If we are serious about inclusive growth and making sure working families, seniors and children have a place in the city, then we must fund the solution.
Mayor Andre Dickens and city housing leaders break ground on the Civic Center redevelopment outside of the Civic Center in Atlanta on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. Atlanta Housing broke ground on the Historic Civic Center Redevelopment first phase of construction, launching 148 affordable senior housing units. (Abbey Cutrer/AJC)
By Terri M. Lee – For The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
7 hours ago
Atlanta is running out of time. Across this city, affordable housing developments that should be moving forward are getting harder to build, harder to finance and harder to preserve.
The cost of building and preserving affordable housing has changed faster than the tools we use to pay for it, and unless we act with urgency, the homes we are counting on today may never open their doors tomorrow.
When affordable housing becomes impossible to build, the consequences do not stop at the doors of the families who need it most.
Workers are pushed farther from their jobs, seniors are priced out of the neighborhoods they helped build, children are forced to change schools, traffic gets worse, employers struggle to retain workers, and neighborhoods lose the very people and institutions that made them strong in the first place.
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$350M funding gap threatens progress in the city
Terri M. Lee is president and CEO of Atlanta Housing. (Courtesy)
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Urgency is needed to avoid the bottom falling out
People gather in the parking lot during a groundbreaking of the Civic Center redevelopment outside of the Civic Center in Atlanta on Tuesday, Dec. 9, 2025. Atlanta Housing broke ground on the Historic Civic Center Redevelopment first phase of construction, launching 148 affordable senior housing units. (Abbey Cutrer/AJC)
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