Athens-Clarke County has seen significant growth in recent years with more newcomers on the way. These talented individuals arrive by the hundreds or thousands every year, making important academic, artistic and economic contributions to our town.
While this growth has a powerful upside for Athens’ economy, some decision makers worry about the negative effects it could have on local residents.
The ACC Commission had a long discussion on this topic at their meeting on Thursday, ranging far afield from the actual item on the agenda which was a rezone request for 218 North Avenue.
Rezone request for 218 North Avenue
The homeowner living at 218 North Avenue has allowed his property to be used as a mobile home / RV park for decades but now wants to sell the 4.5 acre parcel. Studio BNA Architects, a local design firm, is proposing to build eight small apartment buildings on the property having 228 bedrooms in total. This would require a zoning change from commercial neighborhood to multifamily residential.
Commissioners generally supported the proposal, congratulating Studio BNA Architects for their local team and praising their design.
“I think this is an excellent proposal…and it’s excellent for that location,” Commissioner Ovita Thornton said.
“I think they’ve come up with a really creative project here,” Commissioner Melissa Link said.
But not all commissioners were supportive.
Commissioner Tiffany Taylor wasn’t thrilled by the development proposal, which she felt was geared mostly towards the upper middle-class. She seemed opposed to building more housing for this demographic, which she feels would come at the expense of locals and those who are less fortunate.
“With all of these developments that we have approved geared towards young professionals, recent graduates, retirees,” Taylor said, “exactly how many more apartment complexes like this are we going to approve til there is absolutely no place for Athenians to live in?”
Taylor was concerned about a handful of full-time residents currently living on the property who would need to relocate before the start of construction. Thornton and others supportive of the project tried to reassure her that the property owner is actively engaged with them and is helping these residents move.
“I would like for people to know that Mr. Bob has been actively trying to get these folks settled,” Thornton said. “This is a good project but I don’t think I could support it if we could not try to find places for those twelve families.”
Even so, Thornton agreed with Taylor on the deeper issue that Athens’ rapid growth may come at the expense of local residents.
“If we’re looking at a bunch of people coming in here, they’re talking three-thousand, six-thousand by 2030, what happens to the people who are already here? … We probably need to put a break on some of these [housing] developments,” Thornton said.
Commissioners have approved a large number of housing developments in recent years, many of which have yet to start construction.
Experts predict rapid growth, worrying commissioners
Athens grew by almost 12,000 residents from 2010 to 2020, according to the US Census Bureau. ACC Planning staff expect Athens’ growth to maintain that pace, if not accelerate, and they estimate that Athens will add 30,000 new residents by 2045.
Many of these new residents will be well-off or upwardly mobile individuals without young children, such as recent university graduates or retirees. These new residents may not want traditional, single-family homes and might instead opt for luxury-style apartments or townhomes. Some commissioners feel that this type of growth could raise nearby rents and push local families out of Athens.
“You don’t understand unless you grew up here. I predict in ten years, no one will be able to say ‘I grew up in Athens.’ I see Athens changing,” Commissioner Stephanie Johnson said. “I’m okay if we have enough [housing]. We can max out. There is a time and there is a place when we can max out and that is okay. We don’t owe it to anybody to keep building.”
It’s true that the rise of large, luxury student apartment complexes in Athens has correlated with rapid growth and sharply increasing rents throughout the city. But it doesn’t mean that these developments caused the higher rents.
Former Commissioner Russell Edwards told APN that the problem is actually a severe lack of housing that is causing rents to go up.
“The government commissioned an affordable housing study about three years ago that found we were 6,000 dwellings behind,” Edwards said. “We see in the data that we are currently experiencing a vacancy rate of around four percent, so there is a tremendous lack of competition in the rental market. Due to that constraint on supply and high demand, you’ve got extreme escalation of prices. The landlords don’t have to compete with each other, because there are no empty units for anyone to move into.”
Edward’s vacancy rate number came from Jeff Humphreys, director of the Selig Center for Economic Growth at UGA, who recently spoke at the 2025 Georgia Economic Outlook luncheon about the local economy, as reported by the Athens Banner-Herald. The vacancy rate statewide is around ten percent, according to Humphreys.
Taylor seemed doubtful that these large apartment complexes could have any positive effect for Athens residents. She questioned the need for their existence, wondering if many of them might be mostly vacant.
“Can we get an occupancy measure on all of the high rises and things that we have built? … How occupied are they? He [the designer of the 218 North Avenue project] said we’re in a deficiency of these types of housing but yet we’re approving only these types of housing,” Taylor asked. “Are they just so full that we still need to build more apartments?”
Planning Director Bruce Lonnee responded, saying that his department has run into difficulty when trying to gain precise data on rental occupancy rates, as opposed to the estimates given by economists.
“Capturing that occupancy information right now requires a property owner or manager to willfully provide it,” Lonnee said. “A lot of times it’s not in their best interests to say that they are not occupied.”
Lonnee’s department is working with the ACC Public Utilities Department to get a clearer picture of occupancy rates by tracking water usage in these apartment complexes.
Are single-family neighborhoods a thing of the past?
Johnson also brought up the Future Land Use Steering Committee, which is tasked with developing a new future land use plan to guide Athens’ development for the next 20 years. Johnson urged more local residents to get involved in the process for creating this map, incorrectly claiming that the committee was considering “getting rid of single family homes.”
“We are behaving as victims. We are not allowing ourselves to get involved with this process,” Johnson said.
But that wasn’t what the committee was talking about, exactly.
The committee did discuss single-family zoning at a recent meeting, specifically whether Athens should allow new duplexes, triplexes or townhomes in residential areas. This was controversial to some at the meeting, but it’s something that Edwards strongly supports.
“Every neighborhood in Athens has a diversity of housing options. Even in Five Points, you’ve got apartment complexes that are right next to established, single-family neighborhoods. In Boulevard, you have grandfathered-in quadruplexes, five-plexes, cottage courts – those all exist. Unfortunately, our code changed and now prohibits the creation of the very type of neighborhoods that already exist. And now we have a housing crisis,” Edwards told APN. “If we can’t get our heads around what actually caused our current housing shortage, then we’ll never fix it.”
This committee has been meeting since early 2024 and is almost ready to finalize its work and present it to the ACC Commission. The draft of the new Future Land Use map should be published sometime in the next few months.
Link also expressed concern about single-family neighborhoods at the meeting on Thursday. She suggested allowing people to have trailers, RVs or tiny homes in “some of our larger-scale, less-dense residential zones” as a way of easing some of the “pressure” on single-family neighborhoods.
“I know that there are already people living in tiny houses or RV-style vehicles on some of these larger wooded properties and I’d love us to develop some kind of special-use process to allow property owners to allow that to happen,” Link said. “It is increasingly a common and desirable way to live. My social media feeds are full of sweet little influencer videos of their tiny homes and trailer life.”
Living in tiny homes or RVs is currently not allowed by ACC code. New trailer parks are also not allowed. If the current trailer park at 218 North Avenue is dispersed, it would not be able to continue, even if the residents found another piece of land to occupy.
Commissioner Allison Wright asked ACC staff to send her a list of all the types of housing, such as trailer homes, that are not currently allowed by ACC code unless they were grandfathered-in.
The commission will vote on the rezone at 218 North Avenue on February 4.
Help APN continue covering local news for the Athens area!
Please consider becoming a member or giving a one-time donation via PayPal.
