At first blush, the city of Atlanta’s fledgling crackdown on landlords with an egregious number of housing code violations might simply look like an attempt to clean up eyesore apartment complexes.
But the Safe and Secure Housing program, launched a year ago with $800,000 in seed funding from the municipal Affordable Housing Trust Fund, also aims to nip violent crime in the bud, an Atlanta Civic Circle analysis has found.
To date, the Safe and Secure Housing effort has initiated housing code enforcement and oversight actions against 27 properties citywide. Almost all are listed in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s “Dangerous Dwellings” database of problem apartment complexes — and in almost all cases, it’s because of both their deteriorating and dangerous conditions and the crime that often accompanies unchecked blight.
To take on negligent and predatory landlords, the city hired seven new code enforcement staff for the Atlanta Solicitor’s Office and contracted with private attorneys to take them to court. The city says the new staff also are helping responsible landlords return their properties to livable conditions.
So far, the beefed-up task force has brought eight of those 27 dangerous complexes — mostly on the city’s Westside — back into housing code compliance, and it’s monitoring them to ensure they stay that way.
Rehabilitating repeat offenders
The city task force has successfully pressed several particularly egregious, investor-owned properties for the repairs needed to return them to habitable standards.
The Premier at 1935, for instance — a 238-unit complex built in the 1960s and owned by Florida-based SAR Apartment Capital LLC — had for years sparked complaints over unsafe living conditions and violent crimes — a homicide, dozens of aggravated assaults, more than a dozen robberies, and two rapes between 2017 and July 2023. The city had lodged 173 code complaints against the property.
Now, the complex at 1935 Alison Court, near Fort McPherson, exemplifies the city’s aim for the properties it’s targeting with the Safe and Secure initiative — to make them safe for tenants to live in.
Likewise, the Royal Oaks apartments, near the Atlanta airport, is back in housing code compliance, after accumulating 185 code complaints and a laundry list of assaults, robberies, and rapes. The complex, located at 3540 North Camp Creek Parkway, is owned by another Florida-based investor, Prosperity Capital Partners.
The rehab journey
Despite the task force’s efforts, problem properties abound. The 27 properties currently under code enforcement or oversight measures house more than 5,000 rental units, and so the Safe and Secure Housing team has its work cut out for it.
In the past year, the team has issued noncompliance notices to five apartment complexes — totaling nearly 500 units — that have prompted tenant complaints about living conditions and violent crime. Those properties are awaiting further inspection.
Eight properties are in some stage of the civil code enforcement process, meaning they’ve been issued code violation notices and the city has filed cases against them in Atlanta Municipal Court.
The city is in ongoing litigation with landlords over two properties with dozens of code violations. The Fairburn Gordon Apartments is awaiting a nuisance complaint hearing, and the property owner of the other apartments, located at 1425 Joseph E. Boone Boulevard, has signed a consent agreement to make repairs after nuisance complaints were filed.
The Fairburn Gordon Apartments, owned by California-based A&B Apartments LLC and Behzad Beroukhai, is quickly emerging as Atlanta’s next Forest Cove Apartments — a complex infamously plagued by deferred maintenance, pests, mold, and violent crime.
The AJC found that, between 2017 and May 2023, police logged 92 crimes at Fairburn Gordon, located at 195 Fairburn Road in Adamsville. Those included a homicide, 30 aggravated assaults, nine robberies, and four rapes. Officers also discovered a dead woman in an apartment’s closet in April 2023 and then found a man who’d been fatally shot last September. The complex also amassed well over 100 code enforcement complaints in that six-year period.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently revoked Fairburn Gordon’s Section 8 voucher funding contract — but that doesn’t stop the city’s code enforcement case against the property. (HUD similarly pulled its Section 8 contract for Forest Cove owner Millennia Housing Management, and, after two years of pushback from the owner, the city finally started demolishing the derelict complex in March.)
The Safe and Secure Housing task force recently discovered new code violations at two apartment complexes — Hidden Village, at 3041 Landrum Drive, and The Retreat at Greenbriar, at 3000 Continental Colony Parkway. The AJC cited both in its “Dangerous Dwellings” database for substandard living conditions and crime.
The city also found that two other properties — Ashley Cascade, at 1371 Kimberly Way, and 32Hundred Lenox, at 3200 Lenox Road — had fallen out of compliance after previously being brought back up to code.
Atlanta’s enforcement task force can only investigate housing code violations if they are reported to the city. Call 311 if you have a housing code violation to report.
Click here to see the Safe and Secure Housing team’s progress mapped.