By Sean Keenan
A smattering of single-family homes in historic Southwest Atlanta is coming on the market for buyers shopping the city’s short supply of affordable housing.
As the novel coronavirus continues to spread, claiming lives, shuttering businesses and forcing people to isolate themselves from friends and family, the need to produce and preserve affordable housing in Atlanta and beyond has never been more severe.
Though government officials have enacted protections against some eviction and foreclosure proceedings, Atlanta’s housing affordability crisis is mounting.
Enter a coalition of organizations committed to providing housing for low- and moderate-income families with a few for-sale options in Atlanta’s historic Pittsburgh neighborhood.
The Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership (ANDP) recently announced it had teamed up with the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Atlanta Civic Site and the Atlanta Land Trust (ALT) to protect a collection of Pittsburgh homes and help place families in them.
On Saturday, ANDP and ALT plan to host a virtual tour of three of those homes, which are priced at around $165,000 each — less than 80 percent of the area median income for a household.
Join us on Saturday for our first Virtual Open House with @ANDPINC. We’ll be touring three affordable homes for sale in the Pittsburgh neighborhood. pic.twitter.com/2RsXL1FSeW
— Amanda Rhein (@atllandtrust) April 28, 2020
The program uses a community land trust model, in which a person can buy a home but lease the land beneath it from ALT or another CLT, allowing the organization to guarantee long-term affordability.
“When the homebuyer is ready to sell and move on, the sale of the home is restricted to another affordable buyer,” ANDP materials say. “This ensures there will be permanently affordable homes in the neighborhood.”
Each home for sale through this Pittsburgh program is either newly built or freshly renovated.
Would-be buyers will have to apply through ALT and be prequalified by one of the organization’s approved lenders.
Check out the Pittsburgh homes for sale here.
(Header image, via ANDP: An affordable home on Pittsburgh’s McDaniel Street.)
