Housing costs going through roof
Plans to combat affordability crisis not good enough, out of touch, experts say
ATLANTA — Meshell North is stuck.
A lifelong Atlanta resident, information technology worker and grandmother of four, North resides in an apartment on the city’s northwest side. She’d like to move into a house, but the prices stand out of her reach.
“I can’t afford to move out,” said North, who rented a house before the Great Recession and then was forced to leave when its owner entered foreclosure. “I’ve been looking for houses to rent, and there are so many scams out there. The houses you do see ask an arm and a leg for a garage. It’s crazy out there.”
As in many other cities across the nation, Atlanta’s housing costs are rising fast, so much so that many middle- and lowerincome residents are forced to leave because they can’t keep up with them. The problem has reached such a crisis level here that Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, a Democrat, pledged $1 billion toward creating or preserving 20,000 affordable housing units by 2026, with half the money from public funds and half from private.
Bottoms isn’t alone.
District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, issued an aggressive promise for her tenure — 36,000 new units by 2025, 12,000 of them affordable. She challenged her counterparts in suburban Maryland and Northern Virginia to build 240,000 more over the same time frame.
In 2017, San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, a Democrat, set a goal to build 25,000 new homes by 2023, 10,000 of them rent-subsidized, and New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, a Democrat, aims to create or preserve 300,000 affordable units by 2026.
Yet the ambitious plans from coast to coast are facing mounting criticism. Some housing advocates assert that officials in the cities don’t fully grasp the scope of the problem and aren’t moving quickly enough to address it.
And with the mayors offering little specifics on how they would generate the revenue to finance their goals, other experts say they worry that the numbers and time frame put forward may be empty promises.
Atlanta’s plan “talks about coming up with new revenue sources but doesn’t name them or put a dollar figure on them,” said Dan Immergluck, a professor in the Urban Studies Institute at Georgia State University in Atlanta. “There’s not a commitment for new city money.”
He urges Atlanta to take bolder and more specific actions, including approving $250 million in bonds, dedicating hotel/ motel taxes toward affordable housing and raising property taxes.
Inland cities in the South like Atlanta have long been viewed as cheaper alternatives to coastal metros. Yet in some Atlanta neighborhoods, more than 72 percent of residents are rentburdened, which the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development defines as spending more than 30 percent of one’s income on housing. In 2015, 22 percent of Fulton County’s renting households received an eviction notice.
City leaders are focused on Atlanta households earning below 60 percent of area median income, or roughly $28,000 for an individual. Their strategies include building units on publicly owned vacant land, rehabilitating units where people already live, upzoning for duplexes, triplexes and accessory dwelling units, easing parking requirements and ensuring that landlords accept housing vouchers.
“Our population has increased by over 17 percent, but that’s not enough,” said Terri Lee, Atlanta’s first chief housing officer.
She added that growth is great for the city, but not if it means longtime residents must leave.
“We have to do things to preserve the opportunity for our existing residents to stay here.”
It’s an ambitious plan, but, to Immergluck, a vague one.
For example, the city hasn’t set yearly increments to reach the 20,000 figure, he said.
While he agrees with Bottoms’ overall goals, Immergluck said he wishes the city were moving faster.
“We’re seven years into this affordable housing crisis,” he said. “These ideas have been floating around for a long time, yet there’s no legislation. Where are the ordinances?”
For residents like North, the need for quick action stands paramount.
Yet North also knows she’s lucky. Rent in her building has risen only incrementally over the years, $50 or so at a time. She makes $18 an hour and knows many friends and relatives, including her daughter and grandchildren, who’ve been forced out of the city by escalating prices.
Her daughter’s family slept in a hotel for more than a year before finally settling in a suburban Clayton County duplex. It’s a long drive for them to visit northwest Atlanta, with no yard for the grandchildren to enjoy upon arrival.
“People are coming in and remodeling houses, then putting them back up for sale,” North said, estimating that homes near her unit off Highway 78 rent for at least $950 per month, $1,200 for a nicer place. “If they’re going to do that, they need to provide some kind of program to help people buy those houses and have them be affordable.”
Other cities face their own issues. With four years to go, San Jose stands more than 9,000 units short of reaching 10,000 affordable homes by 2023. The city reports 946 affordable units complete or under construction, with an additional 2,441 in the pipeline.
Funding is a major concern. San Jose’s housing director, Jacky Morales-Ferrand, estimates that more than $520 million is needed to meet the city’s 10,000-unit goal. Apartment rents in San Jose grew 50 percent between 2010 and 2018, with the median now $2,600 per month for a two-bedroom unit.
One conundrum is that it costs cities more to house very-lowincome earners — the lower the income, the more subsidy needed for housing. But because of high land costs in California, developers need high rents to justify building expenses.
San Jose remains largely suburban in character and aims for more downtown residential high-rises, more ADUs and more down-payment assistance for first-time buyers.
“No solution is off the table,” said Morales-Ferrand.
The city has earmarked nearly $100 million toward affordable housing projects over the next several years and hopes to accelerate the pace of its program as 2023 approaches.