Cobb strategic plan draft exclusionary zoning

The draft of the Cobb County Five-Year Strategic Plan was released last week, and the second of two public hearings before the Cobb Board of Commissioners is scheduled for May 23.

The plan, which will help set county government policy and goals from 2023-2028, recommends strategies “for achieving success indicators,” as the study’s consultants have phrased it, that for the most part are not very controversial.

But one of those recommendations under the housing category could prove to become a subject of interest as the county continues to gather feedback.

The plan’s three “success indicators” for housing include aiming for an “adequate quantity and availability of housing types.”

One of the recommended strategies under that section is to develop a process to “evaluate and adapt land use policies that promote exclusionary zoning and inhibit a variety of housing options across the County.”

Exclusionary zoning is the practice of allowing only certain kinds of zoning categories in certain areas, and has come up frequently in communities across the country—especially suburban ones—in regard to affordable housing in recent years.

Shortly after the Biden Administration took office the White House issued comments about exclusionary zoning  along similar lines, saying that such practices “drive up housing prices, poorer families are kept out of wealthier, high-opportunity neighborhoods. This, in turn, leads to worse outcomes for children, including lower standardized test scores, and greater social inequalities over time.”

Cobb Commission Chairwoman Lisa Cupid has mentioned affordable housing frequently, including at a contentious town hall meeting last summer in East Cobb when she said that “people who work here should be able to afford to live here.”

In recent years, a number of local and state governments have acted to limit or ban exclusionary zoning, as it has been described by some activists as racially and economically discriminatory.

Such bans have been approved in California, and there’s a proposal in New York state to do the same. Similar measures also have been adopted in Minneapolis and Arlington, Va.

There’s no such language suggesting or proposing a ban in the Cobb strategic plan draft, which goes onto to recommend that other strategies to address affordable housing include setting a countywide housing mix goal, and to ensure that a proposed Unified Development Code, should that be approved, “enable a variety of housing types.”

Atlanta became the first city in Georgia to ban exclusionary zoning in 2017, and a year later Brookhaven created an “inclusionary” zoning code and outlawed short-term rentals.

Housing data included in the strategic plan draft indicates that Cobb has a median gross rent of $1,367 a month and a nedian home value of $263,150.

The strategic plan draft was prepared by Accenture LLP, which the county is paying $1.45 million. A proposal to provide another $285,000 and a time extension was dropped last month by commissioners, who said they would hold extra meetings and feedback sessions instead.

The plan is designed to give policy makers a long-term (10- to 20-year) vision for meeting those future service needs, in addition to the more immediate 5-year range.

The draft submitted by Accenture includes seven topic, or “strategic outcome” areas—community development, economic development, governance, housing, infrastructure, mobility and transportation and public safety.

The public can comment on the strategic plan by e-mailing: StrategicPlan@cobbcounty.org.

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