Commissioners wonder if they’re brave enough to allow affordable housing

Despite the Athens-Clarke County Commission’s efforts to build affordable housing across Athens, the cost of housing continues to be a major issue for most people. The dream of homeownership is becoming increasingly out of reach for many while those who do own homes sometimes find themselves unable to afford both their taxes and the expense of maintenance. Skyrocketing rents have forced some Athenians to leave town or to become homeless, whether they end up on the street or on a friend’s couch.

Unless more is done to rein in the cost of housing, these problems will likely continue to get worse as Athens grows. Yet, the federal and state governments aren’t doing much to address this issue. That leaves the ACC government to bear this enormous responsibility alone, despite having less power and fewer resources than larger government entities.

Even so, the ACC government is capable of taking action to make housing more affordable without costing taxpayers a cent. According to the Georgia Initiative for Community Housing (GICH), the way it can do this is by getting out of the way.

Everyone knows that there’s a strong demand for moderately-priced homes and rentals in Athens. If local builders and developers could make good money meeting this demand, that’s what they would do. So what’s the problem? The GICH committee argues that in many cases, the issue preventing affordable housing in Athens is that it’s actually illegal to build. Developers build large, expensive homes – not because that’s what the market wants – but because that is the only type of housing that is legally allowed.

According to Danielle Gilmer, a member of Athens’ GICH committee, local zoning codes which forbid affordable housing are a legacy of slavery and of Jim Crow racism.

Zoned to exclude

That’s not to say that zoning codes are all bad; there are many reasons why cities enact them. The most obvious of these is to limit heavy industrial activity near residential neighborhoods, which can be important for the health and safety of residents. Nearly every US city enacts some kind of zoning code to separate various types of land uses (commercial, residential, industrial) from each other.

But zoning codes can do more than just segregate land uses. They can also segregate people.

Before the landmark US Supreme Court decision Shelley v. Kraemer in 1948, Black people were often prevented from buying homes in the US through explicitly exclusionary housing covenants. Housing discrimination continued after this decision, of course, but was dealt a further blow with the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968 in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

At that point, white racists who still wished to keep Black people out of their neighborhoods were forced to use other methods to enact their goals. As Gilmer and others on the GICH committee explained to the ACC Commission at last Tuesday’s work session, the white-dominated Athens city council changed their zoning codes in the 1960s to continue segregation after outright housing discrimination was outlawed. 

“The original purpose of zoning was to promote health, safety and welfare of residents by separating residential uses from industrial or other noxious uses,” Gilmer said. “Zoning was a key tool, using seemingly neutral rules like minimum lot size and single family [zoning] to exclude minorities, particularly African-Americans, from desirable neighborhoods, a practice that continues to impact housing patterns today.”

Back in the 60s, Athens banned the construction of less expensive types of housing like townhomes, duplexes and quadplexes. Furthermore, the local government outlawed accessory units, started to require large lot sizes and made other changes to keep white neighborhoods in Athens as white as possible, even without explicit racial segregation. The ACC government acted on purpose to make housing more expensive in white areas as a way of forcing the less affluent to look elsewhere simply due to the cost.

Legalizing affordability

After explaining the relevant history, Gilmer proceeded to lay out a set of policies that could help undo this racist legacy and legalize affordability in Athens again. Notably, she’s not claiming that these policies will solve all of Athens’ housing woes. Instead, she argues that this set of policies would be a good “first step” as we begin to tackle the affordability problem.

Allow accessory dwelling units

The first idea Gilmer discussed was about permitting homeowners to build small accessory units (sometimes called “in-law suites”) on their property and rent them out. Accessory dwelling units (ADUs) are allowed in all residential zones right now, but only if they don’t have a stove. This arrangement lets them work just fine as short-term rentals (for example, as Airbnbs), but they are not suitable as normal, long-term rentals.

The GICH committee calls this policy “backwards,” indicating that they prefer that ADUs be used to help alleviate Athens’ housing problems rather than add to our hotel stock. Gilmer and others on the committee are proposing that the ban on kitchen cooking facilities in ADUs be removed. This would allow ADUs to be rented out on the normal, long-term market at more affordable prices than larger homes.

Legalize infill townhomes

Townhomes are single-family units that are attached to each other to allow for some savings by using shared walls. It may be more efficient to build homes that way, but this type of housing is currently illegal in single-family zones across Athens, being permitted only on two-acre lots or larger. The GICH committee says that this prohibition is “difficult to justify” because it “does not protect the health, safety or welfare of Athenians.” The main effect of the ban is simply to prohibit a “relatively affordable” housing type on the majority of residential land in Athens, they argue.

Allow smaller homes and manufactured homes

Currently, new homes must be at least 1,000 square feet in most zoning districts in Athens and apartments must be at least 450 square feet. The GICH committee is proposing that these minimum size limits be dropped entirely.

While the GICH committee admits that most people want larger homes, they don’t see the public purpose in preventing people from living in tiny homes, either. They argue that “the sole purpose of setting arbitrarily high minimum square footage requirements is to increase the cost of housing.” If the market exists for very small (and thus very affordable) homes, why not let developers build them?

