Affordable housing will be the top issue in the race for mayor, according to candidate Tim Denson, who is also planning a “moon shot” effort to address homelessness if elected.
Denson wrapped up a series of summer campaign events last week by fielding questions from a small group of voters at Normal Bar. The former Athens-Clarke County commissioner said he would deal with an affordable housing crisis by encouraging building more housing and more diverse types of housing, as well as by beefing up the county’s inclusionary zoning policy offering developers incentives to make housing more affordable.
“We don’t have enough housing for the people who want to live in it,” he said. “Supply and demand—that’s how we got in this situation.”
With the ACC Planning Department expected to propose changes to the zoning code over the next couple of years, Denson said he would push for more density. “We can’t keep building student housing downtown and single-family housing outside of town” in Georgia’s smallest county geographically. “We’re going to run out of land.”
The zoning code changes will come forward following the adoption of a new future land use map to guide growth, possibly as soon as this fall, although Denson said he wouldn’t be surprised if commissioners delay a vote until after elections in May so no incumbents have to make a hard vote. That’s despite his belief that “staff is being pre-emptively conservative” in drawing the map, “trying to put something before the commission that the commission vote for, rather than what they [planners] think should happen.” The current draft of the map calls for increased residential density along major commercial corridors, but leaves single-family neighborhoods largely unchanged. The code should allow for more infill housing and inward-facing “cottage courts,” he said.
During his time on the commission from 2019–2022, Denson served on a committee that wrote the inclusionary zoning ordinance. The first phase of implementation—giving density bonuses or relief from parking requirements to multifamily developers in exchange for setting aside a percentage of units as affordable or contributing to the county’s housing fund—has only been used three times. It should be extended to include developments on commercial and single-family property as originally planned, he said.
Denson also said he would like to work with the Athens Housing Authority to take control over housing vouchers issued by the state, as Augusta and Savannah did in the 1970s, because the wait list is currently almost two years long. He also wants to work with the state legislature to ban landlords from discriminating against voucher-holders based on their income.
With 26,000 undergrads currently living in local neighborhoods, the University of Georgia can also help by building more on-campus housing, Denson said. “I don’t think the university is going to be backing me on my mayoral run, but I genuinely think we should have a better relationship,” he said. That goes for the commission and the school board as well, said the current school board member, noting that the two bodies rarely meet.
Short-term rentals also contribute to the housing crunch—according to Denson, they make up about 2% of the local housing stock. He said they should only be allowed in commercial zones, much like hotels. “My problem is when they go in single-family neighborhoods and take that housing stock away from the community,” he said.
Denson works at the Advantage Behavioral Health Systems day shelter on North Avenue, and said that reducing the homeless population is something people across the political spectrum can agree on. “The way you solve homelessness is to put those folks in homes,” he said, along with providing case management for issues like mental illness.
“Right now the strategy is to send them to jail,” he said. Keeping a person incarcerated costs twice as much as giving them a housing voucher ($98 per day versus $48).
Historic Preservation: Denson said he would have resisted attorneys’ advice to settle with Athens First United Methodist Church to remove the Saye Building from the West Downtown Historic District and allow the church to demolish it. He accused the church of kicking out tenants like the Boy Scouts, Alcoholics Anonymous and the nonprofit ACTION Inc. “out of spite.”
Denson said he is “not strongly opposed” to a hotel behind the former UGA President’s House on Prince Avenue. “My idea is, what’s the alternative, other than tearing it down?” he said.
Revenue: Denson said ACC will have to “get creative” about raising revenue. One idea is an “inclusionary parking policy”—if developers think they need less parking than required by law, they can pay into a fund for transportation projects instead. Another is to allow open containers downtown in authorized cups sold by bars, with some of the proceeds going toward housing or greenspace.
Budget: Commissioner Mike Hamby controversially took money for transportation and other sales tax-funded capital projects and used it to pay for operating expenses and a small property tax cut of 0.2 mills. Denson said that was only allowed to happen because ACC didn’t have a permanent county manager at the time to say no. “My biggest issue was they pulled money that’s not ongoing [and] used it one time for ongoing positions,” he said. “How are they going to pay for it next year?”
Decorum: Circling back to the idea of the commission “kicking the can down the road,” Denson said that’s something the commission does far too often, and not just on zoning issues or the budget. “I do see it happening more and more lately,” he said. “I see things getting tabled.
“The easiest thing to do as an elected official is to do nothing,” he continued, joking that opponents of a new Eastside fire station should have to sign waivers. “If you table everything, if you don’t make a decision, you don’t piss anyone off… They don’t have a spine, if we’re being honest.”
Without naming names, he said commissioners spend too much time name-calling, bashing county staff and engaging in rumormongering, and it’s “very obvious” some don’t read the materials provided before meetings. He said he would be less tolerant of such behavior than Mayor Kelly Girtz.
Girtz is limited to two terms. The other announced candidate for the May 2026 election is Commissioner Dexter Fisher, although more could jump in.
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