The Micah’s Creek neighborhood in Athens, GA, isn’t just a place. It’s an innovative approach to housing.

Since the 1980s, the Athens affiliate of Habitat for Humanity had been building 2 or 3 new homes a year in its midsized college-town market, selling them at cost and servicing no-interest loans so families living well below median income could afford to become homeowners and get an economic foothold to begin growing inter-generational wealth. But behind the scenes, the staff knew first-hand there was a lot more to it than that.

Talking to homeowners, there were always tales of how well the kids were doing in school, how happy the family were in their home, parents getting better jobs. Obviously, there was greater power to owning a home than just being able to save more and do better economically.

But the spark that lit the fire under the Micah’s Creek Homeownership Opportunity Project came from a Georgia Tech study, published in 2017, which confirmed what the staff had been seeing for themselves. Families who purchased Habitat homes in Georgia not only did better financially than before, they also became more involved in their communities, got along better with each other, and were confident their kids would go to college.

A deeper dive into the current research and historic case-studies revealed more correlations between homeownership, educational achievement, and economic development. So Athens Area Habitat for Humanity asked: What if we could provide homeownership opportunities to a significant number of families in a single school attendance zone, and study the impact in real time, over a period of years?

The result was Micah’s Creek, a neighborhood and surrounding homes in a school district with one of the lowest home ownership rates in the nation, and all the challenges that come with it: families overburdened with housing costs who can’t afford sufficient food and medical care; kids moving in and out of schools, disrupting their studies and curricula and progress, as parents chase lower rents; students with no place to do their homework and low quality of sleep. Together with a longitudinal study by the University of Georgia to document the impact of the homes, and a partnership with W&A Engineering to design on a neighborhood scale, the Micah’s Creek Homeownership Opportunity Project was born.

Of course, traditional funding routes weren’t going to provide enough financing for the number of houses needed to support a meaningful study. So additional research was done to determine the ROI on public-private funding partnerships, and the results were eye-opening. A 2022 summary describes the findings and the resulting recommendations:

[Our housing] problems cannot be solved by creating mixed-income neighborhoods, by increasing the eligibility pool for market mortgages, or by publicly funded programs not focused on homeownership. Rather, we must find solutions which (a) lower the threshold for homeownership by reducing the initial purchase cost and removing the burden of mortgage interest, (b) reduce the ongoing cost of homeownership through efficient construction practices, (c) generate additional funding for future cost-manageable housing, and (d) benefit states and municipalities by replacing the need for open-ended, indefinite funding with up-front investment which in turn generates additional property tax revenue along with increased local spending of disposable income and a reduction of demand for public benefits.

When such solutions also improve educational achievement and civic engagement, the long-term benefits of the initial investment are extended and compounded. This is the essential philosophy and strategy undergirding Micah’s Creek….

Key elements of this model include:

• Targeting families earning 50-80% of area median income who are not currently served by the for-profit housing market but who can become successful homeowners if the barrier to entry is lowered;
• Non-profit construction with initial up-front investment at the federal, state, and local levels;
• Building at significant scale, i.e. entire neighborhoods rather than individual homes;
• Locating neighborhoods in school attendance zones with documented achievement gaps;
• Offering no-interest mortgages in order to remove the single most significant barrier to entry for potential first-time homeowners;
• Mortgage payments re-invested into future cost-manageable housing, producing exponential return on investment;
• Retaining a right of first refusal for the non-profit mortgage holder to prevent short-term “flipping” of homes onto the private market;
• Efficient construction to reduce the long-term overall cost of homeownership for buyers;
• Meaningful input and cooperation by those currently living in the area where neighborhoods are to be located;
• Formal preparation of first-time home buyers for the requirements and experience of homeownership;
• Planning and building with the human experience in mind, including greenspace, diversity in home styles, safety, walkability, and access to public transportation, jobs, shopping, recreation, and developmental programming for children and adults.

At the heart of the Micah’s Creek model is a demand for the highest possible return on investment by replacing open-ended, year-over-year commitments to publicly funded programming with up-front investment in targeted projects which produce long-term payback in the form of reduced public spending and increased revenue together with essential benefits to residents and to the local private sector.

“Micah’s Creek isn’t a new way to build houses,” remarks Athens Habitat’s executive director, Spencer Frye. “The template created by Micah’s Creek is a model for non-profits, home buyers, and governments to cooperate in a way that puts more people into more homes at lower cost and with better outcomes, and actually generates future funding for more housing.”

This future-focused, results-oriented approach to housing attracted the attention of Georgia’s US senators and the Governor’s office. In the end, the project and its sister project, Lydia’s Second Home, garnered some $9,000,000 in federal, state, and municipal grants, covering about half the currently expected cost. Athens Area Habitat and smaller donors are making up the rest.

The first home completed for Micah’s Creek is set to be dedicated on March 26th (time TBD). Community support for this project has been overwhelming and attendance is expected to be high, so if you’d care to attend, please RSVP with Zach Hanvey beforehand. And we ask that attendees use public transportation, walk or cycle, or carpool as parking is extremely limited!

If you have more questions about the Micah’s Creek HOP or are interested in donating, please contact VP of Operations Charles Smith.

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Further information for those interested in sponsoring a home in Micah’s Creek: