Atlanta to Tackle Affordability by Zoning Reform

Marshall A. Lattimore reports:

Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced the “Atlanta City Design: Housing” initiative, a project administered by the City’s Department of City Planning that has been created to propose policy-based solutions to Atlanta’s housing affordability challenges and aligns with the goals and action items of the Mayor’s One Atlanta Housing Affordability action plan.

The One Atlanta Housing Affordability Action Plan, intended to address systemic racism and ensure affordable housing for everyone in the city, calls for the city to create or preserve 20,000 affordable housing units in the Atlanta by 2026. The Atlanta City Housing: Design initiative is intended to implement the zoning changes necessary to meet those goals.

"The proposed zoning policies in the analysis also target structures of racism and discrimination that have limited housing affordability and exacerbated inequality in Atlanta. The resulting policies seek to increase immediate and long-term affordability for Atlanta residents and directly address the structures of discrimination that still exist in Atlanta’s zoning and land-use policies," according to Lattimore.

Additional coverage of the new initiative is available from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which describes the news as follows:

Bottoms is proposing a zoning amendment that she says would unlock 60% of Atlanta’s land for more housing. The amendment would allow for second units on properties, such as basement apartments, without substantially changing the character and feel of the neighborhood….

The announcement includes a storymap to illustrate the consequences of urban design in terms of inclusion and exclusion.