On March 4 , housing leaders, developers, researchers and community advocates gathered at the Atlanta Regional Housing Forum to take stock of where the Atlanta region stands on affordability and,more importantly, what it will take to move forward.
The conversation made one thing clear early on: Atlanta’s housing crisis is not driven by a single issue. It is layered, structural and deeply interconnected.
“We all know what many of [the underlying issues] are,” Housing Forum founder Bill Bolling said, pointing to capital shortages, zoning restrictions, permitting delays, construction costs and community opposition. Rather than isolating one cause, the forum focused on how these barriers compound.
At the same time, speakers emphasized that the region has made real progress. “Atlanta ranked fifth in the nation for affordable housing apartment production from 2020 to 2024,” said Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta’s Sarah Kirsch. “That’s pretty remarkable.” Still, she added, “that does not mean we should take our foot off the gas.”
Atlanta’s widely cited goal of producing 20,000 affordable units has helped align public and private actors, but it falls short of the actual need. “The short answer is no, right, it is not sufficient,” Kirsch said, noting that the goal was designed to be achievable, not exhaustive.
A recurring theme throughout the forum was that housing cannot be separated from broader social and economic outcomes. “Housing is foundational to all the other things we care about in our community,” Kirsch said. “It’s foundational to better educational outcomes… economic mobility… food security… better health outcomes.” In other words, the stakes extend far beyond units and price points.
Still, turning alignment into production remains difficult. Developers pointed to regulatory systems that have grown increasingly complex over time. “We have built on it, and we have built on it, and we have built on it,” said Rick Porter of Richpoint Properties. “But we have not decided that some of those ideas from 40 years ago are not necessarily relevant today.”
That accumulation has real costs. Requirements like large lot sizes, multiple parking spaces and lengthy review processes can add thousands of dollars per unit and months to development timelines. “If things take longer, it costs more, which ultimately makes things less affordable,” said EJ Lee from Good Places.
Even when projects are viable on paper, community resistance can stop them. “The NIMBY [not in my back yard] effect is a real thing,” Lee said. In some cases, developments intended to serve seniors or lower-income residents have been blocked after years of planning.
For developer Joel Dixon, that tension reflects a broader issue of public responsibility. “Our mayor works for you… This is not the mayor, this is us, our responsibility,” he said, calling on residents to engage more directly with zoning and land use decisions.
Market forces are also reshaping the landscape, complicating access to homeownership. Data presented at the forum showed that institutional investors now play an outsized role in metro Atlanta. “We are home to more than 78,000 corporate-owned single-family rental properties,” said Georgia State professor Taylor Shelton. “These properties represent a full third of the single-family rental market here in metro Atlanta.”
In some counties, the concentration is even higher. “These companies own 58, 70 and 82 percent of the single-family rental market” in Douglas, Henry and Paulding counties, Shelton said. As their presence has grown, rents have increased and eviction rates have risen. “Tenants… are effectively paying more money for what amounts to a worse product,” he said.
Against that backdrop, the forum returned repeatedly to the question of what can actually be done. The answers were not simple, but several patterns emerged: streamline permitting, rethink zoning to allow more housing types, secure consistent funding sources and strengthen collaboration across sectors.
Kirsch emphasized that much of the work comes down to maintaining alignment. “We can agree on probably 80 percent of what needs to happen,” she said. “If we spend all of our time arguing about the 20 percent, we’re never going to do anything.”
At the same time, some speakers pointed to innovation already happening on the ground. One example is PadSplit, an Atlanta-founded company that converts existing homes into shared housing. Dixon highlighted its speed and scale. “If I told you there was a way of affordable housing in one week… PadSplit… did that this past week… with zero subsidy,” he said.
The takeaway from the March forum was not a single solution or policy fix. Instead, it was a clearer understanding of the problem’s scope and the need for sustained, coordinated action.
“There’s a shared purpose,” Kirsch said. “And that shared goal… we need that alignment to chase those shared goals.”
In Atlanta, affordability is not just about building more housing. It is about navigating a system where policy, markets and community dynamics intersect, and deciding, collectively, how to move forward.
