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A nearly $900,000 gift to the Atlanta Land Trust (ALT) is expected to help produce up to 50 new permanently affordable housing units in some of the city’s minority neighborhoods, according to a press release from the organization.
On Wednesday, ALT officials announced The Kendeda Fund, a foundation focused on housing, transportation and education, had awarded the housing-centric nonprofit an $895,000 grant to help purchase land that could one day host the creation of affordable housing.
Those new units could come in the form of rehabbed existing single-family homes or new construction, ALT executive director Amanda Rhein told SaportaReport.
Rhein added that ALT leaders have identified a few properties in Southwest Atlanta and on the Westside, although it’s too soon to announce exactly which parcels.
The organization, though, has been focusing its efforts in recent years along the Beltline corridor, where concerns of waning affordability run rampant. The land ALT is eyeing is slated to be under contract before the year’s end, Rhein said, meaning some properties along and near the development-propelling multi-use trail network would be earmarked as affordable.
Once the land is secured, ALT would select qualified homeowners to live in the homes, which would likely be priced for households earning between 60 and 80 percent of the area median income (AMI).
In the last year, ALT has expanded its pipeline of affordable housing from 60 to an estimated 150 units, the release says. With this newly acquired two-year grant, that pipeline is expected to grow to help low-income families.
The organization already has 15 homes in Reynoldstown, Pittsburgh, Washington Park and Mozley Park.
(Header image, via Atlanta Land Trust: A family that moved into an Atlanta Land Trust home.)