City of Atlanta launches affordable housing ‘tracker’ to illustrate progress

Those following Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms to see if she lives up to her promise of creating or preserving 20,000 affordable homes by 2026 now have a tool to keep track of her progress.

This week, the City of Atlanta launched the Atlanta Housing Affordability Tracker, a dashboard that documents the progress of the Bottoms administration’s goal of investing $1 billion in affordable housing in Atlanta.

Those goals include creating or preserving 20,000 affordable homes by 2026 and the investment of city-controlled public resources in the production and preservation of affordable housing, as officials have stressed. (That’s assuming a second term for Bottoms happens; the mayor indicated to the AJC recently she plans to run for reelection in 2021.)

Updated quarterly, the data in the dashboard currently shows city agency commitments made between January 2018 and December 2019. Once the tracker moves beyond the beta version, it also will include private and philanthropic funds committed to the development of affordable housing, officials said.

Data in the dashboard represents the collaborative efforts of the City of Atlanta, Invest Atlanta, Atlanta Housing, the Atlanta Beltline, and Fulton County/City of Atlanta Land Bank Authority.

Since Bottoms released her Housing Affordability Action Plan last summer, many projects have begun around the city in an effort to increase affordable housing.

For instance, last June Atlanta leaders broke ground on Creekside at Adamsville Place just west of the Interstate 285 Perimeter.

The $27.6 million affordable housing development includes 147 new apartments with rent prices aimed at families making incomes at 30, 60, and 80 percent of the area median income.

Laurel Street

Also, last October Atlanta Habitat announced its $15.5 million Commitment to Community Capital Campaign to develop Browns Mill Village, an affordable homeownership community located in Orchard Knob east of Interstate 75, south of downtown.

And in November, Adair Court, a 91-unit senior rental housing community on Murphy Avenue in Adair Park, opened its doors a few blocks from the Beltline’s Westside Trail and Urban Farm.