Cherokee Chamber Hosts Affordable Housing Discussion

WOODSTOCK — Cherokee County representatives are continuing discussions about affordable and workforce housing in the county.

The Cherokee County Chamber of Commerce held a "Regional Issues Awareness" meeting Oct. 18 at the Chambers at City Center in downtown Woodstock.

Brantley Day, community development agency director with Cherokee County, Matt Bedsole, director of the city of Atlanta's Housing Innovation Lab, and Alison Eltz, an intern with Cherokee County Community Development and junior at the Georgia Institute of Technology, discussed affordable and workforce housing strategies and what could be done in Cherokee.

Bedsole said Atlanta's goal is to preserve or build 20,000 affordable housing units in the city by 2030.

"We just hit the halfway mark of this goal the other day — this number basically means that, to be successful, we would have doubled our production of affordable housing in the city compared to when this mayor entered office," Bedsole said.

The city of Atlanta uses an affordable housing tracker to show the number of affordable housing units built and under construction, funding sources, where these units are in the city, and the number of units by income level, Bedsole said. The numbers are updated monthly.

Bedsole said Atlanta has used partnerships to help fund new affordable housing developments. These partnerships include TogetherATL, GoATL, and Bowen Homes.

The city has also outlined affordable housing goals and a "mixed-income tool kit," Bedsole said. These methods include defining and outlining "deeply" affordable rents, permanent affordability, affordability that grows with need, public financing tools, and more.

The city also created a list of public land projects.

"Part of my job is to get land that's held by the city in the hands of somebody that can build affordable housing," Bedsole said. "The value of that land can be used to lower the cost of the housing. Land is about 10-15% of the total cost of housing. We are also doing a public land activation study to determine possible redevelopment and relocation sites."

Some of the ongoing affordable projects in Atlanta include the 2 Peachtree project, Midtown Fire, The Melody, and Gun Club, Bedsole said.

"Atlanta has had an affordable housing problem that has been going on for at least a decade, which has now spread out to a lot of the counties," Bedsole said. "Our solutions aren't necessarily going to be your solutions, but these are some projects that can help solve this problem that could give Cherokee some ideas."

Day said that Cherokee Regional Housing Forums over the past year have helped open communication between the county, cities and other stakeholders when discussing affordable housing and workforce housing.

"The goal is basically to get the right people in the room to understand the problem and understand the need, and then begin to develop solutions on how to address that need," Day said. "We've also brought in state government partners like the Atlanta Regional Commission and the Department of Community Affairs. The Cherokee County School District and Northside Hospital are also involved, as well as county and city leaders and staff, industry leaders, nonprofits, housing employers and housing advocates."

Day said that "the takeaway from Matt is we aren't going to solve the issue like Atlanta has done, but what we can do is try and take lessons from Atlanta and adapt it and scale it to make it fit for us in Cherokee County."

Day added that the partnerships with the cities are "invaluable."

"As we look to define and address the affordable and workforce housing problem, we need to work together to plug that housing in," he said.

More housing forums are scheduled for 2025, including Feb. 14 at the Cherokee County Fire Training Center in Holly Springs, May 14 and Sept. 17 at the Cherokee County Conference Center at the Bluffs in Canton, and Nov. 5 at Canton City Hall.

Eltz gave a presentation showing that Cherokee is more affected by institutional investors than other areas in the country.

She cited the 2008 housing crash as a point when institutional investors first began turning to the single-family housing stock as a form of investment. These investors bought large numbers of cheap houses to rent out to people who had either lost their house of couldn't afford a house due to the recession. This led to more firms entering the industry.

"The problem is uniquely severe in metro Atlanta largely because the high demand in our housing market, as well the low regulations in the housing market," she said, adding that, when a company owns a substantial portion of the housing in an area, they have a degree of control over the market in that area, which has implications for affordability.

Eltz said studies have found that large corporate investors have decreased home ownership rates and driven up housing prices, while acting as a barrier to homeownership for first-time buyers and charge market rate rent. She said some of these firms have histories of questionable practices including high hidden fees, aggressive rent increases and lack of responsiveness to tenants.

Georgia is ranked as the most at-risk state in the nation for market disruptions, rental increases and unsafe conditions, according to the report.

Out of the 96,861 attached and detached single-family houses in Cherokee County, 8,260 of these are corporately owned (registered to a company name), according to the county tax assessor's office.

Close to 60% of these 8,260 homes, or 4,940 single-family homes, are owned by institutional investment firms (large companies purchasing homes to rent out for investment). The remaining single-family homes are owned by a mix of law firms, a homeowners' association, a home builder, small businesses or local landlords, Eltz said.

Institutional investors own about 5.1% of the single-family housing stock in Cherokee, according to the report. In metro Atlanta, this number is about 4.4% and nationally this number is about 0.73%.

Invitation Homes, American Homes 4 Rent and Progress Residential are among the top three highest volume institutional investors in the county, owning 988 homes, 842 homes and 601 homes respectively, according to the report.

An example of an investor-owned neighborhood is the Hidden Creek neighborhood in Canton, per the report, which has 139 homes, 55% of which are owned by institutional investors. 19% is owned by American Homes 4 Rent, 10% is owned by Invitation Homes and 10% is owned by Progress Residential, Eltz said.