Housing Affordability in Cherokee
The housing affordability crisis is growing every day in Cherokee County. As a County Commissioner, it is my responsibility to find every way possible to improve the situation. We have been looking at options to help increase affordability and we are currently discussing the following:
Workforce Housing Ordinance - if adopted, this ordinance would focus on developments that meet certain criteria in an effort to increase affordability. Some of these criteria are proposed to be:
Sell only to buyers earning less than 80% of Area Median Income (AMI).
Total development size must be less than 10 acres
Public Water and Sewer shall be accessible
Shall be within 2 miles of Interstate I-575, I-75, or SR-92 as measured in a straight line from the edge of the roadway right-of-way
75% of surrounding properties shall be developed or under construction.
Property must be located within a Comprehensive Plan Character Area that supports residential zoning as the primary land use. Cherokee County Zoning Ordinance Article 7 – District Uses and Regulations June 17, 2025 7-2
Property must be zoned residential or agricultural.
Property must be located outside of a Master Planned Development, a Planned Unit Development (PUD) or Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND).
Property shall be compliant with the minimum lot size requirements for which it is zoned.
Adopting an ordinance such as the Workforce Housing Ordinance could allow developers to build for sale homes that would be more affordable than what we are seeing today. I am looking to partner with a developer in District 4 to do a small test site to iron out some of these details and see what regulations make the most impact on reducing cost.
Land Bank - Cherokee County, and cities within the county, have recently created a Land Bank.
A “land bank” (per Georgia Land Bank Act) is a public body corporate and politic created by a county plus at least one city within the county to acquire, hold, manage, and redevelop property that is vacant, tax-delinquent, abandoned, blighted, or otherwise underutilized.
Once established, the land bank has perpetual duration (unless formally dissolved by law) — it doesn’t expire automatically.
The core functions: take title to “troubled” properties (via tax sales, donations, purchases, transfers), maintain an inventory, and eventually convey/dispose of those properties for redevelopment or beneficial community use (housing, public space, economic development, etc.).
The land bank does not have taxing power or eminent-domain power.
The proposed Cherokee Regional Land Bank aims to address the shortage of affordable and workforce housing. Leaders have emphasized using it to help provide homes for essential workers — e.g. teachers, firefighters, nurses — whose salaries often don’t match local home-price levels.
It will target vacant, delinquent, blighted, or investor-owned properties that may be underutilized or contributing to rising housing costs. The idea is to “short circuit the market” — by acquiring property at low cost (tax sales, donations) and then conveying it under controlled terms to support affordable or workforce housing.
The land bank could also be used for broader community development: redevelopment of deteriorated properties, stabilization of neighborhoods, returning properties to tax rolls, and helping revert abandoned property into safe, tax-generating, usable land/buildings.