ATLANTA — The Atlanta BeltLine unveiled a subsidized housing project in northwest Atlanta Wednesday, with apartment rentals starting at $900 per month. The BeltLine has long promised affordable housing, but Atlanta's surging real estate market isn’t cooperating.
About a mile away on North Elizabeth Street, there's a two bedroom / one bath house listed for sale on Realtor.com at $375,000. Tax data indicates home values on this street quadrupled here in the last four years.
That’s the reality the Atlanta BeltLine is fighting as it unveiled what it describes as affordable housing in an apartment complex near the BeltLine’s still under-construction northwest corridor.
"Every year you see increases in rent in the city of Atlanta. That’s why you see projects like this that are very critical," said Clyde Higgs, CEO of the Atlanta BeltLine Inc, which subsidized the complex to guarantee that the developer offer apartment units at below market prices – in the Bankhead/Grove Park community, where the BeltLine has helped drive real estate values sky high.
Higgs said he expects workers from a new Microsoft facility, due to be built across Donald Lee. Hollowell Dr., to seek living space in the new facility.
"This property will probably go to market rate in 20 plus years," Higgs said.
Economist Tom Smith said affordable housing works only in tightly controlled spaces.
"All of the economic forces are working against us in this way," said Smith, of the Emory Goizueta Business School.
Roofstock reports the price of median homes in metro Atlanta jumped more than 18 percent in the last year.
According to Marketwatch, a study this year showed Atlanta has the fifth most overpriced housing market among American cities right now.
Those pressures are expected to eventually impact even housing artificially priced now at affordable levels.
"So why would I choose to put affordable housing on this land when I have huge opportunity costs? So the economic forces are working against affordable housing all the time," Smith said.