The Politics of Fair and Affordable Housing in Metropolitan Atlanta: Challenges for Educational Opportunity

• In Event: Critical Intersections Among Housing and Education: Understanding Relationships, and Exploring New Opportunities, Across Policy Spheres

Abstract

In September 2018, House ATL, a coalition of business, community, philanthropic, and housing policy interests, unveiled a comprehensive plan for affordable housing policy in Atlanta convened by the Urban Land Institute. The plan was directed toward Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, who was elected in 2017 and who promised 1 billion for affordable housing ($500 million in new public monies) during her campaign. In June 2019, the Mayor unveiled her Atlanta Affordable Housing Initiative, but critics say that there is neither sufficient funding nor adequately specific goals to make a substantial difference to the city’s most disadvantaged residents (Brey 2019). Diversion of resources to projects such as the downtown development of the “Gulch,” and only limited inclusionary zoning measures around the Beltline development project connecting the city’s neighborhoods, have further precluded or curbed new investments in affordable housing. With one of the highest eviction rates in the country and a placement near the bottom in Chetty, Hendren, Saez and Turner’s study of intergenerational mobility (2014), education and housing need to be more closely coordinated if educational opportunity is to be improved.

This paper considers the question of which race-conscious approaches to housing and community development, enforcement of fair housing laws, and educational policies, could meaningfully contribute to expanded educational opportunity in the Atlanta metropolitan area. It situates education policy within the broader context of housing policy and community development. The author employs Schneider & Ingram’s (1997) social construction of target populations framework to analyze how various stakeholders have characterized the challenges of affordable housing and proposed solutions.

Drawing on documents, media accounts, observational notes from hearings and meetings, and selected interviews with approximately 20 policymakers, representatives of non-profit organizations, philanthropies, and other community-based stakeholders, the author 1. describes the politics of affordable housing in Atlanta between 2017 and 2020, including limited efforts at cross-sector coordination through the Atlanta Regional Commission and the Atlanta Public Schools Task Force on Affordable Housing; and 2. analyzes the barriers to and possibility for coordination of housing and education policy instruments to potentially increase educational opportunity in the region. These include: enforcement of fair housing laws, adoption of source of income protections, inclusionary zoning, strengthened regional coordination, limitations on the Tax Allocation Districts that divert money from the city schools, new bond measures, effective targeting of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit provision to higher opportunity school districts, student assignment policies that restrict unlimited choice, and improved transportation options for students across city and county lines.

Author

• Elizabeth H. DeBray, University of Georgia