When Gov. Brian Kemp signed into law 2024’s Safe at Home Act, it was meant to protect tenants against the worst excesses of landlords who rent out neglected apartments.
A little over a year later, tenants at Bolden Townhomes in southwest Atlanta don’t seem to be benefiting from the meager protections the state law granted Georgia residents. Instead, some say they were told to vacate their homes with unsafe conditions because they had been accused of squatting.
Another state law passed last year, called the Georgia Squatter Reform Act, criminalizes property squatting, and seems to have informed the response to the complex’s residents.
Speaking during a press conference at the apartment complex on Friday, Mercedes McGregor said local law enforcement told her she would have to leave her apartment, even though she maintains she was a legal tenant.
“They’re calling us squatters,” McGregor said. “Squatters don’t have keys. We all had leases everybody showed when the sheriff came.”
Though she didn’t detail the contents, McGregor held up legal documents she said officers served her, and said they gave her three business days to respond to the complaint.
“On my third business day, at 10 o’clock in the morning, I was already getting evicted,” she said.
McGregor was one of several residents who spoke Friday about dangerous conditions at the complex, where some have already been forced out of their homes.
Housing Justice League’s executive director Alison Johnson and her organization, which advocates on behalf of the city’s low-income residents, said many people who remain at the complex don’t have electricity and are living in homes infested with mold and water damage.
“It is an atrocity,” Johnson said, comparing conditions in the units to those at Forest Cove, the neglected apartment complex in the Thomasville Heights neighborhood that the city condemned and began demolishing last year.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Her group and the tenants are demanding that Bolden Capital Group, which owns the complex, stop evictions, meet with tenants and organizers, and help restore power to the units, which are serviced by Georgia Power.
Bolden Capital Group said it had faced several “complex challenges at the property, including unauthorized occupancy, utility theft, and damage to units.”
“These issues have created difficult and unsafe conditions for our legal residents, our team members and the broader community. In partnership with local law enforcement and under guidance of the law, we’ve taken necessary steps to protect the property and ensure a safe environment for those who reside here legally,” the company said in an emailed statement.
Bolden Capital Group did not immediately respond to a follow-up question about whether it was relying on the Squatter Reform Act to remove residents. Under that state law, people accused of squatting have three days to respond to a complaint.
Resident Ty Ocean told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that conditions in his unit were “fine” but pointed to trash on the grass as evidence that more could be done to clean up. He said he hadn’t faced any eviction threats.
“I’m not a problem,” he said. “I’m allowed to be here. I’m not a squatter.”
Angela Vaughn, Montavious Vaughn and Amber Miller showed the AJC on Friday the interior of the one-bedroom apartment they share, pointing to a gaping hole in the kitchen ceiling that had collapsed after a water leak in the upstairs bathroom.
Their power had been out for days, they said. Vaughn pointed to exposed wiring in the ceiling. He said his mother, Angela, had fallen down the stairs.
The family moved into the apartment in February. They said water leaked into the apartment when it rained. Like other residents, they said the leasing office is often empty, with no staff on site, and that when they called management they had to leave messages but never got a reply.
“The landlord hasn’t been here. Mold is growing on the toilet. The side of our bath is leaking every time we get in the shower,” Miller said during the press conference.
Miller estimated dozens of families, or about three-quarters of the people living at the complex, faced eviction.
Some housing advocates feared that the law criminalizing property squatting would make it easier for some landlords to use the law as a rationale to skirt tenant protections, and eviction court.
They persuaded lawmakers to include language in the bill that would give residents the opportunity to prove to a magistrate judge that they had a valid lease, or had not been deceived by rental scammers.
Johnson said more attention needs to be paid to the laws that were passed to protect tenants. She said state lawmakers needed to make changes to the Safe at Home Act to better define habitability standards.
“There’s no oversight to the actual ordinance that was passed to hold landlords accountable,” she said.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Bolden Captial Group is headed by founder and chairman, Edward Bolden. His Instagram profile states that he is the “largest Black multifamily landlord in Atlanta.” The company is not accredited by the Better Business Bureau and holds an F rating for failing to respond to six complaints filed against it, according to the nonprofit.
Eighteen complaints have been filed against the company, the BBB website adds.
Tre’Auana Griffin shares her apartment with her two young children. She said her power has been out for three or four days even though she has contacted Georgia Power and paid the bill. Georgia Power told her there was something wrong with the power box, according to the resident.
“I don’t really have no family to help. I don’t really have nowhere else to go,” a tearful Griffin said during the press conference.
Later, she showed the AJC the apartment she said costs $1,275 a month. The home has spiders, bedbugs and cockroaches, she said. Because the power is off, the food in her refrigerator spoiled.
Georgia Power spokesperson Matthew Kent said the company does not typically discuss customer accounts but was aware of the situation at the complex.
“Georgia Power continues to work with Bolden Townhomes to address various connection and account issues for their residents. Given possible legal, safety and account privacy issues, we are not at liberty to discuss details,” he wrote in an emailed statement.
The Bolden Townhomes property is on Oakland Drive in Atlanta City Council member Jason Dozier’s district. Dozier was not immediately available for an interview.
“The residents we’ve spoken to have said that they paid their rent, and so they’re being evicted despite having paid their rent,” the Housing Justice League’s Matthew Nursey said. “A lot of them don’t have leases. A lot of them have leases with the incorrect information on it, like misspelled names and things like that.”
He said Bolden Capital has a reputation for neglecting properties and that the city had intervened after the company purchased another property in southwest Atlanta.
In 2020, then-City Council member Joyce Sheperd told Fox 5 Atlanta that the city had taken legal action over conditions at an apartment complex on 3rd Avenue SW, which Bolden owned.
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
Credit: arvin.temkar@ajc.com
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