The housing crisis: Rising prices and legislation squeeze Athens residents

If there’s something many residents of Eastside Athens have noticed, it’s the surge in housing developments in the past few years. At least four developments have been started in just the past year, including a development by Ashton Place, a new neighborhood off of Old Lexington Trace, a single family home addition to Snapfinger and townhouses off of Research Drive.

“As a resident, right behind our property where we live, an entire subdivision is going up almost in our backyards. No one wants to have people moving in directly behind them,” social studies teacher James Page said. “However, we have a huge housing shortage here in Athens and really across the country, which is causing housing prices to drive up and be really expensive and unaffordable.”

Page’s neighborhood backs up to what will soon be Lexington Meadows, and was once an open field.

Athens has been attracting people more and more as the city grows. The population of Athens in 1990 was around 88,000, while in 2024 the population was almost 130,000, according to the Census Bureau. The city draws many people in, not just because of its status of being a college town, but because of its close proximity to Atlanta, its business opportunities and its growing housing market. 

Athens isn’t just experiencing a demand for more housing, it is also experiencing a surge in house prices. The House Price Index (HPI) measures the movement of single-family property prices and the average price changes. In 2014, Athens’ HPI was 168.41. In 2024 the index increased to 411.54. That means most homes have become three times more expensive than they were a little over ten years ago. Prices have never increased that much and that fast in Athens history.

Homeowners are not the only ones affected by this surge of house prices, as tenants who are renting in Athens are also experiencing higher prices. As prices rise, landlords have no choice but to raise rent to cover their own expenses, making Athens less affordable for lower income families.

“Athens is beginning to provide more opportunities for the upper income families,” Cedar Shoals ESOL teacher Melanie Marty said.

Marty has lived in Athens for almost thirty years. She used to live in Wakefield, a neighborhood off of Barnett Shoals Rd.

“I don’t understand how some of these homes are being built, especially off Barnett Shoals.” Marty said. “They’re not affordable. Unless somebody has a middle class income, it’s difficult.”

The demand for cheaper housing hasn’t stopped Athens developers from developing more luxury homes. Wakefield leads into another neighborhood, Snapfinger Woods, which currently has a development at the beginning of the neighborhood. Two of the newest homes built near Snapfinger Woods in a development called River Ridge are currently being sold at $575,000 and $585,000.

As for downtown, The Drake is a new luxury apartment complex built on the corner of North Lumpkin Street and East Broad Street next to University Tower. It consists of four luxury apartments, two of them being three-bedroom apartments and two being two-bedroom apartments. The largest of these apartments, the penthouse, measures 1,290 square feet and the smallest is on the fourth floor, at 875 square feet. The Drake calls itself “the most exclusive address in the Classic City” and has a starting price of $1.35 million.

“You can’t force private developers in Georgia to have affordable housing. There’s not enough of a financial incentive,” Athens-Clarke County Commissioner Carol Myers (District 8) said. “We have people come to City Hall who ask why we aren’t approving affordable housing. I feel bad, but the fact of the matter is, our market is a capitalistic one that screws people at the bottom.”

Housing like The Drake has attracted a different audience to Athens, leaving older residents and families scrambling and trying to find a solution to Athens’ housing affordability crisis.

Double Edged Sword

On April 18, 2024, Governor Brian Kemp signed Georgia House Bill 581 into law. On Feb. 13, the Clarke County School District Board of Education held a vote to decide if they should opt out of the new law.

Georgia Bill 581’s goal is to provide property tax relief for homeowners around Georgia by limiting the property tax amount that can be collected by the state. Every county was given an option to opt out of this bill or not. Clarke County was one of the 47 counties to opt out of the bill.

The main point of the bill is to cap the assessed value of a home to the rate of inflation. This means that government property value assessors could not raise the assessed price of a home past the rate determined by the state government every year. 

It may seem paradoxical for the state government to put a cap on the price of houses. After all, the higher the price of a house, the more a homeowner can sell it for. But higher home prices also mean higher property taxes and higher insurance premiums. For homeowners not looking to sell, the ever climbing taxes can be a big financial burden. 

“The reason that I voted to opt in was really two reasons. One of them being, in my district, which is the north part of the county, I have some older constituents who have lived in their homes for decades, and now they’re getting taxed out of their home,” CCSD Board of Education member Mark Evans (District 9) said.

On its face, the bill seems simple. By opting out, there would be a cut back on property tax. According to Ownwell, a property tax analysis website, Athens has a property tax rate of 1.25%, higher than the national median of 1.02%. This is partly because The University of Georgia owns 762 acres of land in Athens. The university, being owned by the state and operating as a nonprofit educational institution, is exempt from paying property taxes. Clarke County is geographically the smallest county in Georgia. With so much nontaxable land, it means higher taxes on the land not owned by the state.

“My personal thoughts on the Georgia bill 581 are that it was drafted very hastily,” Board of Education member Tim Denson (District 5), who voted to opt out of the bill, said. “The way it was written, it puts a lot of pressure on school districts. Especially since county and city governments were not given other options on how they could raise that revenue back if the bill were to be passed.”

The Board of Education sets what’s called a millage rate: the amount of tax payable per dollar of the assessed value of taxable property. The millage rate overall affects how much a property is taxed. By opting into the bill, there is a cap on the assessed value of homes to combat inflation, causing property taxes to have a more steady incline. However, funding for public schools in Clarke County would also decrease because less property tax means overall less money going into the school district. By opting out of the bill, the Board of Education would have more power over how much property tax can go to the school district. Funding for the school district would be more secure, but property taxes would likely continue to rise at fast rates.

What makes the discussion difficult is the effect on funding public schools. The concern about many of the schools in Clarke County is no new topic, especially on the Eastside. The Governor’s Office of Student Achievement reported in 2024 that Clarke County has a performance rate lower than the state average in all three subjects recorded. However, it also has more students with special needs and students taking accelerated courses than the state average. According to The Red & Black, by opting into the bill, the school district would have lost $7.4 million in revenue.

Less funding means less help for students who may need it. This makes Georgia House Bill 581 a “double edge sword,” especially for residents who are both homeowners and teachers.

“In my heart, I wanted to opt out. But if I look at what my constituents are going through, what good are the school taxes if there are no children there because they can’t afford to live,” Evans said. 

Having to decide what’s best for the school district and what’s best for their own district made voting hard on both sides.

“I very quickly saw that it was going to create this revenue squeeze on our school district that would make it impossible for us to operate at the level that we needed to,” Denson said. “I knew that there was no way that I could support this, my job right is to do what’s going to be best for students and the district here when it comes to educating our students. This bill directly goes against us being able to do that.”

Voting to opt out of the bill means there is no cap on the value of homes to combat inflation, not solving the already complicated housing crisis.

“When you have really complex problems, such as what we have with our housing situation, and especially with something as complex as property taxes, there’s usually not an easy fix,” Denson said.