Once a hot spot for crime in the Reynoldstown neighborhood, the Atlanta Motel at 277 Moreland Ave. now has a new life as a colorful affordable housing complex.
The 1960s property that sits right off I-20 has been revamped as a 56-unit home for the city’s most vulnerable residents, and it will be fully equipped with laundry facilities, a lounge, free internet and wraparound social services.
Stan Sugarman, co-founder of developer Styrant Construction, called the reimagined motel “a great success.”
“It was probably the worst thing in the neighborhood, and today it’s going to be something totally different,” he said at the grand opening ceremony this week. “There’s no nice way to say it: Housing is everything — it’s the first step in being a whole person.”
The formerly dilapidated motel is just one of three projects Atlanta officials celebrated in less than three weeks, as Mayor Andre Dickens looks to cement his affordable housing legacy.
Earlier this month, Dickens cut the ribbon on the 26-unit Bonaventure Avenue rapid housing project near Ponce City Market in the Old Fourth Ward. And on Thursday in west Midtown, the city broke ground on the Waterworks Development that will house 100 vulnerable Atlantans.
At the site next to the reservoir near Northside Drive, Dickens told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that boosting the city’s affordable housing stock is his top priority.
“This is definitely the reason why I ran for mayor,” he said. “Is to provide housing and stability for people; to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to thrive in the city — and housing is fundamental to everybody’s existence.”
“I want to be known for this,” he added.
Credit: Riley Bunch/riley.bunch@ajc.com
Credit: Riley Bunch/riley.bunch@ajc.com
Dickens entered office for his first term with a lofty goal of creating or preserving 20,000 units of affordable housing by 2030. He’s looking to reach that number with innovative projects like The Melody, a shipping container community at 184 Forsyth St. in downtown.
In the past three years, according to the mayor’s office, the city has delivered over 6,000 affordable units, with another 4,500 under construction. In 2024, officials celebrated the groundbreaking of 15 projects and 15 others that were completed.
Josh Humphries, the city’s top housing adviser, said the administration is focused on projects like The Melody that use unconventional ways to stand up units quickly. The shipping container project took a record time of just four months to open from when construction started.
“Typically for a new multifamily housing, it’ll take three to four years to deliver — sometimes longer than that — which is just not fast enough for our residents,” he said. “We know that we need to deliver more housing and quality housing as fast as we can.”
Each year, the nonprofit Partners for HOME conducts a federally mandated survey of Atlantans experiencing homelessness called the Point-In-Time count. The 2024 results showed a 7% increase in the number of Atlantans living on the street since 2016.
“We know that the crisis of homelessness still persists in our community and there is much work to be done,” Partners for HOME CEO Cathryn Vassell said Thursday at the Waterworks Development.
The organization expects to prop up 700 new units in the next 18 months.
“The administration has made it clear that affordable housing is their top priority,” she told the AJC. “But that also includes for people who are experiencing homelessness, which is really exciting.”
Credit: Ben Gray
Credit: Ben Gray
The flurry of ribbon cuttings is also good for Dickens’ reelection bid, which will likely lean heavily on his affordable housing contributions to the city.
But the first-term mayor has also faced challenges, like a years-long battle with Millennia, the owner of the rundown Forest Cove apartment complex in southeast Atlanta.
And more recently at Centennial Yards, the mini-city being built within downtown Atlanta’s Gulch, the developer opted to pay the city an $8.5 million fee instead of building affordable housing units that were slated in original agreements.
Still, the city is still pressing forward with projects like the office-to-residential conversion at 2 Peachtree St. downtown, which was once the First National Bank of Atlanta and is now home to the city’s Housing Help Center that opened last year.
Dickens told the AJC that he hopes other cities in the region begin to stand up more mixed-income and affordable housing options so that Atlanta doesn’t bear the weight of tackling homelessness alone.
“We think that this is inspirational work that we’ve done in three years,” Dickens said.
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