Rat and roach infestations. Mold, collapsed ceilings and broken floors. Bathrooms flooded with raw sewage, including blood and feces.
Those are some of the indignities tenants said they faced, as U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff held a hearing in Roswell on Monday to hear from renters and housing experts about how some landlords treat renters in Georgia.
The hearing was part of an inquiry into whether the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is properly holding to account landlords that neglect their properties and residents. Landlords collectively receive millions of dollars in subsidies under the Project-Based Rental Assistance program, according to the senator’s office.
Ossoff’s probe was sparked in part by an Atlanta Journal-Constitution six-part investigative series, “Dangerous Dwellings,” which pulled back the curtain on unsafe living conditions at several Atlanta apartment complexes, including the now-shuttered Forest Cove in Atlanta.
Cancer survivor and tenant advocate Miracle Fletcher, a former resident of Trestletree Village apartments in Atlanta, was among those who spoke at the hearing, held in Roswell City Hall.
She said poor plumbing at the building meant raw sewage contaminated her unit.
Fletcher, driven to tears as she testified, said a foul odor permeated throughout her home. She described a time when her daughter was taking a shower and raw sewage bubbled up and coated her feet.
“It was humiliating,” Fletcher said. “I felt degraded. It felt as if my quality of life or my daughter’s life … it didn’t matter.”
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
When Fletcher organized a tenant association, she said the property managers retaliated against her by accusing her of lease violations.
Latysha Odom, a mother of four children who lives at Heritage Apartments in Griffin, and DeAnnna Hines, who lives in Southwood Apartments in Marrow, testified after Fletcher. They described terrible conditions in their homes, including crumbling ceilings and floors, and rat and roach infestations.
“I can’t leave any food out, even to fix our plates, because if I do, there’ll be roaches in our food,” Odam said. “If I fix anything to drink, we have to cover our cups and cans with a book or something heavy otherwise bugs will get into our drinks.”
The witnesses said property managers and maintenance staff continually failed to fix the problems.
The Senate Human Rights Subcommittee, which Ossoff chairs, uncovered other horror stories in dozens of interviews with tenants, landlords, maintenance staff, housing attorneys and policy experts, the senator said.
Ossoff said the committee had heard from one tenant that their child had fallen through a collapsed floor, and another whose child was bitten by a rat. Others described fires, violent assaults, shootings, and kids sickened by mold.
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
Credit: Natrice Miller/AJC
“What we found thus far is that too often landlords and large property owners and managers are securing and receiving massive federal subsidies while subjecting vulnerable families and children to dangerously unsafe and unsanitary living conditions,” Ossoff said.
He said some neglected properties had passed HUD inspections.
According to tenants’ rights attorney Esther Graff-Radford, HUD failed to follow up with another inspection at some troubled apartment buildings and there was “very little meaningful enforcement” when tenants complained.
“When HUD or the [Georgia] Department of Community Affairs inspect they either are missing the worst issues in occupied units or they simply take the landlord’s word for it that issues have been repaired,” she testified.
In a statement, HUD said it was following up on “all of the incidents identified” and would work with state and local authorities to ensure all landlords in the Project-Based Rental Assistance program were in compliance.
“HUD is committed to ensuring that people living in HUD-assisted housing have safe, decent homes and that property owners manage assets responsibly in accordance with our rules. No one should live in de-humanizing and unsafe conditions,” the agency said.
Ossoff said HUD has enforcement tools to hold accountable thousands of landlords and private property owners and managers.
“It takes far too long to identify bad actors and hold them accountable,” he said.
