Atlanta is in the midst of an economic boom: Thousands of people are moving to the city every year to take advantage of a burgeoning tech industry and other opportunities that have made Atlanta the nation’s fastest-growing. But not all of the city’s neighborhoods are sharing in this prosperity, with many residents in predominantly low-income and Black communities struggling with basic quality-of-life issues. It is an ever-widening equality divide that demands solutions.
Chief among these challenges for communities of color is a lack of quality affordable housing, with high prices and a lack of inventory remaining a huge problem for Black Atlanta residents. According to Up for Growth’s 2024 annual report, metro Atlanta still has a shortage of over 100,000 homes. What’s more, the housing that is available simply isn’t affordable, with many Atlanta residents spending over 30% of their income on rent.
At the same time, Atlanta’s majority-Black and lower-income communities are struggling with food deserts and grocery choice disparity. According to a recent report from Emory University, residents in the city’s majority-Black and low-income neighborhoods have “significantly less” access to fresh produce than those in non-majority Black and higher-income neighborhoods.
All of this is why Mayor Andre Dickens has made affordable housing and combatting food deserts focal points of his tenure, setting goals to build 20,000 units of affordable housing and make sure that 85% of Atlanta residents live within a half-mile of a fresh food grocer by the end of 2025.
These are complicated problems borne out of long-standing structural racial divides and economic realities that don’t have easy solutions. It will require policies that incentives developers and small business owners to build and locate in communities with significant barriers to potential success.
As city leaders work toward solving these problems, there are ways to make it easier for those who want to build housing or open grocery stores in communities that desperately need these services. Perhaps the best way: Simply making it less expensive to do business. And a pair of bills on the table in the state Legislature could help do this by reforming a broken legal system that is driving up insurance costs for businesses.
Legal reform has become a hot-button issue in Georgia in recent years, with many businesses calling for changes to premises liability laws as frivolous lawsuits increasingly drive up insurance costs across the state. These higher costs are making it increasingly difficult for businesses to keep their doors open and for entrepreneurs to launch new projects. This particularly impacts affordable housing and grocery access in disadvantaged communities, which often are in higher-crime areas that result in even higher insurance costs.
For example, affordable housing units are often built in areas that are historically disadvantaged and hurt by systemic issues, and as a result, these units are surrounded by higher rates of crime. When crime rates are higher, there is a higher risk for incidents on affordable housing providers’ properties — leading insurance costs to rise.
In fact, a commissioner’s report found that the majority of insurance claims with payouts more than $500,000 are being paid by business premises liability cases — cases in which property owners are held accountable for accidents and injuries occurring on their properties. There has been a 25% increase in the frequency of claims like these in the last four years, and the number of large losses over $1 million is increasing year by year.
Due to these issues, insurance providers either stop offering coverage in certain neighborhoods or continue increasing their prices. Even if affordable housing providers can find insurance, they can’t afford it, sometimes causing them to leave the state entirely.
Grocery stores in disadvantaged areas suffer the same consequences. When a crime or damage is more likely to occur on a grocery store’ property, insurance rates spike, forcing the storeowner to raise costs or close their doors to the customers they serve. When grocery doors in food deserts close down, it exacerbates the very problems Mayor Dickens has been seeking to fix in the communities that need our help the most.
By passing tort reform legislation, we can start bringing down these costs for business owners, which can help make it financially feasible to move into more vulnerable neighborhoods.
Reforming our legal system is not just an issue for business owners — it touches all of us. Equity and generational success grow through access to basic needs like food and shelter, and we all have a part to play in ensuring disadvantaged communities are not left behind. By passing tort reform, the Georgia legislature can strengthen our communities and give them the tools they need to thrive for the future.
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