The nation’s top housing agency has barred Forest Cove Apartments owner Millennia Housing Management from doing any further business with the federal government, cutting off the company’s access to new Section 8 rental voucher contracts for its low-income apartment properties nationally.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) decision to cut off the Ohio-based mega-landlord from future government contracts for five years follows years of criticism from Millennia’s renters and housing advocates. They claim the company has misused tenants’ money and public funds, neglected crucial property maintenance, and otherwise provided unsafe housing across the country.
And the “debarment,” as HUD calls it, might not be the last of Millennia’s problems. The company owns dozens of government-subsidized apartment complexes nationwide, and its questionable practices now face more intense scrutiny.
“HUD is pursuing separate enforcement actions and will take further action as appropriate and necessary,” Ethan Handelman, the agency’s deputy secretary for multifamily housing programs, told Atlanta Civic Circle in a statement Friday.
Last year, the federal housing authority suspended Millennia’s ability to seek new government contracts or renew existing ones, while it mulled a more permanent resolution to mounting concerns. “HUD found that Millennia Housing Management exercised financial mismanagement of tenant security deposit accounts and taxpayer funds providing housing assistance,” Handelman said in a December statement.
Although Millennia cannot seek any more federal subsidies, HUD will continue making rent subsidy payments for the mega-landlord’s current Section 8 tenants, Handelman’s March 15 statement said. But he added that HUD expects the company “to continue performing any necessary repairs or maintenance” at its properties.
“This is a victory for tenants across the country,” said longtime Forest Cove tenant advocate Foluke Nunn, a community organizer with the American Friends Service Committee’s Atlanta Economic Justice Program. She also represents the Millennia Resistance Campaign, a national coalition of housing advocates that’s been striving to hold the controversial landlord accountable for years of documented property mismanagement.
“Millennia abuses taxpayer dollars by leaving properties in disrepair and endangering the tens of thousands of tenants living in its complexes,” Nunn said in a statement from the Millennia Resistance Campaign to Atlanta Civic Circle. “It has long proven that it lacks the competence and integrity to be a responsible steward of subsidized housing.”
Millennia did not respond to a request for comment by publication. The landlord has maintained that the vast majority of its multifamily portfolio meets federal housing quality standards — and that the Millennia Resistance Campaign has been peddling misinformation and exaggerations about its Section 8 apartment complexes to cast the company in a negative light.
Problematic properties
While Millennia has in the past denied responsibility for the poor conditions at some of its low-income apartment complexes, several of its most problematic properties raise questions about safety and basic habitability.
Forest Cove, a southside Atlanta apartment community, has emerged as one of Millennia’s most infamous cases. The 396-unit complex was condemned in December 2021 and finally evacuated almost a year later, in fall 2022, through a costly, city-led initiative. The property has caught fire multiple times and has been infested by rats, roaches, mold, litter, asbestos, and violent crime, both before and after the city’s resident relocation effort.
Similar problems have been reported at other Millennia properties: A fire at one in Arkansas killed three people in October 2022. A carbon monoxide leak at a Mississippi complex left a mother and child dead in September 2022. And a gas leak explosion at apartments in Florida hospitalized seven residents in 2019.
“HUD’s debarment is a strong first step, and now it has to finish the job so that Millennia tenants will get true justice,” Nunn said in the Millennia Resistance Campaign statement. “The poor living conditions at many Millennia properties remain unaddressed, and HUD’s plan to preserve their long-term affordability remains unclear.”
What’s next for Forest Cove?
When the city of Atlanta launched its Forest Cove resident relocation effort in 2022, it said the planned revitalization of the distressed Thomasville Heights neighborhood would create new housing for former tenants looking to return to the community.
Dickens’ office told Atlanta Civic Circle in early January that it would raze the dilapidated and dangerous Forest Cove complex by April, clearing the way to redevelop the blighted 22-acre property. But the recent discovery of asbestos has pushed back the city’s timeline and will increase the cost, since the buildings must first be remediated. Before the asbestos discovery, the mayor’s office said the demolition would cost $2 million.
In other Thomasville Heights news, the city this week announced that the new Atlanta Urban Development Corporation (AUD) — created to build affordable housing on city-owned land — had issued a request for proposals from developers for the first phase of the sprawling neighborhood redevelopment effort. The ambitious Thomasville Heights Neighborhood Plan aims to reactivate nearly eight acres of vacant, publicly owned land neighboring Forest Cove in this initial phase.
“AUD envisions the development as one that prioritizes the provision of family housing and is expected to include a mix of single-family residential and townhomes, with some mix of rental and homeownership units, and affordable and market-rate units,” Mayor Andre Dickens’ office said in a Thursday press release.
I am just now learning of HUD’s action against Millenia, and I’m hoping that changes will be swift and thorough. My Mother lives in a Millenia-owned low-income/handicapped/ADA/EOH apartment building in Springfield, MO. Since Millenia has owned the property, its condition has gone steadily downhill. Currently, the two elevators that serve all six floors are inoperable leaving handicapped residents stranded on the 2nd thru 6th floors. My Mother, who lives on the 3rd floor, had a medical emergency last week. The EMT’s could not maneuver the stretcher up the stairwell, so my 87-year-old Mother had to walk down the stairs from the 3rd floor to get on the stretcher. There are other residents stranded on the upper floors that cannot do that. A dead body had to be lowered out of a window two weeks ago because a stretcher could not maneuver up the stairs to get the body out of the apartment. So many empty promises have been made over the last several years that aren’t being followed through with. I can only hope that HUD will use their authority to mandate the changes that are necessary.
The owner of millenia had said that the millennia resistance campaign was trumping up things are making him look bad and it’s because they are true I lived in a building in Canton Indiana and you can’t get a hold of him what happened to get through to his extension and his daughters I talked to his daughter she said she promise a neurological disorder that affects my muscles and I am on a limited income and they have caused a great deal of trials in my life trials of pain and suffering in my life. It was really hard to know that HUD knew all along that they would retaliate against me and when they retaliated against me they let them did nothing but push me from here to there they knew the whole time they’re trying to say they didn’t but they did and to know that like I said it does something to me and it made my life a lot worse caused me lots of grief in my life I’m now suffering from moving three times and all the things that they put me through. But to know how to knew all along and they allowed them to do it and didn’t care what happened to me was like over the top