Welcome to Friday, Atlanta!

🌦️ Today's weather: Mostly sunny then chance of showers and thunderstorms, with a high of 93 and a low of 72.

🕯️ Situational awareness: Today marks 25 years since the Sept. 11 attacks, which killed nearly 3,000 people and has since reshaped U.S. foreign policy, national security and daily life.

• 🍎🍯 And as Rosh Hashanah begins at sundown tonight, Shanah Tovah to those celebrating.

🎂 Happy birthday to our member Sara Gottlieb!

This newsletter is 970 words, a 3.5-minute read.

The Atlanta region is in a housing affordability crunch and there are no signs that it will ease any time soon.

• To address this trend, the Atlanta Regional Commission has released its Housing Forward 2035 strategy for the 11-county region.

Why it matters: The housing crisis doesn't care about city and county boundaries, so the region must come up with a collective framework that will help metro Atlanta remain an affordable place to live.

Driving the news: The strategy was unveiled last week at the Atlanta Regional Housing Forum, which brought together advocates, elected officials and nonprofit entities.

What they're saying: Anna Roach, executive director of the ARC, said the region is projected to only meet 25% of the housing demand for people who earn less than $55,000 a year by 2035.

• By then, 75% of people who fall below that income threshold "won't have housing to speak of."

Zoom in: The ARC's strategy calls for building 367,000 homes by 2035, and preserving about 104,000 affordable units that could be lost due to redevelopment.

• It also calls for 51% of those 367,000 new homes to be affordable for people at or below 80% of the area median income (or around $73,000 for a two-person household).
• The region should also focus on creating new housing at price points that are accessible for people who make no more than $55,000 a year, and building new homes on at least 10% of the region's 1.7-million vacant or underused parcels by 2035.

State of play: The strategy comes on the heels of a study that found more than half of renters and nearly a quarter of homeowners spend 30% or more of their income on housing, according to the ARC.

What's next: The ARC's board has to adopt the strategy, which could happen at its Oct. 14 meeting.

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Metro Atlanta cities and counties are holding events to mark 25 years since 9/11, a day we remember for the nearly 3,000 people who were killed and the countless lives forever changed.

Here are some events happening Friday to honor the lives lost in the terrorist attacks:

🇺🇸 9/11 Field of Flags, a partnership of the Marietta Kiwanis Foundation and the Kennesaw Mountain National Battlefield Park, features 2,977 American flags representing the people killed on 9/11.

• The ceremony starts at 7:55am and includes an honor guard, 21-gun salute and memorial bells at 8:46am, 9:03am, 9:38am and 10:03am — the times when the hijacked planes struck the World Trade Center and Pentagon and crashed near Shanksville, Pa.

🏫 Milton High School's 10am event features a keynote speech by Dr. Stewart Gordon, who helped identify World Trade Center victims.

🙏 Suwanee officials will hold a 6pm ceremony at Town Center Park's Remembrance Plaza, a permanent 9/11 memorial that includes a steel remnant from one of the former World Trade Center towers.

More events: Cherokee County's 8:30am event includes a keynote by fire and emergency services battalion chief Matthew Richter. Douglas County and Douglasville's remembrance event also starts at 8:30am.

• Roswell will hold a moment of silence at 8:46am. Avondale Estates will ring a bell at 8:46am, followed by silent reflection.

Junkman's Daughter, the iconic Little Five Points emporium of almost everything, is getting a new face.

Why it matters: The stalwart megashop's facade and the Vortex Bar and Grill's oversized skull entrance are key ingredients of L5P's magic.

Zoom in: Moss Mills, the son of the store's founder, Pam Majors, who died in 2016, told Axios the old mural had badly faded and its UFO hanging over the entrance was starting to deteriorate.

• The mural by Kyle "BlackCatTips" Brooks will be the fourth iteration of the facade since Junkman's moved into the former grocery store space on Moreland Avenue in the mid-1990s, he said.
• Expect Brooks' signature style of eccentric characters but with some Junkman's touches, according to Mills: more frowns, teeth, horns and "character chaos."

The UFO, which used to collect rain that would spill on people standing underneath, will be replaced by an awning over the store's entrances.

• Mills said Brooks plans to include an Easter egg in the mural paying homage to the UFO.

What's next: Mills said the project should take at least four weeks.

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⚖️ The estate of William Brent Hinds, co-founder and guitarist for the heavy metal band Mastadon who was killed in a motorcycle crash, is suing the remaining band members for using his likeness to promote a new album. (AJC)

🦉 A southeast Georgia native and recent Cornell University graduate has founded a nonprofit designed to protect and study the wildlife two miles from where OpenAI plans to open a $20 billion data center. (The Current)

The Clayton County Medical Examiner's Office listed neglect and deteriorating jail conditions as the cause of a detainee's death in August 2025. The manner of death was classified as a homicide. (WSB)

😮 A 18,000-square-foot home in Buckhead's Tuxedo Park neighborhood recently sold for $18.6 million, the second most expensive residential sale ever recorded in metro Atlanta. (AJC)

🤷🏽‍♀️ Kristal didn't know how to respond to the phlebotomist telling her she has small veins, so she just apologized.

👀 Thomas is reading ProPublica reporter Max Blau's story about the cost of — and secrecy surrounding — Georgia's lethal injection process.

This newsletter was edited by Crystal Hill.