The State of Housing Panel: How do we create an Atlanta designed for everyone?

by Kendra Taylor, Project Manager, Office of Housing and Community Development

To conclude The Color of Law Book Club, we had a panel discussion with three Atlanta leaders on housing in Atlanta:

·          Tim Keane, the Commissioner of Planning at the City, who provided insight into the structural changes needed at the City to make housing policies inclusionary rather than exclusionary

·         Terri Lee, the Chief Housing Officer at City of Atlanta, discussed current challenges in the City for affordable housing, like the ability for long-term residents to age in place as housing prices in the City rise.

·         And Nathaniel Smith from the Partnership for Southern Equity, framed housing at the intersection of education, environment, and health which all shape access to opportunity.

Throughout the discussions in the Book Club, we focused on how local planning decisions are related to contemporary inequality. For example, we explored land-use and zoning policies and how they have historically been intentionally exclusionary. We saw how the 1929 Atlanta Zoning Code, based on racial exclusion, became redefined after it was invalidated by a court to be based on economic exclusion. Despite no longer being explicitly racist however, the economically exclusionary zoning policy accomplished much of the same goals as its predecessor. With us, the panelists reflected on the roots of historical discrimination in Atlanta today, how remedies to exclusionary policies must be structural, and how we must move forward on these problems collectively.

One of the most important insights from The Color of Law was how local, state, and federal policies have shaped the design of our cities, and often the design has been for exclusion rather than inclusion. Our existing housing stock and land-use patterns are a product of a generation of zoning decisions, and housing types going forward will be shaped by the zoning decisions we make today. Therefore, when considering remedies to contemporary problems like racial and economic segregation in housing and housing affordability, structural remedies are necessary. That is, reliance on interventions like subsidies without fundamentally changing land-use and zoning policies means that we are essentially subsidizing harmful policy. In Atlanta, most housing structures are either single-family homes or large 50+ unit apartment buildings, in part due to Atlanta’s zoning laws. But the most affordable housing types are often those in between these two types. Existing housing types and zoning laws have gained an axiomatic status in our cities which limits our civic and political abilities to create alternatives. As Tim said, we cannot subsidize our way out of the affordable housing crisis.  But reframing the problem as structural rather than one you can throw money at can be uncomfortable because it means that there will be fundamental changes to our City and its neighborhoods.

Throughout the Book Club and in the panel, we focused on what the lessons from our past can teach us for moving forward. Several themes emerged, including that any approach to remedying housing inequality must also include the realms of education, transportation, and health, and that we must frame housing affordability in more collective terms. Terri and Nathaniel discussed how housing affordability has been an issue for a long time and that it has been an intractable problem that no City has yet solved. And especially in the context of a pandemic, we have learned how important safe housing is. The panelists view civic engagement as an important feature of achieving more equitable outcomes in housing, and the civic solutions need to be open for everyone to participate in and reap the benefits of. As Nathaniel noted, housing is a gateway to opportunity.

In 2017, the City released Atlanta City Design which is a vision for a city that is designed for everyone and the approaches needed to design for inclusion. Importantly, Atlanta City Design both centers history in the current planning process, looking critically at previous decisions to chart our path forward, and centers residents in the planning process. If you want to get involved in shaping Atlanta’s future, one way you can do so is to join your Neighborhood Planning Unit (NPU). NPUs are where residents can directly engage with zoning and land-use decisions and can advocate for inclusionary policies. The Book Club and resulting discussions are a prelude to a series of policies that will be rolled out this Fall to address housing affordability and access, and our discussions are a basis on which we hope that residents will continue to engage with the City in this work.