A bill to rescind Georgia’s decades-old ban on rent regulation is almost certainly doomed to fail during this legislative session—but what about a measure to allow local governments to more closely monitor rental housing costs and landlord behavior?
Sponsored by six Georgia Democrats, Senate Bill 278 seeks to repeal state statutes that prohibit cities and counties from inspecting multifamily rental properties without “probable cause” to indicate that a housing code violation is occurring, and that bar municipalities from creating registries to track the rents charged.
“With the infusion of corporate entities, especially those from outside the state, buying up properties across Georgia, it’s very difficult to identify owners and hold them accountable,” said the bill’s author, state Sen. Jason Esteves (D-District 6) in an interview. “This bill is intended to address that.”
SB 278 hasn’t had much luck in the landlord-friendly legislature so far, but advocacy groups like the Housing Justice League and HouseATL are still urging policymakers to embrace measures to beef up inspection practices and allow rental registries.
Some American cities, including Seattle, Minneapolis, and Oakland, have established rental registries to log past and present rent prices for properties, as well as property owner information. These cities’ laws require landlords to submit that data to a governing body or else be barred from increasing rents or even, in some instances, evicting tenants.
Atlanta is saturated with absentee landlords and investors hiding behind shell companies and skirting housing laws. When a landlord lets an occupied or vacant property fall into dangerous disrepair, the city’s code enforcement teams often struggle to identify whom to hold accountable.
“Public officials lack real-time data to know whether landlords are complying with the rules or flouting them,” according to a report from national community development publication Shelterforce. “As a result, enforcement is spotty at best.”
Organizations that track rent price trends, like the Atlanta Regional Commission, typically rely on incomplete data from apartment listing sites like Zillow or RentCafe. Those sources only offer data for rental units on the market—and those owned or managed by landlords willing to share what they’re collecting from tenants.
That’s where rental registries come in handy.
“Lease registries would create publicly accessible rent data, which is hard to find,” said Anh-Ton Tran, a member of the Housing Justice League’s eviction defense group. “If we had this data, we could better assess how housing prices are increasing for families who are more likely to rent larger units.”
Other cities have found online rental registries are cheap and easy to set up and manage. They lend important transparency to landlord-tenant relationships by enabling local governments to hold landlords accountable for providing safe housing, Tran said.
The Housing Justice League wants to make registering a lease in a municipal database a prerequisite for filing an eviction, Tran added. “Fulton County and the greater Atlanta metro area have an extremely high filing rate that is alarming,” he said.
There were 72,635 evictions filed in metro Atlanta in the first half of 2023, a 12% jump from 2022, according to data from the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank.
Property inspection issues
The city of Atlanta last year launched the Safe and Secure Housing initiative to bulk up its code enforcement office’s capacity to address substandard housing, “but we can only investigate housing code issues when potential violations are reported to the city,” Josh Humphries, Mayor Andre Dickens’ top housing advisor, told Atlanta Civic Circle. (He encouraged Atlantans facing housing quality issues to call 311.)
To better facilitate code violation inspections, SB 278 would modify the existing law so that local governments could inspect residential rental properties when there is “reasonable suspicion” of a code violation that is in plain view, instead of probable cause. The bill adds that an owner must be notified in advance–and it would only apply to rental properties with four or more housing units.
SB 278 also says cities and counties “may require the registration of residential rental properties containing four or more dwelling units when the owner or the owner’s immediate family do not reside in any of the units.”
The goal, Esteves said, is “to lower the standard for inspections” so local governments can address problems faster.
Unfortunately for rental registry advocates, SB 278 hasn’t moved at all in the legislature since it was filed in February 2023. Still, the bill or one like it could be more palatable to state lawmakers than local Democrats’ long-fought bid to repeal Georgia’s rent stabilization ban.
Senate Bill 125 would do away with a state law that prohibits cities and counties from enacting policies commonly referred to as “rent control.” These days, that usually means regulating the rate of annual rent increases. But it failed to gain any traction during last year’s general assembly, and local housing experts don’t expect it to have much luck in 2024, either.
Want to know more about rent registries? View slides from a recent Housing Solutions Lab presentation featuring Allison Pretto from the city of Oakland and Dr. Ingrid Ellen of the Furman Center at New York University.
Have questions? Let us know in the comments.
There is also issues of management violating tenet’s rights. Such as improper entering without notification or at will. Harassment of tenet’s per management. And enlisting others to harass. The unlawful use of jammers to jam tenet’s security system. This is a major problem!
Thanks for writing and sharing the bills in congress. I wouldn’t know about them otherwise
Thank you for publishing this. Atlanta has a lot of slumlords.
Another benefit to all humans needs housing snd not just strictly affordable housing: award PHAs funding specifically to back (another form of co-sign) for homebuyers over 50% of AMI (threshold to be eligible for affordable housing assistance) with less than an eligible credit score to buy a home in lure of downpayment as long as the homebuyer can pay the downpayment. If the homebuyer foreclose on the home the PHA has 1st option to buy the hone from the bank or mortgage company pursuant to the mortgage agreement. Then the home becomes property of the PHA and can only be sold at 60% ANI or less or rented 50% AMI or less at regular program eligibility requirements..
our municipality is located in St. Louis County Missouri, we along with other minority communities have been blighted with vacant and abandoned houses for tax write offs
the landlords and property managers expect us to pass inspections regardless of the condition of said property. the property is generally dirty, with damages everywhere. do we have to pass this? is it considered cosmetic?