project area, the plan is to set aside $240 million for work-force housing, which would help fund 5,600 units.

The rest of the region, however, is not as far along in developing funding strategies for affordable housing, something ANDP hopes to help change.

"We traditionally grew up serving the city of Atlanta, and now our mission has grown to serve the entire metro area," O'Callaghan says. "In the next five to 10 years, we will be shaping who is going to live in the city five decades from now. If we don't figure it out in the next 10 years, it will be too late."


Copyright 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. More information: www.ajc.com.

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