The Gilmer County Board of Tax Assessors heard updates about workforce housing construction in the very early stages when meeting last Thursday.
New Beginnings for Gilmer County, a transitional housing nonprofit that includes representatives from multiple area churches, applied for a tax exemption on the Progress Road property, which was discussed at the meeting.
Kent Sanford, representing New Beginnings, told assessor board members Bill Logan, Jerry Davis, Gary Engel, John Williamson and Tom Porter that quadriplexes are being planned, and the land is currently being graded. Nothing has been built yet, he noted.
“The plan for the property is to develop affordable workforce housing for folks like school teachers and firefighters,” said Sanford. “New Beginnings, on this specific project, will be operating more like Habitat for Humanity does, where we don’t get any profit out of doing it. We’re just doing it to meet a need in our community. Unlike Habitat, where it’s for lower income people, this is for essential workers that our community needs.”
A maximum of 6 buildings with a total of 24 units could be built on the 3-acre property, Sanford noted.
“We would build one quadriplex at a time and sell those units to those types of folks, then build the next one. The construction would be over a period of time, and (it will take) probably a number of years to get it done,” said Sanford.
Noting that there’s currently nothing under construction, Porter said he wasn’t sure the tax exemption request should be submitted this early. “I’m not sure that we’ve got this in order. Maybe if we had a unit constructed and for sale, that’s one thing,” he added.
Sanford said, “there’s no incentive for a builder to be doing this type of housing. Every dollar we can save as the nonprofit will allow us to transfer (units) to those end users at a better price. Then it will go on the (tax bills).”
The housing will be for purchase, not rental, and, once sold, the owner will pay taxes on the apartment and land directly underneath it, while the remaining land will go into a POA common area, Sanford noted.
“It’s only been done (like that) on a very limited basis here, but you take an area like Statesboro or Athens where there’s a lot of college student housing and it’s done over and over again,” he added.
New Beginnings is seeking to have the property where the housing will be built, which is in the county, to be annexed into the Ellijay city limits. “Quite frankly, our codes in Gilmer County don’t really allow for it,” said Sanford. “The codes in Elllijay and East Ellijay do allow for it.”
Porter said he was concerned that the board was being asked to “approve something the county doesn’t approve.”
The county has given conditional R4 zoning to the housing, said Sanford. The condition is that the two lots it’s to be built upon are combined.
“We have a survey underway now to combine the two lots,” said Sanford.
Logan gave concern about the number of units planned for the three acres and that a tax exemption was being asked for without anything already built.
“It has the infrastructure to support it. That’s the key,” said David Clark, county attorney. “You won’t see that in the county in a lot of spaces and you actually don’t see it in the city in a lot of respects. You see it if you get down in Cherokee (County), especially Woodstock. It’s coming, (where) they’re all packed in there like that.”
Sanford said he was previously on the local assessor board over 30 years ago, at which time tax exemption for projects done by nonprofits were approved whether on improved land or not. After filing the exemption request, he learned that the “current take on it is, if it’s unimproved, you have nothing to exempt.”
Clark said that’s the way the assessor board has handled previous nonprofit projects without any construction. “I can’t remember an exception,” he said.
“I filled the request based on my past knowledge, not on current practice,” said Sanford. “If it can’t be approved, I understand.”
Sanford withdrew the application, but was urged to bring it back for review when the housing construction is further along.
“We should be the last people to approve this,” said Porter.