Metro Atlanta is short more than 200,000 affordable homes for lower-income households, and the region's population keeps growing while housing prices stay elevated. On Wednesday, officials unveiled Housing Forward 2035, the first-ever regional housing plan for the 11-county Atlanta area, setting a target of 367,000 new homes by 2035 and laying out ten regional housing actions meant to close that gap.
The plan was unveiled inside Saint Luke's Episcopal Church, according to WABE. Anna Roach leads the Atlanta Regional Commission, the agency behind the strategy, which the Atlanta Regional Commission says is needed because the metro area needs more homes for lower-income residents, even as new housing is needed across all income levels. The commission projects that a large share of new jobs created between now and 2035 will be in low- and moderate-wage occupations, yet current market trends are on track to meet only 25% of housing demand for households earning less than $55,000 a year, per WABE.
Housing unaffordability has already led to significant cost burden among lower-income households, with many living in homes that cost more than they can afford. To close that gap, the plan calls for a four-fold increase in affordable home production for households earning under $55,000 annually, alongside preserving 104,000 existing affordable units currently at risk of loss to redevelopment, according to the Atlanta Regional Commission.
Vacant Land and a Widening Sprawl Problem
An ARC planning analysis identified 106,000 vacant or underutilized properties across the 11-county region, including 1,530 publicly owned parcels. That inventory led the plan to set a target of building new homes on 10% of those identified vacant or underutilized properties by 2035, the commission reports.
Without intervention, ARC's strategic study found that new housing construction would keep concentrating in outer suburban counties such as Forsyth, Cherokee, and Henry, pushing low-wage workers farther from major job hubs and public transit. Housing Forward 2035 responds with three strategic goals: strategic growth, closing the affordability gap, and activating vacant or underutilized properties, the plan states. One of its ten actions calls for building a strategic approach to homelessness prevention and response.
Rising Costs and a Tighter Timeline
Construction costs have not made the job easier. Tariffs and inflation have raised the costs of construction materials including steel, aluminum, and lumber, according to WABE, adding pressure to a housing market already struggling to keep pace with demand.
Developed over two years in collaboration with real estate advisory firm HR&A Advisors, the plan will be reviewed over four upcoming ARC board meetings before heading to the 11-county planning board for formal adoption in late 2026 or early 2027, according to SaportaReport. As an 11-county planning agency, ARC lacks direct zoning authority, meaning Housing Forward 2035 functions as a policy roadmap dependent on voluntary adoption and municipal implementation across dozens of cities and counties.
A Dashboard to Track Whether Cities Follow Through
To keep tabs on that voluntary rollout, the Atlanta Regional Commission is launching a regional housing dashboard that will track progress on the plan and provide public transparency, per WABE's report. The tool arrives as ARC's own numbers show the strain building: the 11-county region added 53,690 residents between April 2025 and April 2026, reaching a total population of 5,339,164, but growth decelerated from 1.2% to 1.0%, a slowdown SaportaReport notes planners attribute in part to housing shortages.
The City of Atlanta bucked that regional trend, growing 1.3% over the same period to a record 549,615 residents and leading the region with 5,622 building permits amid a boom in Midtown and BeltLine apartment construction, according to Urbanize Atlanta. The new housing plan builds on ARC's broader 25-year Regional Development Plan, Growing Together for 2050, which the ARC Board approved in August and which anticipates the region's population climbing from 5.2 million to nearly 7.9 million by 2050.
Institutional Ownership Adds to the Squeeze
Homeownership barriers extend beyond new construction. An earlier ARC analysis found that seven major institutional investors own more than 51,000 single-family rental homes across 21 metro Atlanta counties, holding over 97% of their total Georgia residential portfolios in the metro region, as Hoodline previously reported. That concentration of corporate ownership has made it harder for lower- and moderate-income buyers to break into the market, even as demand keeps climbing.
The strategy's roots trace back to April, when ARC hosted its Regional Housing Summit in Duluth, drawing more than 200 government, business, and nonprofit leaders into five working groups that shaped the goals, land tools, and homelessness strategies now featured in Housing Forward 2035. Wednesday's Atlanta Regional Housing Forum also included an analysis of the newly enacted federal Road to the 21st Century Housing Act, examining how federal policy could complement the region's own production tools.
With the plan now headed into a series of board reviews ahead of formal adoption in late 2026 or early 2027, the coming months will test how aggressively individual cities and counties are willing to align local zoning with the region's shared housing targets.
