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1-27-2023 11:49am
$1,575 rental houses in Milledgeville apparently now considered "average"
Christian McKearney
Editor
Politicians and elected officials don't seem very interested, and it's very rarely if ever mentioned at City Council or county commission meetings.
Right now, however, the meteoric rise of housing is the biggest problem for many people in Milledgeville and Baldwin County.
The old adage is to spend no more than 30 percent of your income on housing, although that's quickly becoming unattainable. An increasing percentage of renters in Milledgeville are now spending 50 percent of their money if not more on rent. The phenomenon is happening so quickly that it's not yet completely understood by social scientists and policy experts, and it's also not yet fully appreciated by politicians and lawmakers. The longterm impact the economy is still unknown, but it couldn't be good.
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The $2,000 per month rental house in Carrington Woods
The nine-figure house in Grestone Arbor
The $111,000 trailer in Harrisburg
For example, $1,575 per month for a rental house in Milledgeville/Baldwin County apparently is now "market rate" or "average," at least based on the listing price for one the "old doctors houses" near Central State. When a development group previously purchased 54 old brick houses around Central State and the "Riverbend Development" project was announced, supporters of the project said that the houses would be rented at "market rate" and help ease tensions on the local rental market.
A total of 40-something new rental houses in the "Riverbend Development," are expected to be rented out by the end of this year. A company previously purchased the 157 acres and 54 different brick houses between the Georgia War Veterans Home and the bottom of the hill leading out of town. Most were built in the 1950s and 1960s, when CSH administrators were in desperate need of medical doctors. The houses were built as a perk to recruit new doctors, hence the term "doctors' houses." Many of those doctors ultimately came from Cuba following the Castro Revolution and the botched Bay of Pigs invasion.
Keep in mind, based on the data, Baldwin County is one of the poorer counties in one of the poorer states in the country. The Census Bureau most recently placed Baldwin County's median per capita income at around $26,000. An "average" $1,575 rental house adds up to $18,900 per year.
