Atlanta has built more homes, but deeply affordable housing lags

Low-income renters experienced the steepest rent increases, with extremely low-income households seeing increases of 22% from 2015 to 2023, compared with a 9% increase for middle- and high-income households, said Liz Hipple, managing director of policy and research at the center, citing an analysis of the underlying data.

The study, “Abundance for Who? Housing Access and Affordability in High-Growth Metropolitan Areas,” suggests that building more housing alone is not enough; without deeply affordable units, low-income families are in danger of displacement or homelessness.

The Georgetown Law center said it is those low-income renters who are being left behind in the metro area.

Hipple said many new rental units in high-growth metros are studios or one-bedroom apartments in higher-end or luxury multifamily buildings aimed at higher-income renters. They typically are not suitable for low-income families with children.

Although rents are rising faster for low-income families, the stock of older affordable housing is becoming more scarce, facing pressure from the high demand for housing, redevelopment and gentrification in a metro area that in recent years has seen rapid growth.

“Even if you are building more, … unless you’re being intentional to make sure that new housing is going to have some affordable units, it’s not going to reach the neediest families,” Hipple said.

She added that the report’s findings challenge the idea, pushed by some housing economists, that supply-side growth will trickle down to low-income families.

“It’s not happening quickly enough, and it’s certainly not benefiting the lowest-income families,” Hipple said in an interview.

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens wants to build or preserve 20,000 housing units by 2030. At the start of his new term, the administration said it was more than halfway to meeting that goal, with more than 13,000 units delivered, completed, under construction or funded to date.

Still, Dickens has also said conditions have changed dramatically since he set the goal at the beginning of his first term.

“The city has stood up and in many cases the state with the Department of Community Affairs have stepped up. (Fulton) County has helped in some areas, too. But the federal government is no longer really doing as much as they did in the past,” Dickens said at a rapid-housing event earlier this month.

At the same time, housing advocates in Atlanta, including the Housing Justice League, are urging Dickens to do more to build deeply affordable housing for people earning below 50% of the area median income.

According to the city’s affordable housing tracker, the Dickens administration created just over 900 units affordable at 30% of the area median income or below. For a two-person household, that income limit equates to about $37,000 per year, according to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development 2025 guidelines.

The city created 1,700 units affordable to households earning between 31% and 50% of area median income, with an income limit of about $46,000 for a two-person household.

Data from the Atlanta Regional Commission showed that between 2018 and 2023, the 11 core counties in metro Atlanta lost more than 230,000 affordable rental units priced at $1,500 a month or less.

Of those, about 54,000 units rented for $800 or less, and roughly 178,000 rented for between $800 and $1,500.

Across all the metro areas in the study, median rent for units built after 2010 was about $1,900, compared with $1,540 for older units, according to the study, which cited 2023 American Housing Survey data sponsored by HUD and conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau.