HUD cuts loom over ribbon-cutting to rehouse Atlantans
Mayor Andre Dickens last week unveiled 100 new studio apartments for unhoused Atlantans — the latest product of the city’s Rapid Housing Initiative, which provides permanent homes and supportive services to people experiencing chronic homelessness.
But concerns over how to fund additional permanent supportive housing for unhoused Atlantans loomed over the Dec. 3 ribbon cutting for Waterworks Village, just west of Atlantic Station. That’s because the Trump administration in November had announced a 70% cut to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Continuum of Care grants that fund this kind of housing.
Then on Monday, HUD withdrew the Notice of Funding Opportunity for the Continuum of Care grant program and announced that it is updating the qualification requirements. The White House has not yet said what the new requirements will be.
In Atlanta, the proposed November HUD cuts threaten nearly $10 million in federal Continuum of Care grants to fund permanent supportive housing for unhoused people. Currently, 844 Atlanta households rely on that money for housing and wraparound services — and the grant cuts threaten to displace nearly 600 formerly homeless Atlanta households from permanent supportive housing.
Meanwhile, the city is already behind schedule in its plan to create 500 new permanent supportive housing units by the end of this year.
As temperatures drop, emergency warming centers open
When temperatures dip below 40 degrees, the mayor’s Office of Emergency Preparedness sets up cots and heaters in some of the city’s recreation centers to provide emergency warming facilities for unhoused people.
Anticipating frigid weather, the city of Atlanta last night opened two emergency warming centers — one at the Central Park Recreation Center at 400 Merritts Ave., and the other at the Old Adamsville Recreation Center at 3404 Delmar Ln.
Check out Atlanta Civic Circle’s Q&A with Asher Morris, the Emergency Preparedness Office’s deputy director, to find out how Atlanta’s emergency warming center operations work.
Atlanta City Council approves Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative oversight board members
In late September, the Dickens administration announced a potentially $5 billion plan to revitalize some of the city’s most underinvested neighborhoods by extending the life of Atlanta’s eight Tax Allocation Districts (TADs) to 2055.
The mayor’s Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative calls to use $1.3 billion of $5 billion in diverted property tax revenue from Atlanta Public Schools, Fulton County and the city to subsidize affordable housing projects within the eight TADs on Atlanta’s Westside and southside. That includes areas around the Beltline and Mercedes-Benz Stadium, plus the Perry-Bolton corridor, Campbellton Road, Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway and Martin Luther King Jr. Drive.
Under pressure from the community, the Atlanta City Council tabled legislation to authorize the eight TADs extensions until next year. However, council members last week approved a slate of appointments — made by the council, mayor’s office, and Invest Atlanta — to a Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative advisory board to review over 215 line items on the mayor’s project list.
The 13-member board includes:
- Dickens’ chief of staff Courtney English
- Westside Future Fund CEO John Ahmann
- Focused Community Strategies CEO Marvin Nesbitt Jr.
- Purpose Built Communities executive vice president Michelle Matthews
- Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation executive Daniel Shoy Jr.
- Four Invest Atlanta staffers and board members
- Representatives for the Atlanta Committee for Progress and the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce.
- Chairs of the city council’s Finance and Executive Committee and its Community Development and Human Services Committee
Atlanta City Council committee chairs are appointed by the city council president.
HEARD ON HOUSING
WSJ: “California’s ‘Teacher Village’ Model Spreads as Housing Costs Soar”
More schools are offering company housing to prevent educators from fleeing to cheaper locales. ‘They go to Idaho, they go to Texas.’
The Monterey Peninsula Unified School District in California is now in the housing business. The District purchased 64 rental units to offer to staff at up to 30% below market rent. A 288-unit apartment complex to built on existing District-owned land is also in the works.
→ Read the story
Proposed guardrails gutted for city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund
The Dickens administration successfully gutted legislation to restrict how the city can spend its Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which received $19.5 million from the city’s general fund this year. The Atlanta City Council unanimously approved a watered-down version of the measure on Dec. 1, reinforcing the administration’s authority to tap the trust fund as it sees fit.
After an Atlanta Civic Circle investigation in May revealed that Dickens’ office had been using over 75% of the dedicated fund for housing-related debt service and payroll, Councilmember Matt Westmoreland offered a remedy: Restrict spending only 15% of the trust to service bond debt, and 5% for administrative costs and staff salaries.
But the substitute legislation the mayor’s office pushed and the council approved specifies that the trust can be used to service housing bond debt without any percentage cap – which cements the city’s ability to use the trust freely for that purpose. It also caps annual trust expenditures on staff and administration at 15%, instead of 5% — and it gives the city’s chief financial officer, Mohamed Balla, the liberty to determine those expenditures.
Westmoreland also proposed updating the guidelines to require that at least half of the trust’s annual funding pay to build housing affordable to households making 50% or less of area median income (AMI). But the legislation that the city council approved sets no minimum percentage for trust spending on housing construction — and specifies that it funds housing construction that’s affordable to households making up to 60% AMI, instead of 50% AMI.
The new legislation does require the Mayor’s Office to provide an annual accounting to the council by Oct. 1 of how it spent the fund in the prior fiscal year ending June 30.
Read the full story here.
Council considers parking minimum repeal
The Atlanta City Council is considering recommending to the city’s planning department to axe all off-street parking minimum requirements in its ongoing overhaul of Atlanta’s decades-old zoning code, known as ATL Zoning 2.0.
The current requirement that new construction, such as apartments, must provide a minimum number of parking-lot spaces are outdated and drive up housing costs, deter small-scale residential development, and undermine the city’s investments in transit, says the new city council resolution.
“The full removal of parking minimums represents a transformational opportunity to make Atlanta a more competitive, affordable, and people-centered city for generations to come,” the legislation adds.
Council members last week referred the proposal to the city’s zoning review board and the council’s zoning committee, meaning the issue will be discussed again early next year.
Atlanta’s City Planning Department has spent over four years drafting new zoning code guidelines and collecting public input to craft ATL Zoning 2.0, a comprehensive roadmap for the city’s built environment. The planning department will send its proposed new zoning code to the city council for a vote next year.
Today’s newsletter was written by Sean Keenan and edited by Meredith Hobbs. Your support makes Housing Happenings and ACC’s housing reporting possible.