When Atlanta leaders passed the most aggressive blight tax in Georgia in 2024, they pitched it as a way to crack down on neglected properties, while generating revenue for affordable housing.
“Make no mistake about it: This is a war on blight,” District 3 City Councilmember Byron Amos, who authored the ordinance, warned negligent property owners in fall 2024. “There’s a new sheriff in town.”
But Atlanta has yet to collect a dollar of the blight tax approved in August 2024, according to a February audit by the City Auditor’s Office. Meanwhile DeKalb County will roll out its own blight tax program by June, just nine months after passing the enabling legislation.
Atlanta’s ordinance authorizes the city to hike the property tax on a blighted property that is vacant or abandoned by up to 25 times the city’s millage rate. For a property assessed at $250,000, that would increase the property tax from $952 to $23,800 per year, according to the city audit. The stiff penalty is intended to force absentee owners to fix or redevelop long-neglected buildings.
But to activate the blight tax, Mayor Andre Dickens must appoint a “public officer” to officially declare properties blighted. That didn’t happen until last month, when Dickens appointed City Solicitor Raines Carter as the officer through an executive order.
Dickens’ chief of staff, Courtney English, said the city has delayed establishing the blight tax program, because it has been conducting due diligence to ensure that it’s legally sound. He called the city audit premature. “Our residents deserve speed, but they also deserve and need us to get this right,” he said. “Getting it right took some time.”
What’s more, the Fulton County Tax Commissioner, which collects property taxes for the city of Atlanta, last month declined the mayor’s request for it to collect the blight tax, English told Atlanta Civic Circle.
Fulton County said in a statement that Tax Commissioner Arthur Ferdinand informed the city on April 14 that his office would not bill or collect the blight tax. Fulton’s statement did not say why, but added: “The city of Atlanta has the option of handling billing or collections for this tax.”
English said the city is working on other ways to implement the blight tax without Fulton’s help. “We have the power to assess and collect the blight tax on our own, and we plan to do so,” he said.
To get the program moving, Atlanta City Council on May 4 unanimously approved a new measure from Amos that clarifies how the city can enforce the blight tax — and designates the city’s chief financial officer as the tax collection agent.
The new ordinance establishes a clearer legal process — one of the issues cited in the audit. Now, the designated public officer must inspect the property, produce a written report, and serve it on the property owner. The property owner has 30 days to remediate the property or request a hearing in Atlanta Municipal Court. If a municipal judge finds for the city, the ruling is sent to Atlanta’s chief financial officer.
The city’s chief financial officer must notify the tax commissioner for either Fulton or DeKalb Counties of the property’s blight designation. To impose the increased property tax, it now falls upon the chief financial officer to “take whatever administrative action that shall be necessary to ensure that the increased [property] tax shall appear on the next regular tax bill rendered by or on behalf of the city,” according to the ordinance.
Other governments moved faster
Atlanta modeled its blight tax on programs in the city of Forest Park and Macon-Bibb County — but they began identifying and penalizing properties within months of enacting the legislation. One key reason is that both designated their code enforcement director as the public officer early on, according to the Atlanta audit.
Atlanta’s city auditor recommended in February “that the chief of staff coordinate with the mayor to designate a public officer as defined in the ordinance. We further recommend that the mayor’s office formally communicate the designation so that city officials and the public know who to contact regarding program requirements.”
Akin to Atlanta’s new approach, Forest Park also assesses the blight tax itself, rather than looking to Clayton County.
DeKalb County enacted its own blight tax in November — and the program is scheduled to start operating by June. That’s because DeKalb’s ordinance has a built-in timeline: It requires the blight tax to be fully operational within 180 days of the measure’s adoption.
Dekalb set a deadline to implement the program, in part, because of apparent delays in the Atlanta program. ”We haven’t just been seeing some lag when it comes to housing or blight [in DeKalb], but we’ve seen it in other areas as well,” DeKalb District 7 Commissioner LaDena Bolton, told Atlanta Civic Circle. “We heard about what happened with Atlanta.”
In Atlanta’s defense, English said, the city largely relies on Fulton County to handle taxation, whereas DeKalb, as a county government, can use its own tax assessors’ office to assess the blight tax.
DeKalb’s impending blight tax imposes a penalty on abandoned properties of up to 10 times the current county millage rate, far lower than Atlanta’s 25-times multiplier.
But the DeKalb process also has more legal teeth than the Atlanta one. DeKalb, like Forest Park and Macon-Bibb County, designates its code enforcement director as the public officer to target blight. Once the public officer determines a property is blighted, they will refer the case to the county attorney to file a complaint against the property.
Consequently, all blight cases in DeKalb will be heard in court. Only after a ruling that the property meets the county’s legal standard for blight does the tax increase take effect.
DeKalb’s approach builds on Atlanta’s model, said Super District 6 Commissioner Ted Terry. DeKalb’s initial blight tax legislation followed the Atlanta process, where property owners can request a court hearing to contest a blight determination. However, the final DeKalb version refers all blight cases to the county attorney to pursue legal action.
“Ours might be a little different, but basically the same goal is dealing with landowners who have let their properties go into decline,” Terry said.
Terry said the blight tax isn’t meant to be punitive, but an escalating incentive — a “soft push” to clean up properties that will become “a really loud siren” if owners fail to act.DeKalb has often mimicked Atlanta’s housing policies — establishing its own affordable housing fund that mirrors the city’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and developing a community land trust based on the Atlanta Land Trust, for instance. This time, the county has an opportunity to show the city how it’s done.