Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens on Tuesday revealed a potentially $5 billion plan to revitalize some of the city’s most underinvested neighborhoods.
In addition to funding transit expansion, trails and greenspace, healthcare facilities and grocery stores, the mayor’s new Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative calls for $1.3 billion to subsidize affordable housing projects.
“Even as Atlanta has prospered, there is still an untold story that we must confront if we are going to take this city to even greater heights,” Dickens said at a Sept. 30 press conference. “What Atlanta has had is tremendous growth. But what we have lacked is balanced growth.”
City officials haven’t shared many specifics on how that projected $5 billion in new public investment would manifest in areas covered by Atlanta’s eight tax allocation districts (TADs). During the press conference Dickens said the new funding would “jumpstart development” for neighborhoods around the Beltline and Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and in underserved parts of the southside and Westside — including the Perry-Bolton corridor, Campbelltown Road, Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
The catch is that the additional $5 billion would come from diverted property tax revenue from the TADs – so the city’s plan hinges on extending the lifespan of all of Atlanta’s TADs until 2050. Right now, all of them are set to expire within the next five to 13 years.
TADs are designated areas where the city of Atlanta issues bonds via Invest Atlanta to pay for infrastructure, like parks, and to subsidize private development, including housing. The idea is that the new development raises property values, and thus property taxes, within the TAD. The additional property tax revenue, over a baseline set at the TAD’s creation, is used to pay off the bonds.
For a TAD to be created, the three recipients of Atlanta property tax revenue — the city, Fulton County, and Atlanta Public Schools (APS) — must agree to forgo the additional tax revenue over the lifetime of the TAD.
If the city can secure buy-in from Fulton and APS, Dickens said, the neighborhood revitalization plan would move full-speed-ahead — but that might be easier said than done.
Several Fulton County commissioners have already signalled a desire to end the county’s participation in the Westside TAD. Likewise, APS has raised concerns about losing out on education funding if the city extends the lifespan of the TADs after they’re supposed to sunset.
Fulton County and APS aren’t the only skeptics of extending the lifetime of Atlanta’s eight TADs. Dan Immergluck, a housing expert and frequent critic of the city, said in a social media post that extending the TADs won’t create housing that’s affordable for the people who need it most. “Seeing all the Atlanta nonprofit and civic folks over on LinkedIn cheer on a disastrous local development policy that will starve schools and not lead to deeply affordable housing is damn depressing,” he wrote.
Immergluck argued that TAD spending offers little transparency and oversight. Instead, he urged the city to tap into other revenue sources to fund affordable housing, such as expanding Atlanta’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund and raising more revenue by increasing commercial property taxes.
“If the goal is to increase city spending on affordable housing, which I have argued for years is desperately needed, then do that and allow the dollars to be used everywhere across the city,” he added on LinkedIn. “Instead of playing games with the Housing Trust Fund, make it much bigger.”
Dickens said on Tuesday that he hopes the county and APS will sign onto the plan. “We’ve had conversations with them,” he said. “They understand all that’s at stake.”
As for housing funding, Courtney English, the mayor’s chief of staff and top policy advisor, told Atlanta Civic Circle: “We need a billion dollars, and then some.” The projected $1.3 billion from extending the TAD lifetimes, he said, “would get us down the road in ensuring that we have housing in those [southside and Westside] neighborhoods.”
English wouldn’t share a timeline for how the city plans to spend the proposed $5 billion within the TADs. “We will be introducing legislation to city council in short order to extend the TADs,” he said, adding that it won’t take until 2050 to pay off the bond funding.
Westside Future Fund CEO John Ahmann is backing the mayor’s proposal. He said pushing back the Westside TAD’s expiration date “would mean a lot more resources for investment” in neighborhoods like Vine City and English Avenue, where his nonprofit builds and sells affordable housing.
“In order to give people high-quality homeownership units, it often takes subsidy,” Ahmann said in an interview. “So that TAD funding would provide a real shot in the arm for investment.”
Currently, the Westside Future Fund relies heavily on philanthropy and low-cost private capital, he said, “which is kind of like whipped cream in comparison to what the city can invest.”
This article was edited on Oct. 13, 2025 to clarify that Atlanta has eight TADs, not six.
The balance the Administration wants to maintain is demographic and political. People with money moving into town are not a threat to our prosperity, only to the power of political incumbents. My expectation is that “affordable” housing will attract the young and upwardly mobile. The poor need to live throughout the region if we’re to get out of this “doughnut and hole” nonsense the Administration seeks to perpetuate.
First the city should meet the needs of the people who live here.
There is no magic money tree! This is robbing Peter to pay Paul. The $5 Billion was promised to be returned where property taxes are supposed to go: to fund schools and public services. So if this cash grab goes through, it means a $5 billion tax increase on Atlanta residents. Teachers, firefighters and jailers have to be paid for.
And if you think you can trust TADs to do better things than paying teachers does, think about this small example. The Gulch TAD – a massive giveaway to billionaire developers – was supposed to create 61 affordable homes when the first Gulch apartment tower opend this year. Where are they? Nowhere! (Sean has done a good job on dissecting that shell game. Though he has not put it as starkly as I just did. Where are the 61 affordable units that CIM promised?
The allocation of future city revenue to infrastructure and development was never meant to be a permanent commitment. When first passed by the legislature, the city was in economic decline. The hope for TADs was to increase commercial investment and values to produce the tax revenues needed for equitable services. Now that growth is here, the revenue should go to the General Fund so that our City Council can make priority decisions about what the city residents need. The council should decide where this new revenue goes. Also, The mayor, the council, the county commissioners, and the APS board members need to start receiving needed revenue from fair appraisals of existing commercial property.
Housing costs, construction, financing and resisting sales and rental prices are dictated by the principles of capitalism. Affordable housing uses the same bricks concrete and other materials as market rate housing. When the labels “market rate” and “affordable” are used they automatically create the mental image of “low income” and the construction and management standards of public housing.
What is needed is income integration in housing. Build the same housing at the same general standard and provide financial incentives to owners/builders/landlords to charge lesser prices to certain occupants. There are numerous proven strategies like this that need to be revisited with focus on the successes rather than failures.
It’s wild that Dickens wants to spend $5 billion to “jumpstart development” while his Planning Department is moving forward on a zoning update that largely makes development illegal across the vast majority of the city. Before we spend $5 billion, why not start by making new homes (especially missing middle) legal to build and new businesses legal to open?