Beltline to spend millions on affordable housing
The boss of the Beltline says it’s no accident his agency is going to spend millions on affordable housing.
“The pace with which that affordability is declining is much faster than anything else happening in our economy,” said Beltline President and CEO Paul Morris at a meeting of the Invest Atlanta board, just before the city’s economic development authority approved his organization’s $69.8 million budget. (Beltline funding comes from property taxes in the trail corridor, as well as other public money, private money, philanthropic donations, and other sources.)
The “very difficult challenges that we all went through to try and figure out how to re-craft this year’s budget to carve out a disproportionate share of funds for that specific purpose was not by accident,” Morris said.
The plan includes $2.2 million for affordable housing for the budget year that ends in June 2017 .
But wait, that’s not all! The budget also includes a $50 million bond sale that will raise $7.5 million for affordable housing over the next few years.
Part of the job of Atlanta Beltline, Inc. is to make sure there’s affordable housing in the 22-mile park/trails/transit corridor. They do that in several ways, such as helping with home down payments and by offering incentives to developers who build affordable units.
The spend is pretty timely, given grumbles citywide about housing being too expensive.
Emma Darnell, the Fulton County commissioner who represents part of southwest Atlanta, also sits on the Invest Atlanta board. She thanked everyone who worked on writing the affordability dollars into the budget.
Because what she’s hearing about, she said, are working families that are finding it a challenge to stay in their homes or to move to the area.
“I’m hearing about the fact that we set a 5,600 affordable unit goal, and we’re at 560,” said Darnell.
Darnell praised the trails and the investment and the homes and luxury apartments that have come with the Beltline, but she also said working families need to have the opportunity to enjoy the area, too.
Morris said, “we’re kind of at an inflection point where we feel very strongly that the need to open the opportunity for protecting affordability and to expand affordability demands over-investment, to put it quite candidly.”