A shorter version of this column appeared on the Atlanta Journal-Constitution website on April 1, 2026.
The housing affordability debate in Georgia has found a convenient villain: local government. According to a recent Atlanta Journal-Constitution op-ed, city and county zoning rules are strangling housing supply. The solution, it says, is for the state to step in and loosen the regulatory grip that's keeping homes out of reach for working Georgians.
Housing affordability is a genuine problem in Georgia. I'm not here to argue otherwise. But from what I'm seeing in cities across Georgia, the stated explanation doesn't hold up. And the cure, state preemption of local zoning authority, would make things worse, not better.
Here's what's actually happening across the state.
Cities Aren't Blocking Housing, They're Actively Building It
Rome’s leaders had a “lightbulb moment" realizing that without available housing, economic development efforts might stall. To address the issue, the city appointed a housing task force, allocated $1 million in developer incentives, and invested another $1 million into its land bank authority. The land bank alone has put $6 million in property back onto the tax rolls, and Rome now has roughly 4,200 housing units in the pipeline. As the city manager puts it: "public investment attracts private investment."
Warner Robins used $807,000 in federal funds to partner with Habitat for Humanity, helping families move from renting to homeownership. Macon recently broke ground on a $20 million, 64-unit affordable housing development. Thomaston landed a $2.5 million state workforce housing grant for a 90-home development targeted at workforce buyers. Gainesville recently approved a rezoning for 65 mixed-income senior units developed by the local housing authority. In Winder, city officials approved a 31-unit townhome project with workforce housing set-asides built into the conditions.
In rural Georgia, Fitzgerald has addressed more than 700 blighted properties and partnered with private builders to rebuild. Blakely started its housing recovery not with a shovel but by cleaning up the community and realigning local ordinances before approaching developers.
Other writers have termed Georgia's housing shortage "government-induced." Tell that to officials in Pembroke, where the city scraped together financing for a $10 million Low Income Housing Tax Credit development and $13 million for a senior housing project, all on a $4 million city budget.
Standards Exist for a Reason
Braselton has added roughly 10,000 residents and 4,000 homes since 2000 and has reduced minimum lot sizes to accommodate more development. But when national homebuilders came in with designs that maximized unit count while creating congestion and long-term maintenance headaches, city officials pushed back. One corridor already carries 38,000 vehicles a day. If the city doesn't account for that, taxpayers will pay for it later.
Sandy Springs recently required certain new developments to complete water supply and fire flow studies before receiving permits. Before approving more density, officials need to know the capacity is there to support it. If you don't know whether the water system can handle a hundred new units, you probably shouldn't approve them. Call that red tape if you want. To me it sounds like local officials being pragmatic, being good stewards of local tax resources, and looking out for both current and future residents.
Planning directors from Roswell, Johns Creek, and Alpharetta made the same point at a recent forum. With undeveloped land increasingly scarce, the decisions only get harder. As Roswell's community development director put it, city planners have to "stand in that gap" between residents who want to preserve their neighborhoods and the need to keep communities growing. These are planners, not politicians, and they're telling us the same thing: standards exist for real reasons. And in most Georgia cities, those standards were shaped by volunteer residents serving on local planning boards.
Design standards and lot requirements are often framed as arbitrary costs. But those standards reflect real constraints like road capacity, school capacity, water and sewer infrastructure, and long-term neighborhood viability that don't disappear when you remove the rule requiring developers to account for them.
When the Problem Isn't Zoning
South Fulton is actively updating its land use map and expanding housing options. But even where zoning allows more density, some areas simply lack the roads, sewer lines, and utilities to support it. Changing what's permitted on paper doesn't build the roads and sewer lines that new housing needs.
In Sandy Springs, the city rezoned its entire city about five years ago and commissioned economic studies to show property owners the upside of redevelopment. The city did what critics say cities should do. And yet for-sale housing there starts close to $1 million. The city made the effort, but the market didn't follow. Investors favor steady returns in a way that for-sale housing doesn't. No city ordinance caused that, nor can fix it.
The State Is Already Showing What Works
There are certainly zoning and land use regulations that need updating, and many cities have already done that work. When permitting takes too long, cities can and should improve the process. But it's worth recognizing what already works.
Gov. Kemp's Rural Workforce Housing Initiative has provided more than $90 million to help cities build the water, sewer, and road infrastructure that makes housing possible. Cities like Cairo, Hawkinsville, and Waynesboro have used those grants to put hundreds of homes in the pipeline. Infrastructure financing was the challenge, not zoning, and the state helped solve it. More investment is needed in infrastructure if we want to make housing more affordable.
The Georgia Initiative for Community Housing has helped smaller cities across the state become marketable to developers and build the capacity to make deals happen. The Department of Community Affairs and the Georgia Environmental Finance Authority have been steady partners for years, helping cities access housing programs and finance projects they couldn't otherwise afford.
What works is the state and housing stakeholders giving cities the right tools for the specific problems in front of them. If we want to make real progress on housing in Georgia, more of that is the answer, not legislation that second-guesses every local land use decision in the state.
