The Tri-Cities were once hidden gems for Atlantans in search of close-knit communities and reasonably priced housing. But, recently, residents wonder how much longer they’ll be able to call these places home.
Editor’s note: This story was assigned by Cost of Living partner Canopy Atlanta, whose community engagement team talked to more than 140 Tri-Cities community members about the journalism they needed. Dozens of residents shared their personal experiences about the rising cost of housing in the area, with challenges ranging from high rent to developers buying properties to the cost of maintaining an older home. This story emerged from that feedback.
Canopy Atlanta trains and pays community members to learn reporting skills to better serve their communities. LeJoi Lane is a Canopy Atlanta Fellow. This story was written by Lane and journalist Logan Ritchie, with editing support from Christina Lee and Heather Buckner.
Five years ago, Kenneth Oladapo was in a good place. He paid less than $1,000 a month to live in Adair Park, about two miles from the business he co-owns in Westview: Clutch Bicycle Shop, which, of course, he biked to.
But in 2020, when it came time for Oladapo to find a new place to live, there was nothing even close to what he’d been paying: He was seeing rents in the neighborhood of $2,000, an unbelievable and unmanageable jump. After Adair Park, he moved to Capitol View, then Oakland City. “Being in those neighborhoods since 2016, we can see how the housing market was changing so drastically,” Oladapo says.
Eventually, he left the city of Atlanta and landed in East Point’s Jefferson Park neighborhood, where he’s lived ever since. Rent is more affordable, and Oladapo can still bike to work, though the commute is not without its difficulties: His route, which is much longer now, often lacks safe bike lanes, meaning he must fight traffic and obstacles like debris and trash cans. Rent is $1,750 for a two-bedroom, two-bathroom house—several hundred dollars a month higher than he would prefer to pay, which is not ideal, but he’s on good terms with his landlords. Still, if rent continues to rise, he could find himself in a situation similar to the one that brought him to East Point in the first place.
East Point, College Park, and Hapeville—aka the Tri-Cities—were once hidden gems for metro Atlantans in search of close-knit communities and reasonably priced housing. But, recently, transplants and longtime residents alike have wondered how much longer they’ll be able to call these places home. Housing costs have been slowly creeping up for decades. According to data journalist Maggie Lee, in 1999, median rent in most of the Tri-Cities took up a quarter or less of renters’ incomes. Today, median rent costs at least 27 percent of a renter’s median income, but it can cost as much as 42 percent in some areas. Buying a home is much more difficult than it was a few decades ago, too: In 1999, home ownership could be attained with two or three years’ worth of salary. Today, a median home in some parts of Tri-Cities can cost as much as six times that area’s median household income.
Dontay Wimberly rents in East Point. While he has his complaints—especially around food access—he likes the area. Still, he’s finding it harder and harder to stay. He splits the rent with someone, each of them paying around $650. According to Zillow, the median rent in Tri-Cities is just shy of $1,800 per month. “It’s not affordable for me,” Wimberly says.
The surge in Tri-Cities housing costs mirrors what’s happening across the country: Here, as elsewhere, the pandemic triggered cultural shifts that slowed new construction even as the need for personal space intensified. Older generations aging in place reduced the available housing stock; some people, after months of quarantine and home improvement projects, recognized the value of their homes and chose to stay put, further constricting the market. Still, according to a report from Zillow, metro Atlanta has experienced one of the largest rental increases in the nation: a 36 percent increase in rent between 2019 and 2023, against only a 12 percent increase in wages.
Today, to afford to live in the Tri-Cities area—to spend no more than 30 percent of their pay on housing—households must earn more than $75,000 a year. Based on 2022 data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the median annual household income in College Park is $47,700; in East Point, it’s $59,600; and in Hapeville, it’s $62,100.
More than 18 percent of the Tri-Cities area lives below the federal poverty line; in 2022, that was $23,000 a year for a family of three.
Doris Contreras, a teacher at Hapeville Elementary School, has witnessed how increased housing costs have affected people in the area. Students have withdrawn from her school because their families couldn't afford rent and had to move. About a mile away from Hapeville Elementary, townhomes can cost up to $500,000; two-bedroom rentals start at $2,550.
Alan Hallman, mayor of Hapeville—and a fourth-generation Hapeville resident—says the city has long been a “well-kept secret.” “Finally, the word’s out and people want to be here, and when people want to be here, then the desire to buy property is there, and when the desire to buy property is there, the value starts going up,” Hallman says.
At Georgia Municipal Association meetings, he and other mayors often discuss how to deal with large corporate investors snapping up residential properties. College Park Mayor Bianca Motley Broom agreed that’s one reason rental costs in her city are higher too.
“Institutional investors are targeting mostly the south side, finding communities of color with good housing stock, and they’re going in,” says Motley Broom. “They’re buying houses and then renting them for rates that we haven’t really seen before, and it’s pushing the entire market in an upward direction that makes it increasingly uncomfortable and unattainable for families who want to be in our area.” She says that more than 70 percent of the city’s residents are in rental properties, so “as the housing needs become more acute, we feel that.”
Even those renting from increasingly rare mom-and-pop landlords are not immune from rising rents: Yard maintenance, amenities, pet fees, and increased property taxes can also impact their bottom lines. In fact, for many renters, costs begin to build before they’ve even signed a lease, via application fees, which can cost anywhere from $35 to $200, or even fees to simply tour available properties. FirstKey Homes, a national property management company with properties in the Tri-Cities area, offers tours through Rently, a platform “designed to maximize tenancy rates, efficiency and profitability.” Using Rently, people can look through listings and take self-guided tours—for a fee. The tier-based service starts at $2 for 3 property tours a month.
While East Point and College Park have local housing authorities where residents can apply for affordable housing, the city of Hapeville does not. In Hapeville’s 2022 Comprehensive Plan, nearly half the residents who responded to a survey expressed the need for more affordable housing.
Mayor Alan Hallman says his City Council has vowed to protect the “heart of Hapeville” through zoning by stopping projects that would increase density in established neighborhoods and pushing new development to the outskirts of those places. “Because if a community loses those old established neighborhoods, you lose your soul and then you just become a jungle of density,” he explains. “We’re trying to balance that, along with the fact that values have gone up. When values go up, the need for density increases from the affordability standpoint for development.” Hapeville is considering mandating a certain percentage of affordable housing in all new developments.
College Park offers some solutions, like workshops to educate people on the home-buying process and a down-payment assistance program for city employees, providing up to $10,000 towards buying a house. East Point’s mayor did not respond to interview requests.
Wimberly, the East Point resident, believes more could be done to help residents. “Give people housing stipends. Give people incentives for cohabitating. Give landlords incentives for renting to multiple family units,” he says. “Honestly, more money always helps. How about that?” •