On Thursday, July 18, we officially unveiled Invest Atlanta’s first-ever Equity Statement to our Board of Directors and the public.

You may wonder, “Why an equity statement? Why now?”

After all, we have been doing work for decades to support greater equity for residents and communities throughout the City of Atlanta. Since its founding in 1979, the Urban Residential Finance Authority has been financing the creation and preservation of affordable housing in the City. And since 1997, the Atlanta Development Authority has supported small businesses, entrepreneurs, and worked to make Atlanta for everyone.

In addition to Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms efforts making equity a top issue through her One Atlanta initiative, we also wanted to recognize the importance of equity in what we say, and more importantly, in what we do through our initiatives. That’s why we decided to highlight our focus and commitment on equity through this statement:

Economic prosperity and competitiveness in Atlanta start with equity—equitable access to opportunity and pathways to wealth creation.  It is more than a goal, it is a guiding principle that drives us. We advance our work through this lens to ensure that all Atlantans are positioned to benefit from economic investments in our city, regardless of their zip code. 
 
We are committed to responsibly utilizing the resources, economic incentives, programs and financial tools available to us to increase sustainable living-wage jobs and affordable housing, reduce income and wealth gaps across racial and social-economic lines, and help ensure all Atlanta neighborhoods and residents have the assets they need to thrive.

We have already put the statement up on our website and will display it prominently in our office as a reminder to our staff and visitors that equity is in all that we do.

We believe this is necessary and important, both as a way for us to clearly communicate with our stakeholders, but to provide a set of guiding principles around the actions we take and the new programs and incentives we launch.

In addition, we have 11 core values, we will be adding this core value to our list:

We believe economic prosperity and competitiveness starts with equity for all Atlantans.

My hope is this will help more people understand the essence of the work we do.

This is who we have been.

This is who we are.

This is who we will be.

And this where we want to continue to go.