50 signatures reached
To: Atlanta City Council, GA State Legislature
City and State Lawmakers: Defend the Right to Housing in Atlanta and Georgia!
What are we demanding?
1) Lift the state-wide ban on rent control: The state of Georgia has had a ban on rent control since the 1980s. As long as this ban remains, landlords can and will continue raising rents at rates that displace people from their homes and communities. Effective rent control policies exist. Georgia needs to allow local governments to implement necessary policies to protect residents.
2) Pass Housing Justice League’s Tenants’ Bill of Rights. Georgia is far behind other states in protecting tenants. Tenants make up 56.4% of Atlanta residents. Tenants deserve to have stability in their lives. Read the Tenant Bill of Rights here: https://tinyurl.com/52ztpy98
3) Curb corporations’ ability to buy large amounts of property: Predatory real-estate investors are snatching up land and houses before ordinary people can put down an offer. This contributes to rising housing costs as these houses are flipped and turned into rentals. These activities displace marginalized communities disproportionately in neighborhoods of color. We need new laws that limit the ability of investors to control enormous portions of the housing market and people's access to housing.
4) We demand for the City of Atlanta to institute a lease registry, requiring landlords to submit their leases for public record. This will allow the public to keep track of how housing costs are increasing, and which landlords are acting predatorily. As a prerequisite for filing an eviction, landlords must submit their ledger of leases.
5) We demand a moratorium on 3rd party sale of delinquent property tax liens. This has long been a mechanism for continued dispossession in black and brown communities, and makes their properties susceptible to predatory corporations and real estate firms.
Why is this important?
Georgians are being priced and bought out of our cities.
Over the past several months, Housing Justice League has noticed worsening trends that are impacting who is able to live and own land in and around Atlanta.
Corporations are buying out our neighborhoods. It is becoming less and less common to find a house owned by a person. In 2021, investors bought well over one third of the houses that were for sale in the predominantly Black neighborhoods south and southwest of downtown Atlanta. In some zip codes, the rate of purchase by investors was over 50 percent.
Since January 2020, rents in metro Atlanta have increased by 28.2% on average. Meanwhile, the wages of working class people have not significantly increased in decades.
Housing is a necessity. However, our governments at all levels allow the housing market to be treated as a game of poker that rakes in wealth for the ultra-rich. A safe and sanitary place to live should be treated as a human right, guaranteed for all. Not a commodity to be bought, sold and priced based on the desires of wealthy institutions.