LOCATION, Oakland City, Atlanta, GA

SIZE: 3.5 Acres, 42 units

STATUS: In Progress

SERVICES PROVIDED: Architecture, Housing Choices

KUA has teamed up with Civitas Housing Group and The Atlanta Land Trust (ALT) to design 42 units across 3.5 Acres in South West Atlanta. The project will create permanently affordable housing in a community expected to experience rapid gentrification in the coming years.

The ALT is a community land trust with a Mission, “to deliver and steward permanently affordable housing to support inclusive, equitable communities near the Atlanta BeltLine and other targeted areas in the city of Atlanta.” Their vision is to help create, “a livable, equitable and economically viable city where historically marginalized populations and communities of color can access and benefit from opportunities and prosper.” In support of ALT’s Mission and Vision, this proposed project will provide a model for infill development that includes a variety of affordable for-sale housing options.

The site proves challenging for development, specifically for the density needed to achieve affordable housing prices. A majority of the roughly 3.5 acre site is undevelopable, with multiple stream buffers and sewer easements crossing the property. An initial proposal sought a stream buffer variance to provide for more developable land in an already impacted area of the stream buffer, but the variance was denied. The evolved site plan thus concentrates most units at the north end of the site, along Donnelly and Peeples and a proposed internal courtyard. This plan proposes to relocate one of the sewer easements to provide a more rational site layout.

The project proposes to provide a total of 42 units, one of which is already existing on the site. The unit types include a mix of 1-bedroom, 2-bedroom, and 3-bedroom units, accommodating accessible price points for a variety of housing types. The project intends to offer for-sale product at 60% to 100% of AMI. The homes are designed to be compact, with parking detached from the unit in shared lots to reduce the for-sale price. As a community amenity, the site has a shared community green, accessible to all residents. This project hopes to serve as a model for supporting city and neighborhood goals of diverse, affordable, context-sensitive housing. Given the site’s location in a mixed-use area with direct access to the BeltLine, and because mixed-income housing is a vital community development tool to help staunch the rapid gentrification of this legacy Black community, the development partners believe that mixed-income, for-sale housing is the best use of this site.