It is becoming harder for frontline workers — such as police officers, firefighters, nurses and school teachers — who work in Gwinnett County to also live in the county, according to the head of the Atlanta Regional Commission’s Board of Directors.
ARC Board Chairman Kerry Armstrong said housing is a major issue facing Gwinnett County, and the Atlanta region as a whole, as he addressed the Gwinnett Chamber this week.
“About one-in-three households in Gwinnett are considered ‘cost-burdened’ because they spend a third or more of their income on housing,” Armstrong said. “These trends are by no means isolated to Gwinnett. It’s occurring across the region and it’s just not sustainable.”
Armstrong said there are a number of issues that face the metro Atlanta region, including transportation, resiliency in areas such as water, homeland security, infrastructure and equal access to opportunity remain challenges the area has to continually address.
But, he added that a lack of affordable housing is an issue that can threaten the region’s sustainability if it not addressed, particularly with metro Atlanta’s population expected to grow by 1.8 million people — the equivalent of metro Nashville’s entire current population — by 2050.
“The Atlanta region stands at a critical crossroads,” Armstrong said. “The decisions and investments that we make in the next few years will go a long way in determining the quality of our future.”
Armstrong said Gwinnett is not alone in facing a problem with housing becoming increasingly unaffordable.
He showed graphics that showed which parts of metro Atlanta had affordable housing and how the number of affordable areas decreased over the last decade.
“By 2021, almost the entire northern side of our region, including nearly all of Gwinnett, is seeing median (home) prices north of $400,000,” Armstrong said….
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