Mayor announces affordable housing “strike force.” But what is it?

Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens announced he’s crafting a new “affordable housing strike force” in his first State of the City address April 4, billing it as a “one-stop shop” to coordinate the city’s housing affordability efforts. But what exactly will be the group’s responsibilities?

The strike force will launch in two weeks with top officials from Atlanta Housing, Invest Atlanta, the Atlanta Land Bank, MARTA, Atlanta Public Schools, and Atlanta Beltline, Inc., mayor’s office spokesperson Michael Smith told Atlanta Civic Circle this week.

Those agency heads will assemble a team of housing experts to take stock of all development-ripe municipal land—though it’s unclear how that would differ from a similar initiative by the city planning department last year—review public incentives options available to developers, and streamline the city’s permitting office to fast-track affordable housing construction.

But beyond that, the mayor’s office has not yet fleshed out details about the strike force. Its purpose, though, is to ultimately map out a plan on how to develop and preserve 20,000 affordable housing units over the next eight years—one of Dickens’ campaign goals.

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