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The Atlanta Voice proudly celebrates the induction of Publisher Janis Ware and her late father, J. Lowell Ware (1928–1991), into the 2025 Atlanta Press Club Hall of Fame — honoring their powerful legacy of journalism, justice, and community impact.
The Atlanta Voice Publisher, Janis Ware (left), and her sister, Dr. Rhonda Ware (right). Photo by Jazmine Brazier/The Atlanta Voice
A visionary publisher and civil rights advocate, J. Lowell Ware founded The Atlanta Voice in 1966 after co-founding The Atlanta Inquirer, determined to amplify Black voices and tell stories the mainstream press ignored. He used journalism as a force for empowerment and progress, and co-founded the SUMMECH Community Development Corporation to help revitalize Atlanta’s historic neighborhoods.
Today, Janis Ware carries that mission forward as Publisher of The Atlanta Voice and Executive Director of SUMMECH. Under her leadership, The Atlanta Voice has evolved into a modern multimedia platform, and SUMMECH has built more than 1,800 affordable homes in Atlanta’s Mechanicsville community.
Their Hall of Fame induction is more than a milestone — it’s a celebration of family, legacy, and the unwavering belief that media can uplift and transform communities.
Together, Janis and J. Lowell Ware are the heart of Atlanta’s Black press — champions of truth, empowerment, and progress whose influence endures across generations.
Affordable and low-ticket housing loans are showing signs of an increase in early-stage delinquencies, given that low-income borrowers’ repayment capability has been impacted due to weaker rural growth and a fall in households’ savings.
“There was a payment shock due to the rising interest rate cycle and multiple increases in interest rates, because of which some affordable segment players are now operating at upwards of 13–14 per cent. There has also been a drop in the savings rate compounded by the noise on small-ticket unsecured loan exposure. All of this has reduced the capacity and capability of servicing debt for the below ₹30 lakh loan segment,” said Kanika Singh, Chief Risk Officer, India Mortgage Guarantee Corporation (IMGC).
Nitin Purswani, CEO at Medius AI, a cloud collection and debt management platform, said that the increase in delinquencies can be attributed to several factors, most notably the slower rural growth and its impact on repayment capabilities.
Early indicators reflect an uptick in delinquencies, especially in the 30, 60, and 90 dpd (days past due) buckets, Singh said, adding that affordable housing NPA levels are around 2–2.5 times the industry average.
Affordable home loan borrowers’ EMIs are estimated to have surged 20 per cent in the last two years. The decline in repayment ability is also reflected in the muted incremental demand for affordable houses.
Fall in sales
According to Anarock Research, the share of affordable homes in overall sales fell 11 per cent y-o-y to 20 per cent in H1 2023. In the top 7 cities, this segment’s share fell to 18 per cent from 23 per cent in H1 2022.
Some industry participants believe the elevated delinquencies are due to temporary financial constraints and should correct in the medium term, led by strong macroeconomic variables and a resurgence in the rural economy. However, others said the issue could extend beyond affordable housing.
“The situation in the low-income and affordable housing segments is concerning. This is a telling sign of broader economic stress and reflects a deeper systemic issue,” Purswani said.
InCred Finance, in its Consumer Finance Review for December 2023, said that a key delinquency metric for affordable home loans is similar to that for regular housing loans, despite the much bigger ticket sizes and tighter credit checks for the latter.
“The widespread industry perception is that housing loans are the safest lending products from a credit risk viewpoint. However, even in this segment, there are risks to be managed,” it said, adding that early delinquency rates on home loans are comparable to unsecured products like credit cards and personal loans, which suggests that lower home loan NPA rates are due to intense collection efforts rather than intrinsic customer quality.
The red-hot real estate market of just over a year ago has become a victim of its own success. … [+] Escalating home prices and soaring mortgage rates turned homes unaffordable for many, while builders face growing inventories and plummeting sales. This is not good for the construction industry.
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On June 2021 I wrote a post here titled “3 Reasons Why The Real Estate Boom Is Not A Bubble.” At the time, a lingering deficit of housing units was pushing up housing prices but the combination of low rates, healthy savings and strong income made it still quite affordable to buy a home. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta agrees: According to a recent article, affordability was pretty high when the article came out. But oh my, how times have changed.
The real estate boom was running at full speed in 2021, when homes were affordable despite of rising … [+] prices. They are affordable no more.
Federal Reserve Bank Of Atlanta; Path Financial LLC annotation
The affordability index fell precipitously from those good times to the lowest value since before the Financial Crisis. According to the Atlanta Fed, the decline was (and still is) driven mainly by higher prices and much more expensive mortgages. These factors also affect homeowners who bought or refinanced their homes over the past few years at historically low rates: They are stuck, because moving to a new home will require in many cases much higher mortgage payments. This, in turn, contributes to the shortage of existing homes offered for sale.
