The Housing Justice League has unveiled a raft of policy proposals to bolster the city of Atlanta’s efforts to expand affordable housing — ranging from pragmatic fixes to pie-in-the-sky ambitions.
The advocacy group’s “Housing First” platform for 2025 urges the city to define affordability based on local income metrics — not higher regional figures.
Atlanta defines area median income (AMI) — the basis for its housing affordability policies — using the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) regional figures for the 24-county greater metro Atlanta area. But for a family of four, HUD’s regional AMI was $96,000 in 2023 — far higher than the Atlanta median household income of $81,938.
This higher regional benchmark makes housing seem “affordable” on paper, while actually pricing out many Atlantans, say the housing advocates.
Instead, Housing Justice League calls for the city to use local — or maybe even neighborhood-level — income data to calculate housing affordability. The city could also tie affordability to local minimum wage levels, to better reflect what Atlantans actually earn.
But asking the city to use an alternative to HUD’s regional AMI figures to calculate housing affordability would be a tall order. Atlanta, like most major American cities, uses HUD’s AMI figures, because many federal housing subsidy programs require it.
The Housing Justice League has an even more ambitious ask: to make inclusionary zoning citywide.
Under the city’s inclusionary zoning laws, real estate developers in designated hot submarkets can build larger and denser residential complexes if they set aside a portion of the units for affordable housing.
Atlanta now has three inclusionary zones — one surrounding the Beltline, and two in fast-developing parts of the Westside. But city officials have shied away from citywide inclusionary zoning, as the Housing Justice League has urged for years, out of concern that it could run afoul of the state’s ban on rent regulation.
Housing Justice League’s most novel — and perhaps doable — recommendation is to “democratize” Atlanta’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund “and place it into the hands of the people.” It is asking the city to enact “participatory budgeting” for the dedicated housing fund, meaning public input would dictate how it gets spent.
An Atlanta Civic Circle investigation in May found that the city had tapped the housing trust fund to pay down housing bonds and cover employee salaries, which several city councilmembers said was not the intent of the dedicated purse. Here is a breakdown of Housing Justice League’s other six proposals for the city of Atlanta:
- Massively scale up social housing: Quadruple the city’s affordable housing goal from 20,000 to 80,000 units by 2030, by relying more on public ownership, municipal bonds, and land acquisition for permanently affordable housing.
- Tighten public subsidy requirements for new developments: Tie city subsidies to longer affordability periods (50 to 99 years), mandate that landlords accept Section 8 vouchers, use binding community benefits agreements, and abolish in-lieu fees that allow developers to opt out of building affordable units.
- Enforce HUD’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule: Conduct formal analyses of segregation and discrimination patterns, and adopt proactive fair-housing planning mechanisms to expand equity.
- Create an Office of the Tenant Advocate: Create a city office to provide legal support, education, and emergency housing assistance to Atlanta renters.
- Adopt a humane homelessness policy: End encampment sweeps, expand supportive housing and outreach services, and include unhoused residents’ voices in decision-making structures.
