The city of Atlanta is taking a page from Europe’s playbook to confront its housing crisis. Later this month, the mayor’s office will begin to form an “urban development corporation” to eventually produce a type of mixed-income housing never seen here before.

The Atlanta Urban Development Corporation (AUDC) will be “an operationalization of the Affordable Housing Strike Force,” Mayor Andre Dickens’ chief housing advisor, Joshua Humphries, told Atlanta Civic Circle this week. Dickens created the strike force last year to bring various municipal housing efforts under one city hall umbrella. 

In forming the AUDC, the city is essentially launching a development group that will initially be funded by the affordable housing trust fund and eventually be staffed by real estate professionals and supported by city employees. The goal is to consolidate publicly owned property, partner with private developers, and build housing that’s affordable to Atlanta’s middle- and low-income residents.

Development corporations are ubiquitous in European countries, Humphries said, and the city of Atlanta is especially eyeing the so-called “social housing model” embraced in places like Copenhagen, Amsterdam, and Vienna. “Social housing takes the best pieces of U.S.-style public housing and the best pieces of private-market housing development and brings them together,” he said. “This allows for a higher percentage of market-rate units in a project than you would see in traditional public housing.”

The AUDC would spawn residential complexes often owned—at least partially—by the city. At least a third of the units would be affordable for households earning no more than 80% of the area median income (AMI)—or about $77,000 for a family of four. At least half of those affordable units would be earmarked for households earning 60% of the AMI or below.

Currently, affordable housing projects…