Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms upped the ante Monday in her push to add more affordable housing in Atlanta, calling for $100 million in bonds as well as putting a freeze on any development around the city’s new Westside Park.
Bottoms’ first move, an Administrative Order, calls for the allocation of $100 million in Housing Opportunity Bonds to increase the supply of affordable housing in Atlanta. That total figures into her administration’s Housing Affordability Action Plan, which plans to invest $1 billion in total into affordable housing by 2026.
The second foot to drop was an Executive Order mandating a total freeze on any new construction permits near Westside Park until the city can study how best to protect the surrounding neighborhoods from gentrification and align further development with the ‘One Atlanta Housing Affordability Action Plan.’
Worries over the effects of gentrification have become a major talking point for Atlanta officials, who earlier last month approved a resolution asking the state legislature to repeal a prohibition on municipalities to impose rent controls. That effort is not expected to gain any traction in a Republican-dominated legislature, particularly when the vast majority of economists agree that rent control is bad public policy.
But nonetheless city officials, starting with its head honcho, are working hard to confront what they feel is one of the most pressing issues facing Atlanta, particularly in town where many older neighborhoods are seeing property values rise exponentially.
