The AJC’s: Part 5 identifies 272 of the metro area’s persistently dangerous housing complexes. Unfortunately, Chamblee has 12 apartment complexes, and Brookhaven has 16 on the list. What do they have in common? Most are located along the Buford Highway corridor, are older complexes owned by investment firms, and the residents are overwhelmingly Hispanic.
Chamblee has been highly proactive with code enforcement regarding these properties; more on that below. However, we face multiple challenges in improving these conditions. Most significantly are absentee corporate owners – which the article covers in great depth – that use lawyers to fight us every step of the way. Moreover, if the residents complain about the conditions, management will evict them or raise their rent.
We have been persistent and achieved improving conditions through our Apartment Sweep Program. Code Enforcement Supervisor Robbins presented updates on this progress to the Council on August 11. The video can be found on YouTube and starts roughly at the 28-minute mark. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0GIgumrT__E
Furthermore, Chamblee conducted a housing study in 2022 to help identify strategies to protect our marginalized residents from predatory landlords. Please keep in mind that this is a draft, and we are still working to finalize the study. Examples of these strategies include adopting an Unscheduled Inspections Policy for rental units and creating an anonymous code infraction reporting hotline. You can watch the presentation of the housing report using the following this link. https://fb.watch/huXype7Ppd/. The presentation beings approximately at the 5 min mark. We plan to implement these strategies in 2023.
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