If you lived in Fayette County over the past 20 years, you might remember the enthusiastic multi-family apartment debate in Peachtree City.
Developers were saying hundreds more apartment units were needed in the city and many residents were questioning the logic of bringing in more multi-family rental housing.
Development interests wanted the apartments because it was profitable and investment money was plentiful. On the other hand, citizens were wondering about the long-term implications. The result was a moratorium on multi-family construction.
This is the period where our local governments are reviewing their comprehensive plans. I would say that means something, but it is merely a mandated process that means little to elected officials down the road.
The oldest apartment complexes throughout the county became sore spots with dwindling rents and increased calls to law enforcement.
Fayette County was extremely fortunate to have local influence in the movie industry as out-of-town film labor tightened our residential rental market. However, what happens when more multi-family housing comes online? And what happens when more Georgians become trained and assume those film jobs, not needing rental housing?
Eventually, we end up with over-supply of rental housing. With the glut comes slashing rents and offering concessions to attract renters, which crashes the entire market.
The Pinewood Forrest development is bound to meet a considerable amount of the temporary film lodging requirements, so what happens to our capacity across the county?
Building apartments and townhomes in the suburban areas to attract millennials is a fairytale fabricated by the development industry. While large banks found apartments as “safe” investments, it appears the cyclical nature of the development industry is cruelly biting again. Industry analysts are already warning of an apartment surplus in metro areas.
The Dec. 22 Wall Street Journal article, “Millennials Opt for Home,” cites census data as confirming that our young adults are getting married and having children later in life than previous generations. Likewise, economists are projecting millennials will “more than double its current number of households through 2025.” So let’s not panic about attracting young families.
The young, upwardly professional residents we need to maintain our county’s quality of life will derive from our ability to place their families in quality single-family houses. Chasing single millennials with apartments when the market in downtown Atlanta is heading into a rent-reducing glut is foolishness, especially when millennial families are opting for single-family housing.
We will not maintain our quality of life status by building homes for a transient single population that does not want to be here.
As with housing preference, another fallacy is millennials will not drive cars. J.D. Power’s Power Information Network reported that the share of the millennials in the new car market increased 28 percent. Millennials are estimated to be 40 percent of the nation’s cars sales by 2020.
Business opportunities and young residents are now looking to the suburbs. The suburban areas surrounding the 50 largest metro areas make up 79 percent of the population and accounted for 91 percent of the population growth over the past 15 years (ULI, Terwilliger Center for Housing).
We do not need to be fooled and we must remind ourselves that suburbs are continuing to outstrip downtowns in overall population growth, diversity and even younger residents. Three-quarters of people age 25 to 34 live in metro suburbs.
Building apartments and other high-density housing is not the answer to any of our problems and could cause further problems, especially when the units are built with materials denoting a short useful lifespan.
We need a serious debate amongst open-minded elected officials who do not take criticism personally, look at long-term objectives and honestly review the data.
Steve Brown, commissioner
Fayette County Board of Commissioners
Peachtree City, Ga.
