Quantifying Atlanta's Regional Housing Needs

The Atlanta Regional Commission (ARC) coordinates regional planning and policy across the Atlanta region's 11-county metro area, one of the fastest-growing in the country. To develop its Regional Housing Strategy — with goals of reducing commutes, expanding access to jobs and transit, increasing housing opportunity for lower-income households, and reducing climate risk — ARC engaged HR&A and HousingWeaver to quantify the region's future housing needs, model growth scenarios, and identify where new homes should be built.

The Challenge

The Atlanta region is projected to add over one million people and 350,000 households between 2020 and 2035 — but growth is sprawling outward, pushing residents further from jobs, transit, and opportunities. The region already faces an affordability gap of more than 200,000 homes affordable to lower-income households, and that gap is projected to widen without intervention. To support regional action on housing, ARC needed a strong analytical foundation to quantify the full scope of the challenge, determine where growth should be directed, and identify opportunities to leverage vacant, underutilized, and publicly owned land.

The Approach

Powered by HousingWeaver's data and modeling capabilities, HR&A conducted three interconnected analyses, grounded in regional population and employment forecasts and parcel-level assessor data across all 11 counties.

Key analytical workstreams include:

• A future housing needs analysis projecting how many homes the region must build and preserve by 2035 and whether the region is on track to meet this need, broken down by price point and income level
• Three alternative growth scenarios aligning housing with jobs, transit, and access to opportunity, combined into a composite scenario establishing county-level production targets by affordability level
• An inventory of public, vacant, and underutilized parcels well positioned for housing — screening over 1.7 million parcels for physical suitability, ownership, and vacancy, evaluated against policy priorities, development incentives, and unit yield potential

Results & What's Next

This analysis serves as the basis for setting regional and county-level housing production and preservation goals that will be central to Atlanta's Regional Housing Strategy. Those goals will provide a shared framework for accountability across the 11-county region, guiding where resources are invested, which policies are pursued, and how local implementation unfolds in the years ahead.