Democratic U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s recently passed federal housing legislation could help add more homes to the Atlanta market.
The 21st Century Road to Housing Act loosens restrictions on manufactured housing and limits on how many single-family homes private companies can buy.
“It means that homes here in Atlanta and throughout Georgia are for families, not for Wall Street investors to make a buck off,” said Warren in an exclusive interview with WABE.
Alongside Georgia’s U.S. Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, Warren says the new bipartisan housing legislation is designed to address a growing problem in cities like Atlanta that is adding to housing affordability struggles.
“We’re going to do another housing bill. We’re not through. You know, this is a big bill, but the problem is even bigger,” said Warren.
According to the Reinvestment Fund, a national financial institution serving underserved communities, 1 in 4 homes in Atlanta are owned by corporate investors.
“It’s taking away from our affordable housing stock, and they don’t contribute to the community, which is what is different when you have local landlords and residents; they care about the community in a different way,” said Christina Szczepanski, president of Lending and Investments with the Reinvestment Fund.
According to real estate website Redfin, the median sale price of a home in Atlanta was about $430,000. It is slightly down from last year; however, it is not affordable for everyone.
Senator Warren adds that President Trump did not sign the legislation into law.
“We have a president of the United States who describes affordability as a hoax. And when we put together this law, this huge law, on a bipartisan basis, we have Republicans and Democrats that voted for this; he [Trump] said, ‘big yawn’; he just doesn’t care about lowering costs for American families,” said Warren.
“So this is why the Democrats, we really have locked arms. And John Ossoff and Reverend Warnock have been real leaders in this space.”
After the housing act became law, Trump posted on Truth Social: “I will not sign the Housing Bill, which has been fully approved by Congress and sent to the White House, in PROTEST over the fact that the United States Senate is not capable of passing THE SAVE AMERICA ACT.”
Overall, the goal of the housing act is to make homeownership and renting more affordable. But Warren says the new law may take some time to start working.
“We need to start getting these laws implemented, and that means we’ve got to hold these Trump officials who are in charge over Housing and Urban Development, who are charge of some of these agencies. We’ve gotta hold them accountable,” said Warren.
She says this year’s midterm elections will be crucial in addressing the current affordability crisis.
“We can do this if we can get the majority, if the Democrats can get a majority. We can roll back those Republican cuts that have literally knocked hundreds of thousands of people right here in Georgia off their health insurance,” said Warren.
She says she is working to add more provisions to bring down the cost of owning and renting a home. During the U.S. Senator for Massachusetts’ visit, she sat down with Atlanta housing advocates inside the Georgia Hill Neighborhood Center in the Summerhill neighborhood.
Odetta MacLeish-White has over 20 years of experience in affordable housing and co-chairs the Policy and Advocacy Working Group for HouseATL. She hopes to see innovation like manufactured home construction that can drive down prices.
“My hope is that the Road to Housing Act will open up resourcing. We need dedicated revenue for affordable housing. We need easier zoning that is thoughtful and does not violate communities’ goals or desires on how they would like to see their communities grow,” said MacLeish-White.
“The bill is language; it can only go so far, but now we got to get into what does it look like to actually implement this on the local and state level to ensure that these policies are actually affecting the people that are the most impacted,” said Sherrell Byrd, founder and executive director of SOWEGA Rising and board chair for Georgia Advancing Communities Together, Inc.
“So our renters, our folks living in rural areas, people that are in disaster-prone areas.”
She says one of the greatest concerns is how the implementation and enforcement will look now that this bill is in place, particularly when it comes to things like rural disaster funding.
“As you know, in rural areas, we’ve had our share of disasters. We just want to make sure when the funding does come to these areas that it is coming expeditiously, but it’s also equitable so that these communities can rebuild,” Byrd added.
T. Dwain Smith of the NAACP DeKalb says the organization calls the 21st Century Road to Housing Act landmark legislation.
He adds that the NAACP is pushing for an increase in workforce housing, which he says disproportionately affects marginalized communities, including black and indigenous people and people of color.
“We advocate for expanded rental assistance, fairer underwriting, public housing preservation, and structural reforms to ensure equitable access to safe workforce housing for all,” said Smith.
