Gulch developers punt on affordable housing
The Los Angeles-based developer reimagining downtown’s “Gulch” of parking lots and railroad tracks as “Centennial Yards” — a multi-billion-dollar, mixed-use Shangri-La — won’t include any affordable housing in its first apartment tower.
Because CIM Group’s glassy luxury residential building will feature 304 exclusively market-rate units, the developer had to pay the city of Atlanta $8.4 million for shirking its commitment to make around 60 units affordably priced. The 19-story apartment building is slated to be built and move-in ready by next summer.
Atlanta City Council members approved a new Gulch Housing Trust Fund on Oct. 7, to be funded by CIM Group’s “in-lieu” penalties, which includes the $8.4 million and any future penalty payments. The city will use the funds to ready privately owned Westside properties in foreclosure for redevelopment. The aim is to rehab them into housing priced for people earning less than the area median income.
Councilmembers also okayed an ordinance to pay out roughly $1.4 million from that new housing pot to the Metro Atlanta Land Bank, a regional government group that revitalizes dilapidated properties, to start the process of taking over Westside properties in foreclosure.
By shedding the affordable housing component for the Gulch’s first residential building, CIM Group has set a troubling precedent, said Julian Bene, a former Invest Atlanta board member and vocal critic of the controversial Gulch deal.
“It’s amazing that whenever the Gulch boys talk — and talked initially in 2018 — about the apartments they’re building and how 20%, of course, are going to be affordable, they don’t mention they’ll buy out of this with an in-lieu fee,” he told Atlanta Civic Circle in an email.
Should Georgians cap taxable home value hikes?
With early voting underway, Georgians are deciding at the polling booth whether increases in the assessed value of someone’s primary residence should be capped at the inflation rate statewide. Doing so would limit property tax hikes.
The goal of the so-called Local Option Homestead Property Tax Exemption Amendment, backers say, is to reduce the property tax burden on homeowners, whose tax bills typically increase as their property values rise.
Opponents, however, including some school boards, have cautioned that capping property value assessments, and thus taxes, could deprive schools — which rely heavily on property taxes for funding — and other public services of much-needed revenue.
What’s more, wealthy homeowners would reap most of the tax benefits, said Kyle Kessler, the policy and research director for the Center for Civic Innovation. “I would not see how this would do anything but further [widen] the income and wealth gap in Atlanta or across the state,” he told Atlanta Civic Circle.
📷: Emilia Weinrobe
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Atlanta Planning Department seeks Plan A input
The city of Atlanta is updating its Comprehensive Development Plan, also known as Plan A. It will determine how the city can be built out for years to come — and city planners want your help.
The third round of public meetings to solicit input for the Plan A update is underway. The next one, about urban design, will be Oct. 23 at Fanplex, located at 768 Hank Aaron Dr., SE. Click here for info on all the Plan A meetings, which run through Feb. 6.
AI wonks to build online portal to identify housing that accepts public vouchers
Newly introduced Atlanta City Council legislation aims to give $200,000 to Emory University’s artificial intelligence experts to create an online portal that will allow city of Atlanta residents to apply for subsidized housing units.
The aim is to show lower-income Atlantans what rental units are available that accept federal Housing Choice, or Section 8, voucher subsidies — or, as is often the case, which aren’t. In theory, the digital platform will simplify the process renters must navigate to secure apartments at the increasingly elusive complexes where landlords accept government-backed housing vouchers.
Drawing from the city’s affordable housing trust fund, the online application will “make [Atlanta’s] publicly subsidized housing units easily accessible to residents,” according to the legislative language.
That’s a herculean undertaking. Due to the staggering shortage of affordable housing in Atlanta, more than 20,000 renters are stuck on Atlanta Housing’s (AH) waitlist for Housing Choice vouchers.
Atlanta Medical Center revamp promises rare affordable housing
A newly approved plan to raze most of the idle Atlanta Medical Center (AMC) and transform the 22-acre site into Old Fourth Ward’s next major mixed-use destination includes an affordable housing promise — a rare perk in the fast-gentrifying, neighborhood, where about 31% of the population lives in poverty.
Property-owner Wellstar Health System shuttered AMC in 2022, leaving Grady Memorial Hospital as the city’s only Level 1 trauma center for adults. It announced last week it had tapped local affordable housing developer Integral Group to lead the ambitious overhaul.
City leaders have approved the deal and lifted two years of zoning moratoriums on redeveloping the hospital campus, which were intended to give the community time for input. They expired last week.
“Through direct engagement with the Old Fourth Ward and surrounding stakeholders, we now have an opportunity to create an inclusive, forward-looking, and thriving new development that meets the community’s needs for affordable housing, green space and safe streets — while maintaining some medical use and retaining the neighborhood’s unique character,” Mayor Andre Dickens said in a Wellstar news release.
The news comes about four months after Atlanta Civic Circle reported on the site’s potential to offer much-needed affordable housing units in Old Fourth Ward, where property values have skyrocketed since the Beltline’s Eastside Trail snaked its way through the neighborhood in 2012.
📷: Wellstar
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