With prices rising rapidly, Atlanta residents are finding it extremely difficult to find suitable but most importantly affordable accommodation for themselves and their families. Maxwell Drever analyzed the affordable housing market in Atlanta and ascertained that the pace at which prices are rising, the problem will quickly get out of hand for all stakeholders involved. There are a number of factors leading to these issues and slowly, they are all becoming substantial.
Residents of various towns in Atlanta for instance Gwinnett County are also concerned for the situation of affordable workforce housing. In search for residence options that are close to the school of their children as well as their own workplaces, residents continue to ponder what they can do. The suburbs of Atlanta were once considered affordable but that is no longer the case. Rental prices in particular have jumped to a stage where they are comparable to metropolitan areas in the state.
Maxwell Drever helps you take a comprehensive look at what the problem is and why it is escalating further.
A Multitude of Problems
The reasons prices for homeowners are going up rapidly even in the suburbs of Atlanta is due to a variety of reasons. Factors like rapid growth in terms of more people settling in along with infrastructural developments, shortage of labor and building materials are creating hurdles for affordable housing projects in the area. The COVID-19 pandemic has hit construction supply chains, massively triggering considerable backlogs in development.
Challenges Increasing for Individuals at the Bottom of the Pyramid
The spiking rental rates in Atlanta are a cause for concern especially to the low and medium income individuals. This segment is the target market for affordable housing projects but with the price shooting up substantially, they are no longer in a position to afford rentals or mortgages for these properties. Occupations like nurses, service employees, teachers in the early stages of their career and new entrants to the workforce are amongst the ones struggling the most according to Maxwell Drever.
Affordability of Rental Properties in Atlanta
While the problem of affordability dominated politics in Atlanta, Gwinnett County, Georgia’s second-largest county, has remained largely unaffected. However, after receiving gloomy preliminary findings from KB Advisory Group’s countywide analysis, commissioners put aside $250,000 to build a comprehensive affordable housing plan last month. However, median rents in the state of Georgia have topped $1000 leading to almost 76% of the state’s housing requirements remaining unmet.
The Current State of Affairs
At present, the scenario is set to remain unchanged until 2040 at the current rate of development. Gwinnett county, for instance, the second largest town in Atlanta, has 957,000 residents as of 2020 with the numbers expected to cross 1.5 million by 2040. With only 2% households having annual incomes of $50,000 or more being able to afford homes in the county, the remaining have little to no choice when it comes to accommodation.
Conclusion
As Maxwell Drever notes, this problem is alarming for the concerned authorities. With a state that is growing at such a rapid pace, more attention needs to be paid towards the prospects of affordable housing in the area.
