Atlanta Halfway to Goal of 20,000 New Affordable Housing Units

Atlanta, GA. Photo from Pexels.

Every day at The Overhead Wire we sort through over 1,500 news items about cities and share the best ones with our email list. Each week, we take some of the most popular stories and share them with Urban Milwaukee readers. They are national (or international) links, sometimes entertaining and sometimes absurd, but hopefully useful.

Congestion pricing in New York one year later: Success in a number of different metrics have followed after the cameras were turned on for congestion pricing on January 5th 2025. A look at the data by reporters shows there are 11% fewer vehicles in the congestion zone, traffic speeds have been faster, there’s less pollution and traffic noise, and more transit riders. The program is seen as a massive policy success. (Emily Badger et al. | New York Times)

Grading Sarasota’s New Urban plans: Sarasota Florida rewrote the city’s downtown plan with New Urbanist principles in 2001 and the city is now considering a rewrite to update it according to the times. But to find out how the plan has worked, residents were asked to give their opinions on the plans effectiveness after a quarter century. In the seven most important categories of the plan, they gave it no higher than a “C”. (Kim Doleatto | Sarasota Magazine)

Atlanta halfway to housing goals: The City of Atlanta is over halfway to its goal of building 20,000 affordable housing units in the city. The city has made a lot of progress loosening regulations and hopes to fulfill the promise of building housing by opening up more city owned land. So far housing has come in the form of shipping containers, using vacant lands and church properties, and old office buildings. (Amanda Andrews | Rough Draft Atlanta)

Forcing green can backfire: A new study out from the Santa Fe Institute that finds people hate being told what to do on climate change even if they already approve of measures to curb it. Even more than previously thought, people (3,000 Germans specifically in the survey) don’t like forced bans on things that would positively impact climate change like reducing meat consumption or setting thermostat limits. But creating trust and designing smart policies can help move positive change forward. (Tik Root | Grist)

Speeding punishments: A new program in California could punish drivers for extreme speeding over 100mph in an attempt to rein in reckless driving. Speed offenders will be referred to the Department of Motor Vehicles and could be subject to high fines and potentially the loss of driving privileges. Each year over 1,600 citations are issued to California drivers going over 100 miles per hour. (Karen Garcia | Los Angeles Times)

Quote of the Week

In threading the needle a bit, the goal was to find a ‘Goldilocks’ scenario that created the least disruption for local businesses but also simultaneously created the biggest impact for low-income individuals.

–Reilly White, associate dean in the Anderson School of Management at the University of New Mexico, in KRWG discussing Santa Fe’s new ordinance tying minimum wage to housing costs.

This week on the Talking Headways podcast, we’re joined by Carter Lavin to discuss his new book If You Want to Win You’ve Got to Fight: A Guide to Effective Transportation Advocacy.

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