Nearly half of Atlanta residents are housing cost-burdened, spending over 30% of their income on housing costs. In some neighborhoods on the south and west sides of the city, more than 70% of residents are housing cost-burdened. With a $3 million acquisition loan from Community Housing Capital, the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership (ANDP) will purchase and rehab 20-25 single-family rental homes over the next two years. Fifty percent of the homes will be leased to households earning 80% of Area Median Income (AMI) or below, with the flexibility to rent the remainder to households earning up to 120% of AMI. Average rents are expected to be as low as $1,250 per month, well below 80% AMI rent maximums of $1,724.
Much of Atlanta’s existing affordable housing is in single-family rentals. As non-local institutional investors purchase single-family homes for rent, they often act as absentee landlords or start flipping houses and displacing low- and moderate-income residents. ANDP believes that nonprofit ownership of single-family rentals is critical to slow gentrification while alleviating some of the overwhelming affordability issues in the Atlanta area. In year two of their Closing the Gap initiative, ANDP is on an unprecedented five-year campaign to build or preserve 2,000 affordable housing units in metro Atlanta. In the next three years, ANDP aims to grow its portfolio of affordable single-family rentals to over 300 homes and to sell 25-35% of the homes over the next ten years to homebuyers earning 60% AMI. To support ANDP’s initiative, CHC structured the $3 million loan as a 7-year facility, with two years of interest-only payments that will allow for stabilization of the homes as they transition to affordable rentals.