Our city is blessed with an abundance of world-class institutes of higher education. Not only do we have the state’s flagship research institute, Tech, but we also have one of the fastest-growing and most innovative universities in downtown Atlanta—Georgia State. We have some of the most storied Historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) in the Atlanta University Center. We have public schools like Atlanta Metropolitan State College and private institutions like Emory University. All of these provide an extraordinary amount of opportunity, not just for the city of Atlanta, but for our state as a whole. They provide both education for their students, as well as extraordinary benefits for our country and our planet.
We all know that college has become far too expensive for the average student. In the last four decades, the cost of college has exploded by more than 1500%, far outpacing overall inflation as well as growth in wages. In our state, college students pay a significant price: Georgia ranks second in the nation for the highest average student debt per borrower, with an average debt of $41,775. That is even with the HOPE Scholarship, which covers the full cost of tuition to tens of thousands of Georgia students attending public Georgia universities every year.
It’s easy to assume that the answer to this problem must come from above; that the Federal government or the Governor has to step in and fix this crisis. We, as a people, have lost the muscle memory of how to provide local solutions to problems. In some ways, this makes sense. As a city, Atlanta cannot dictate the cost of college, tuition, books, or fees. But there is one thing that our city can influence: the cost of housing.
Housing costs are a significant component of why many students need to take out student loans. In my own case, my tuition was fully covered by the HOPE Scholarship, but I still had to take out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans just to live on campus. Like so many students, I worked a part-time job during school, and while that money helped with daily expenses, meals and supplies, it wasn’t even close to what I needed to pay for room and board. And that was with on-campus housing, always with three or even five roommates.
We are facing a cost-of-living crisis in this country, particularly around housing. An entire generation increasingly sees the American dream of owning a home as entirely out of reach, and we are offering our college students a dark glimpse of their future the moment they set foot on campus. But unlike tuition or textbooks, this is something our city can address — and it can be addressed today. It doesn’t require tens of millions of dollars in new spending; in fact, it doesn’t require any new spending at all.
Our universities are growing. For example, Georgia State’s enrollment in Fall 2013 was 32,165, and had leaped to more than 50,000 by Fall 2023. Tech just admitted its largest class in history, yet the supply of housing has not kept up. One can cross 10th Street, down Atlantic Drive or Hemphill and go from a dense, lively university campus into a scene more typical of Tucker, Lithonia, Roswell or McDonough than Midtown Atlanta. Single-family homes, no businesses, large yards, and no sidewalks. This is only hundreds of feet from a university campus.
The same applies around the University Center in Vine City and English Avenue or across Metropolitan Parkway from Atlanta Metropolitan State College. This makes no sense. Why is it that mere feet from university campuses, in areas that need dramatically more student housing, nothing is being built? How is it that the private market and the government are letting this problem fester as the cost to rent a single room near a university continues to explode?
The answer is our zoning laws. The reason more student housing is not being built adjacent to Georgia Tech is that it is illegal. And it is not just that it is illegal to build a 20-story apartment tower; it is illegal to build a three-story set of townhomes, even on lots directly adjacent to existing three-story townhomes. In fact, the majority of our city’s land is zoned single-family residential only. This means that, even if the market supports more affordable forms of housing, and even if the property owners want to provide those homes, the city will prevent them from doing so. Some of these restrictions, of course, make sense. Nobody is advocating for industrial waste sites in residential neighborhoods. However, Atlanta’s zoning code was last re-written in the 1980s, and it has become clear that these rules are inflexible and hurting our city. Rather than planning for growth, in most of our city, growth is made impossible.
This has to change. Almost the entirety of our city is suspended in amber, locked in its current built form. It is illegal for our city to grow, and the effects are devastating on the cost of housing, on our economy, on the availability of opportunity and on the ability of people to start businesses. But it is especially hard to understand when it is happening just hundreds of feet away from some of the most premier university campuses in the world.
Our campuses need to be allowed to grow. Our neighborhoods need to be allowed to grow. And this is not just for the benefit of students but for the entire campus community. These universities enroll tens of thousands of students and employ thousands of Georgians. Some of these people are well-paid professors, provosts and presidents, but the vast majority are groundskeepers, custodial staff, maintenance workers, IT personnel and academic advisors. Many of these workers earn anywhere from a decent wage to what is frankly far too little. Someone earning $16 an hour to do custodial work at Tech cannot afford to live near the Institute. They cannot afford to live in the city of Atlanta, and they certainly will not be able to in 10 years as housing costs rise.
If we want Atlanta to be a place where higher education thrives and everyone belongs, we need to recognize that the path we are on needs to change. We need to allow our neighborhoods to grow, particularly those around our world-class universities. That’s why I believe the City Council should immediately consider updating the zoning code to allow for modest density, multi-family, and mixed-use developments within a half-mile of university campuses.
This does not mean turning every campus into a skyscraper-lined slice of Manhattan. It means allowing for affordable student housing and homes for the broader campus community. A percentage of these developments should also be reserved for those making below a certain percentage of the area median income – the people who do the hard work of keeping our campuses running. These workers deserve a fair shot at living in the neighborhoods they serve.
The time to make these changes is now. The city is currently considering what its land use and zoning regulations will look like for the twenty-first century, with the ATL Zoning 2.0 project and the City’s new Comprehensive Development Plan both underway. At a time when the cost of purchasing or renting a home continues to skyrocket, we can’t afford to wait another decade or more. As part of these processes, the city can and should create a “University Neighborhood” zone in the zoning code, allowing for modest and reasonable growth in the land surrounding our city’s institutions of higher learning.
This is not a radical proposal. It is about recognizing the reality we all see: our city is growing, our universities are growing and rather than freezing our neighborhoods in time, we should let them grow with the city and with our universities. I encourage you to share your support for allowing our neighborhoods to grow by leaving a comment on the new zoning code at atlzoning.com and on the Comprehensive Development Plan at atlantaforall.com. Amending the zoning code will make college more affordable, build better communities and help those who need it most.