Henry raises impact fees on development

Henry County has doubled the amount of impact fees it imposes on the construction of new houses in the fast-growing south metro Atlanta community, despite a lawsuit from home builders pushing back on the charges.

Home builders will now have to pay roughly $7,085 in impact fees on any new construction, compared to the $3,544 that the county had been charging. The increase is about $1,000 lower than the proposed new rate the county was considering just a few weeks ago.

“If we are going to build more houses and we’re going to have more development in an area, then there needs to be a correlation with the amount of impact fees that are paid,” Commissioner Kevin Lewis said at Tuesday’s commission meeting, where the fee increase was passed on a 5-1 vote.

The change is meant to address Henry’s crumbling infrastructure of roads and bridges and its need for more police and public safety as its population booms as metro Atlanta’s second-fastest growing county.

But the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association, which filed a lawsuit against Henry in 2022 over the figures the county used to increase its impact fees to $3,544, argues that the charges are barrier to homeownership.

“The easiest way to achieve affordable housing is to remove government regulation and government fees,” Garrett Wiley, the association’s government affairs director, told the board Tuesday. “That’s step 1.”

Wiley asked the board to honor a letter the association sent to attorneys representing the county earlier in the day that asked the commission to put the fee increase vote on hold while the lawsuit moves through the courts. A hearing on the litigation, which also includes plaintiffs ResiBuilt Homes and Peachtree Building Group, is scheduled for Aug. 12 in Henry Superior Court.

Clifton Harrison, president of Life Built Homes, said now is not the time to pass on more costs to home builders. He told the board the market is about $75,000 overpriced and that interest rates need to come down at least a half-point to lower housing prices.

“We’re hyper focused on getting costs down right now to make housing more affordable to families,” he said.

But Commissioner Johnny Wilson said he didn’t think Henry was raising the fees high enough to cover its transportation, public safety and parks needs . He voted against the measure because he preferred the $8,008 increase and an alternate proposal to hike the charge to $10,442.

“We’re so far behind in all these categories that we’re eventually going to have to make up the difference of the impact out of our general fund,” he said.

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