Georgia at the Intersections: Housing Affordability

 Over the past year, Atlanta’s median home prices have increased nearly 24  percent and according to the real estate brokerage firm Redfin -- Atlanta home purchases have been particularly targeted by investors- which means flipping and reselling for even higher prices. A report by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta says the median annual income in Atlanta has increased by roughly one thousand dollars since 2020, meanwhile the median home price has gone up by more than 100,000 dollars. 

As housing prices rise, the city’s racial demographics are also shifting.  White residents coming to Atlanta have vastly outnumbered the arrival of new Black residents, a reversal of trends from previous decades, when Black residents made up the majority of Atlanta's population. 

For our ongoing series, Georgia at the Intersections, we’re talking about what this all means for Atlanta residents and Georgia politics. We spoke with Jim Burress, a WABE reporter who's been covering Atlanta’s housing market for nearly 14 years and Bambie Hayes-Brown, CEO of Georgia Advancing Communities Together, an organization representing non-profit housing and community development groups in Georgia.