On Aug. 17, the Westside Future Fund expanded its footprint with a groundbreaking for 18 new, permanently affordable multifamily housing units in Vine City.
“We’re in the community development business,” Westside Future Fund President and CEO John Ahmann said.
The 280 James P. Brawley Drive development expands the business. It will be WFF’s first-ever new build affordable housing development in the long-disinvested Vine City neighborhood. With a $6.7 million price tag, it was funded through corporate, philanthropic and public investment dollars.
The homes were designed by Atlanta based Kronberg Urbanists + Architects and developed by BlackOak. It is set to be finished by mid-2027.
It tackles two major issues in the city: A lack of new housing, and a lack of affordable housing.
Recent ARC data revealed Atlanta’s population growth is slowing down, and that’s largely due to housing supply – Atlanta saw the region’s largest drop in building permits in 2025, though it still had the area’s highest permit count overall.
But 280 James P. Brawley will turn a once blighted single family home into 18 new housing units.
“This is exactly what we want,” Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens said. “Where there once was a previous lot that only had one house, which was blighted, now we’re going to get 18 families that are going to be everything from teachers to public servants, all in this community.”
It’s only a handful of homes, but it helps to chip away at Dickens’ mayoral goal: 20,000 new or preserved affordable homes by 2030. So far, he’s already hit 15,000 homes. Dickens says its thanks to developments like 280 James P. Brawley.
But it is also a deeply affordable development. Atlanta (like the rest of the country) uses Area Median Income, or AMI, to calculate who qualifies for affordable housing. But the metric uses the entire Sandy Springs-Roswell-Atlanta area – putting the Area Median Income for a four-person family at about $114,200.
Most affordable housing developments are created by private developers. The developers will often set aside a portion of the units as “affordable” for the next 30 years. They will be priced at 60-80% of the Area Median Income.
But in Atlanta, 80% of the AMI for a family of four is still $91,360 – rent will cap out at $2,650 for a four bedroom unit. It’s a market reality: Developers need to make enough rent to get a return on investment. Adding too many affordable units, or too many “deeply affordable units” requires capital investment.
This is where WFF comes in. The nonprofit will cap its units at 80% AMI, but the new homes will be priced down to 30% of the median income. That’s only about $34,260 for a family of four.
“With all the business growth happening in our city, people are going to move back into the neighborhood, and when people move back in, we don’t want people to be pushed back out,” Ahmann said.
For Ahmann, the math is simple: A nonprofit doesn’t need to make back its investment. The future fund can prioritize deeply affordable homes. And it can do that permanently.
After all, the goal of the “corridor” is greater investment. WFF has added single family homes, apartments and affordable commercial space to the area. The city opened a park. The Westside Tax Allocation District won’t run out until 2038 – longer if the city extends it.
Ahmann says Vine City will transform from a so-called “low opportunity neighborhood” into a “high-opportunity neighborhood.” Basically, somebody in the neighborhood with lower wages will have a higher chance of climbing the economic ladder.
“Part of the long-term view is, we know these will become high-performing neighborhoods as they repopulate,” Ahmann said. “But we want to lock down the permanent affordability.”
The CEO said the Westside Future Fund has generated about $200 million worth of philanthropic and low cost impact fund investment. It’s a big change for the neighborhood. When the Westside TAD was created in 1992, the area had not even reached the “baseline” tax property value set for the district.
Now, its generating increment – tax property revenue due to a rise in property values. As the increment raises, Ahmann wants to “lock in” affordability for the long-term residents.
“You really do need a lot of private investment to occur, but not at the expense of the folks that want to enjoy that (investment,) Ahmann said.
