By virtually every metric, the nation’s housing affordability crisis is only getting worse. Renters are struggling to keep up with the cost of living, amid stagnant wages and rising rents. Big corporate investors are gobbling up local housing stock in Atlanta and other big cities, driving up prices at a breakneck pace. Homeownership is drifting further and further out of reach for just about everyone.
Call it irony — or perhaps naivete — but the near-apocalyptic state of America’s housing crisis, as exemplified in metro Atlanta, has left me feeling (almost) optimistic about what 2025 holds for housing policy, both here and nationwide. If nothing else, as the housing affordability crisis escalates to adversely impact just about everyone except the richest of the rich, elected officials of all political persuasions should now find it increasingly difficult to turn a blind eye to the policy gaps making it worse.
Admittedly, I wrote something very similar in an essay for Atlanta Civic Circle this time last year, advocating for major state-level housing policy reform. Consequently, I am loath to try and convince anyone that major solutions are right around the corner. But 365-ish days later, I was right — to an extent — that there is room for hope. Although many common-sense housing policies failed during Georgia’s last legislative session, our historically landlord-friendly statehouse took a few baby steps in the right direction.
Don’t count on the legislature to lift Georgia’s decades-old ban on rent stabilization measures during the 2025-2026 session that starts in January. That effort stumbles year after year, blocked by primarily Republican legislators bent on preserving the “free market” — in other words, Georgia law that allows landlords to raise rents as much as they like each year. But take note — even lawmakers who attacked the dread specter of “rent control” still supported the Safe at Home Act, enacted by Gov. Brian Kemp in June. Only one state representative and two state senators voted against HB 404, which makes Georgia one of the last states in the nation to require rental housing to be “fit for human habitation.”
I won’t gloss over the fact that the Safe at Home Act neglected to define “habitability,” leaving it to the courts to decide whether landlords are merely managing slums or actually providing livable residences to their tenants. However, I’d wager Georgia lawmakers will be more inclined this session to amend that law to ensure fewer people have to navigate rats and roaches, mold and mildew, and other health hazards when they sign a lease.
That’s because 2024 was the year of the institutional landlord, particularly in metro Atlanta, where investment funds now account for roughly a third of recent single-family home purchases. News outlets from Atlanta Civic Circle to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution to The New York Times have reported how these housing industry powerhouses have used their bulk purchases of entry-level housing to hike rents, no matter the property’s condition. That also drives up prices for new homebuyers, who can’t compete with cash offers from mega-investors..
Meanwhile, Georgia lawmakers in rural and urban districts alike are faced with constituents feeling the housing squeeze. That’s something I hope will prompt even the landlords under the Gold Dome to take action. Even they can recognize that their constituents’ rent checks to Wall Street hedge funds don’t help Georgia a lick.
What’s more, I’m hearing from local academics, lobbyists, and political observers that the ongoing surge in out-of-state investor interest could galvanize state and local leaders to take steps to regulate the institutional landlords who’ve come to dominate the housing market.
In last year’s session, a bill backed by Democratic lawmakers to allow local governments like the city of Atlanta to create rental registries — so they could identify the true owners of residential properties and track changes in rent prices — didn’t get so much as a hearing. But it could resurface this year — and maybe with Republican backing.
Right now, Atlanta and other municipalities often find it prohibitively difficult to take action against many negligent landlords, because they operate as LLCs camouflaged by layers of shell companies. Knowing who actually owns the property would give the city and tenants alike a better shot at holding these landlords accountable for properties in disrepair.
Locally, there are also glimmers of promise. An Atlanta Civic Circle analysis found that the city’s new Safe and Secure Housing initiative, launched in 2023 to crack down on dangerously negligent landlords, is actually showing some serious results. In addition to hiring more code-enforcement staff, Atlanta has beefed up its solicitor’s office to prosecute negligent landlords who resist restoring properties to compliance.
Another major driver of the housing crisis is the lack of affordable housing supply. In another promising glint, the city formed the Atlanta Urban Development Corporation in 2023 to build mixed-income housing on city-owned land by partnering with private developers. All of the housing must include a percentage earmarked as affordable to Atlantans earning less than the area median income.
In 2024, that initiative started to bear fruit. The Urban Development Corp. has teamed up with private developers to kickstart major residential projects — including the adaptive-reuse conversion of downtown’s Two Peachtree office tower into an apartment highrise, after the city bought the property from the state of Georgia. Almost half of the planned 625 units will be priced below market.
The city agency is also reimagining an old Midtown fire station as residences and planning to build mixed-income housing on 48 acres of idle Atlanta Public Schools land — among other developments.
If there’s one thing that’s instilled in me an uncharacteristic sense of optimism about improving housing policy in Atlanta, it’s that markedly more journalists at both local and national news organizations are covering the affordable housing beat — one of the bleakest in journalism. Before Atlanta Civic Circle’s inception in 2019, WABE’s Stephannie Stokes was, I believe, the only local journalist dedicated to covering metro-Atlanta housing. More recently, the AJC hired Matt Reynolds as a full-time housing reporter to join us in walking this beat.
And that’s not to mention the innumerable general-assignment, business, and real estate reporters who, due to the enormity of the crisis, are also forced to write about the housing crisis.
A year ago, I wrote the following:
In my four-plus years as Atlanta Civic Circle’s housing reporter, I’ve strained to ward off waves of cynicism and instead seek out sources of hope for the people in our city who can’t afford the ubiquitous $18 cheeseburger, the $70 haircut, the $100 gym membership — or the rent spikes that accompany posh developments and the amenities they bring.
After five-plus years on the job, I still have hope — at least a little.
It’s a bit of a shock, hearing that only last year was a bill passed requiring rental housing to be “fit for human habitation.” I had always assumed such a self-evident requirement was in place, but it does explain why I’ve seen literal slum housing residents getting no action from landlords/management corporations when necessary repairs in order to make their place “fit for human habitation” were badly needed.
Of course, in a state where “right to work” means carpenters, painters, bricklayers, and even musicians, can be paid today, what were livable wages 40/50 years ago, or that rational solutions to address gun violence include such insanity as doing away with requiring permits to carry concealed weapons, and ever expanding places where they can be legally carried, such as bars, I shouldn’t be surprised that it hasn’t even been illegal to rent out places unfit for human habitation… smh
There has to be new laws & regulations that don’t allow so much consolidation of housing units, as to make price collusion too irresistible to resist, for just adding a small percentage of new construction labeled “affordable” is simply not going to cut it, too few, too late. I do hope the billionaires and corporate execs engaged in squeezing every last dollar from Americans, by jacking up housing, and food, & other necessities, that there will be a breaking point. And when that line is crossed, when people can’t work any more jobs, any more hours, to keep their families afloat, history shows us we will see massive social upheaval, which may include violent rioting, terroristic acts, but certainly a lot of chaos…
“Government by Organized Money is Just as Dangerous as Government by Organized Mob.” . . . – Franklin D. Roosevelt
Great post! Very well explained and truly engaging. I like how you broke down the points in a clear and simple way—makes it easy to understand and apply. Thanks for sharing such valuable content.