Homes have become exceedingly unaffordable due to rising prices and skyrocketing mortgage rates.
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Path Financial LLC annotation
Both existing and new home sales slumped. National Association of Realtors data shows that existing home sales fell from a peak of 6.5MM annual units in early 2022 to about 4.1MM units, or about the same as during the worst point of the pandemic, and they are heading lower. It is similar to the decline in new home sales, which in July 2022 reached the lowest level since March 2016.
After a post-pandemic boom, home sales have slowed down steadily and reached the lowest levels in … [+] six years.
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Path Financial LLC
Conditions are unlikely to change much, since mortgage rates will stay high as long as the Fed remains determined to keep interest rates high to fight inflation. This means that sales will slow even further unless there is a price adjustment. This is affecting the construction industry, which had cranked up production in response to higher prices but now finds it more difficult to sell their newly built homes.
Residential construction ramped up quickly after the pandemic, and accelerated even more in late … [+] 2021 and early 2022 in response to higher prices leading to a much larger inventory of homes.
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Path Financial LLC
What makes it even worse for homebuilders is that, according to the Atlanta Fed data, a lot more is still under construction, adding to the pipeline of new homes coming to market.
New construction activity continues unabated. The proportion of homes that are not yet finished … [+] versus those already available is the largest in the Atlanta Fed study period of almost 20 years.
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta
The growing housing glut is confirmed by other measures, such as the number of housing units in the U.S. as a percentage of population. That percentage hit a peak during the construction frenzy driven by the housing bubble of the mid-2000s, which took several years to adjust. But, when prices recovered and sales boomed, new construction kicked in and drove that percentage even higher.
The number of housing units per person is now higher than at the peak leading to the Financial … [+] Crisis of 2008.
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Path Financial LLC
And this brings me back to the point I made earlier: With a lot of new inventory, even more coming out and affordability at a low point, home prices will have to adjust or sales will continue to fall. This may not necessarily be a serious problem for existing homeowners who can wait, but a big one for builders who, having tied up capital in inventory, will have to offer discounts to move their product. But, because of higher construction costs caused by the supply-chain crisis, their margins have shrunk and their ability to cut prices and still make a profit might be limited.
Either way, this is not entirely unwelcome news for the Fed, intent as it is to lower prices, slow the economy down or, preferably it seems, both. A slowdown in construction activity and lower home prices would go a long way to achieve the outcomes it seeks. The first part is unfolding, as the number of permits for new residential construction is 29% below the recent peak. Notably, permits sank between 30% and 77% off a prior peak in 7 out of the last 8 recessions, which suggests that the slowdown in construction spending may get worse if the recession everyone expects actually materializes.
The number of new residential construction permits has declined considerably and in fact more than … [+] during the pandemic shutdown. The slump is likely to continue.
Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, Path Financial LLC
When local factors are considered, national trends matter less
It’s important to keep in mind that there are differences between the aggregate real estate numbers presented above and the realities on the ground, which are influenced by local conditions much more than by nationwide numbers.
Take, for example, three counties in Florida (Manatee, Sarasota and Charlotte) just south of Tampa, on the Gulf of Mexico – which happens to be where I live and work.
According to Realtor MLS data, the number of real estate listings here dropped rather steadily from the 28,000 or so active listings in the months leading to the 2008 Financial Crisis (when monthly sales were a paltry 1,100 units a month) to a low of just 2,000 active listings in March 2022 (shortly after sales had reached a red-hot volume of 4,000 units a month that depleted inventory). In recent months the number of active listings has recovered slightly and is once again larger than monthly sales, but the number of units listed for sale is still far lower than for most of the last 15 years.
This area’s real estate transactions are influenced by tourism, retirement, and a migration into Florida from other states that picked up momentum with the trend towards remote work. In addition, the area tends to attract buyers of luxury homes who are less sensitive to price increases and don’t rely as much on mortgages.
The point is that hyper-local conditions override nationwide numbers, so while the information I presented earlier is important to investors considering real estate investments through instruments such as VNQ VNQ (an ETF that invests in REITs) or REZ (an ETF with higher exposure to residential real estate), it may be of marginal importance for someone evaluating the sale or purchase of a specific piece of real estate. While current conditions seem particularly unfavorable at this time for large homebuilders with a national presence, those thinking about buying or selling a home in any given place will benefit more from consulting real estate agents, who usually have the best understanding of local conditions, rather than aggregate numbers.
