City Insights for December 21, 2022

A hat tip to Carlotta Ungaro, CCE, IOM for sharing this resource about where young people are moving from and to. Georgia is broken up into a number of commuting zones which you can select and see the relevant data that indicates where people move between childhood (measured by their location at age 16) and young adulthood (measured by their location at age 26). For Atlanta, 28% of young adults came from outside Georgia while in Dublin only 6.6% moved there from out-of-state.

Let's Take a Look at Affordable Housing

As I've mentioned before, cities are actively engaged in affordable housing efforts. Lawrenceville has partnered with the local Habitat for Humanity to build 4 homes in 2023 with the city pledging 15-person weekend shifts of city employees to help on two of the builds. In Norcross two developments will receive housing tax credits to develop 160 affordable rental units.

This story from the Pew Research Center, 10 facts about U.S. renters during the pandemic, provides some insight about the problem U.S. renters are facing with housing affordability.

While Americans are supportive of efforts to tackle housing insecurity, this story from FiveThirtyEight points out that research indicates "that while Americans want more kinds of infrastructure to reduce homelessness, far fewer want those resources close to where they themselves live." And this story about homelessness in The Atlantic may also be of interest to read..."the most relevant factors in the homelessness crisis are rent prices and vacancy rates."

It's always great to see and highlight what's going on in Georgia cities that make the places where we work, live and play that much nicer. In Lincolnton an artist is bringing to life two Coca-Cola murals in the city's downtown. The Alpharetta Public Arts Commission approved a 17-foot sculpture of an eagle as part of the city's public art program while in Marietta the city council has allocated $3 million in ARPA funds to develop two new parks. And in Cedartown, city officials recently announced that the city received a grant to help pay for the addition of a skateboard park to the city's Goodyear Park.

In Other City News

What I'm Reading

#cities #affordablehousing #homelessness #ARPA #publicart #qualityoflife Georgia Municipal Association, National League of Cities

City Insights will be back after the New Year. Be safe and Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!