How public-private partnerships are tackling Atlanta’s affordable-housing shortage

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Atlanta is growing rapidly. The population of the metro area, currently about 6.5 million, is projected to rise to 8 million by 2050. Meanwhile, housing options for many longtime city residents are shrinking: Between 2018 and 2023, Metro Atlanta lost over 230,000 affordable-housing units.

JPMorganChase believes the key to tackling Atlanta’s housing challenges is practical, community-driven solutions. Our aim is to expand the supply of affordable homes—and strengthen pathways to long-term affordability—through innovative public-private collaborations.

“Ensuring people have access to homes that are affordable is essential to driving local economic growth,” said Tim Berry, Global Head of Corporate Responsibility and Chairman of the Mid-Atlantic Region. “That’s why we at JPMorganChase bring our business expertise, philanthropic resources, and policy engagement to help remove barriers to building and preserving affordable homes. We’re proud of this work and are eager to continue working across sectors to move it forward.”

The city takes aim at an ambitious goal—with JPMorganChase’s help

In early 2022, new Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens announced an ambitious goal: to create or preserve 20,000 affordable-housing units in the city by 2030. Today, less than four years later, some 13,000 are already complete or in progress. It’s an accomplishment in which both financing and expertise from JPMorganChase have played a key role.

The city remade its housing policies so that for-profit and philanthropic development partners could more readily attract capital. But its major innovation was its creative use of Atlanta’s 2,000 undeveloped acres of publicly owned land, deploying both public dollars and private investment.

“The city wanted to secure the capital as soon as possible in order to expedite critically needed affordable housing projects,” says Marquita Jackson, Executive Director at JPMorganChase. “They were seeking alternatives to a traditional municipal bond executed in the capital markets with the goal of avoiding a long marketing and financing timeline.”

JPMorganChase executed two draw-down bonds totaling $150 million to support accelerated development of affordable housing on publicly owned land, preserve existing affordability, and secure additional funding needed to get shovel-ready projects under construction.

The city created homes out of office-to-residential conversions, initiated development of a multifamily tower over a fire station, and transformed shipping containers that hospitals had used during the COVID-19 pandemic into apartments for unhoused people.

“You cannot build your way out of the affordability crisis alone,” Mohamed Balla, the City of Atlanta’s Chief Financial Officer, says. “JPMorganChase has shown up with capital, but it has also shown up as a strategic collaborator—being very innovative, smart, and capable in this space, and bringing us new deals and new ideas that we can think through.”

Strengthening community ties: the Westside Future Fund

The affordable-housing crisis is rooted in decades-old trends.

In the 1960s, Atlanta’s historic Westside was a collection of vibrant, thriving, high-density, mixed-income neighborhoods housing over 50,000 residents, including civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Julian Bond, and faculty from some of the country’s esteemed Historically Black Colleges and Universities. The Westside was the civic and spiritual heart of Atlanta. By 2017, however, systemic neglect and disinvestment had reduced the local population to just 16,000.

Westside Future Fund (WFF) was launched in 2014 through a public-private partnership in order to bring reinvestment to this once-thriving district. WFF has invested over $130 million in Westside real estate, purchasing more than 200 properties and delivering 272 rental units. It has also built and sold 65 single-family homes and provided more than $1 million in down-payment assistance. Thirty units are currently under construction, with 220 more expected to break ground this year.

But WFF’s objectives are substantially broader than real estate: It seeks to foster the social networks and support systems that are essential to healthy communities, whether that means enabling small-business development or reopening a school that also houses a dental clinic, a health clinic, early childhood-education services, and volunteer legal aid. As Rachel Carey, the Chief Real Estate Officer of Westside Future Fund, puts it, WFF’s work is “a concerted effort to bring public and private resources together to create a holistic community approach to neighborhood revitalization through a lens of restoration without displacement.”

Similarly, JPMorgan has provided $500,000 to fund both immediate and longer-term objectives. The grant will help create housing-construction working capital and develop new digital resources to help residents prepare for and be aware of homeownership opportunities. But it is also a holistic community investment meant to ensure that the revitalization benefits the Westside’s legacy residents, both by providing affordable-housing opportunities and by fostering economic mobility.

Initiatives like these are core to JPMorganChase’s community and economic development strategy, says Suganthi Simon, Vice President of Global Philanthropy for the Mid-South Region at JPMorganChase: “We leverage all of the resources of JPMorganChase to work with organizations that strengthen our communities, empower individuals and families, and help create thriving local economies.”

The keys to home ownership: the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership

For the roughly 144,000 people who were evicted from their Atlanta homes in 2025, and the more than 100,000 others affected by the lack of affordable housing, this work can’t come fast enough. Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership (ANDP), with the support of JPMorganChase, is working to address this issue.

ANDP’s uses innovative approaches to increase the supply of affordable homeownership opportunities. Today, it’s one of the nation’s largest nonprofit developers of affordable housing, managing a portfolio of about 260 homes; it has sold almost 900 as of the end of 2025.

On average, ANDP homeowners pay about $278,000 for their homes—well below the city’s $430,000 median—and earn $190,000 in equity. Most purchasers are first-time home buyers in their families, including female heads of household or people of color. By enabling homeownership, ANDP seeks “to ensure that families have a shot at creating generational wealth,” says Ashani O’Mard, the organization’s president.

Since 2021, JPMorganChase has provided $4.5 million in philanthropic support to ANDP to expand its single-family housing production capacity. This includes establishing a revolving capital fund as well as a new program to acquire investor-owned properties—before they reach the open market—and convert them into affordable homes.

“Having JPMorganChase come to the table with philanthropic support and expertise helps to build the momentum we need from other partners and philanthropic organizations,” O’Mard says. In one recent campaign, she says, ANDP was able to raise $25 for every dollar JPMorganChase contributed.

“JPMorganChase’s investment in the City of Atlanta, WFF, and ANDP has a ripple effect that goes far beyond homeownership,” says Simon. By helping people find homes they can afford, JPMorganChase’s investments help bring the American Dream within reach for more Atlanta residents.

Disclosures:

Home lending products provided by JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A. Member FDIC

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