The GICH committee is also recommending the legalization of homes that are manufactured off-site, a process that is normally cheaper than building on-site. While these homes have a reputation for being lower quality, the GICH committee argues that this should no longer be the case. “The technology, quality and design of manufactured homes has advanced a great deal in recent decades, but Athens’s zoning code has not been updated.”

Reduce minimum street frontage requirements

Some large lots in Athens are both narrow and deep, a legacy of our agricultural past when each homeowner needed enough land to grow a significant portion of the food they ate. Today, we’re stuck with these large lots that have only one home on them, but also have plenty of extra land that isn’t used for anything anymore.

While developers would have the space to build several houses on lots like this, doing so would be illegal because of zoning rules that require a certain amount of street frontage for each house. The GICH committee is proposing to reduce or completely eliminate these requirements, thereby allowing a group of houses to be built on these deep lots that would essentially share a driveway to connect them to the street.

This could let some homeowners subdivide their lots and build new homes for sale, thereby making some money and improving Athens’ housing situation at the same time.

Encourage the building of “starter homes”

The GICH committee is also proposing that builders should be allowed to subdivide large lots into new, smaller lots for the building of additional homes, as long as the homes are smaller (and thus more affordable). Right now, the smallest lot allowed in Athens is 5,000 square feet, with the vast majority of residential zoning requiring even larger lots. But not everyone needs that amount of space or even wants to be responsible for the upkeep of such a large yard.

Committee members argue that allowing smaller lots will make homes more affordable without requiring a public subsidy.

Reduce parking minimums

Gilmer saved her most controversial suggestion for last. Currently, local zoning codes require that developers build at least two parking spaces for each unit they construct, even though some households only own one car. This means that parking lots wind up everywhere, taking up valuable land and making our stormwater runoff problems worse. Parking is also very expensive for developers to build, which adds to the cost of new housing.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Especially when housing is built on a bus line or in a walkable or bikeable area, the people who live there might only need one parking spot per unit, for example. The GICH committee is recommending that the ACC Commission consider whether reducing or eliminating parking requirements could be a good idea in Athens.

The commission response

ACC Commissioners were not overwhelmingly supportive of Gilmer’s presentation, with some staying quiet and others having different ideas on how to proceed. That wasn’t unexpected. A few years ago, the ACC Commission had considered some of these ideas and rejected them.

For example, a proposal to allow accessory dwelling units failed back in 2022 when Commissioners Melissa Link, Allison Wright, Ovita Thornton and Mike Hamby all voted against it. 

Link in particular is still a little uncomfortable with the thought of allowing kitchens in accessory structures and she fears that her constituents will feel the same way. However, she says does want to allow them “under certain conditions.”

“There’s a lot of nuance to this. We are going to get pushback [if we implement these proposals],” Link said. “I think we’re going to have to look hard and close at the nuances of any code we produce.”

Link suggested that developers could use the county’s special use process to apply for the right to build some of the currently illegal housing types, with each one needing a commission vote before it would be approved. This would mean very few would ever be allowed, effectively killing the proposal. For example, the commission rejected a relatively-affordable townhome development last year. 

Link was even more opposed to other ways of encouraging affordability, such as reducing minimum parking requirements.

“Parking is the number one thing I hear about in these smaller, historic neighborhoods. The streets are narrow,” she said. I’m not necessarily supportive of giving up parking mandates.”

Commissioner Carol Myers said she supports these ideas to improve affordability, but she admitted that they could be very controversial to the homeowners who vote in every election and who put her in office.

“I love it all, but I want to talk about the reality here. I can say I love all this stuff, but I know that the people living in single-family zones, we’re going to hear a lot [from them if we implement these policies],” Myers said. “Where do we get the political strength to do something like this?”

Thornton was one of four commissioners who voted against allowing accessory dwelling units back in 2022, but now she is a member of the GICH committee and says she has changed her mind. She spoke in support of the entire slate of policies.

“You will find a way, if the will is there,” Thornton said, answering Myers’ rhetorical question. “Nobody said this was going to be easy…One of the things we do too much of is meet, and nothing ever happens. We study and it collects dust…What we can solve now is what we should do.”

Without Thornton’s change of heart, these recommendations from the GICH committee would likely become just another study that sits on the shelf, unimplemented, as she said. But with her support, there could be a small chance that some of these policies are eventually put into effect.

Mayor Kelly Girtz tried to reassure worried commissioners about this slate of recommendations, saying that other towns have implemented these proposals and seen good results.

“We’re by far not the first community to have these conversations,” Girtz said. “They’ve done the bulk of these things in Gainesville [Florida] over the last couple of years. Minneapolis, where my Dad is from, did this pre-COVID. What you tend to see in those cities is incremental use of these things. You don’t see suddenly you’ve gone from one landscape of housing to another.”

Girtz says he will assign the recommendations to the ACC Planning Department for review before a vote by the ACC Commission sometime in the coming months.

You can read the GICH proposal for yourself here.

Help APN continue covering local news for the Athens area!
Please consider becoming a member or giving a one-time donation via PayPal.