Section 8 complex Woodland Heights is ‘a wreck.’ Where’s HUD?
Rats, roaches, mold, and mildew have plagued Woodland Heights for years. But the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) seems to believe the Section 8 complex on Atlanta’s Westside is livable enough.
HUD last year awarded the apartment complex, located at 2500 Center Street and 2591 Etheridge Drive, inspection scores of 96 and 81, respectively, out of 100.
But former and current residents, housing advocates, and city officials tell a different story.
“It’s horrible. It’s really unacceptable,” ex-Woodland Heights tenant Jamious Moss told Atlanta Civic Circle. “And when you try to talk to the property manager: excuses, excuses, excuses.”
The property owner, a California-based LLC called Rolling Bends | Preservation Limited Partners, is hard to reach — and Woodland Heights tenants say the company rarely keeps the same property manager for more than a few months.
Atlanta City Councilmember Dustin Hillis, who represents the district where Woodland Heights is located, met with the landlord in 2018. “They knew all the problems there, and they were going to fix everything they knew about,” he said.
That never happened. The Atlanta Solicitor’s Office subsequently took Preservation Partners to court over multiple housing code violations. It extracted an agreement from the company to fix things up — but Preservation Partners continued to allow the complex fall into disrepair, paying code enforcement fines along the way.
For many Section 8 landlords, “that’s just the cost of doing business,” said Atlanta Deputy Solicitor Erika Smith. “That place is a wreck.”
Smith said the city would return soon to Woodland Heights to log more code enforcement issues. Alan Holmes, a housing advocate who works in Hillis’s office, said HUD must step up, too. He’s urged Georgia’s two Democratic US Senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, to put pressure on the federal agency to improve inspection practices.
To report this piece — the first in a series to come — Atlanta Civic Circle spent weeks meeting with Woodland Heights residents and listening to their stories. Many renters there remain wary of going on the record, fearful that speaking out against their landlord could lead to retaliation, even eviction.
→ Read our full report.
🗓️ Atlanta’s Affordable Housing Week is back
The city of Atlanta had initially intended to host Affordable Housing Week — an annual series of workshops for landlords and developers interested in providing affordably priced housing — in April. But burst pipes at City Hall threw a wrench in that plan.
This week, the city’s third Affordable Housing Week is underway at a new location: Atlanta Habitat for Humanity’s headquarters, located at 824 Memorial Drive.
The three-day event kicked off on Monday with presentations on how to finance affordable housing developments, how workforce housing programs work, and how to engage the community.
Click here to see what’s on tap for the rest of the week.
🔑 Atlanta Urban League hosts June 28 homebuyer expo
Ready to take the next step toward owning a home? The Urban League of Greater Atlanta is hosting a free, daylong event with resources, workshops, and services to help individuals and families start or strengthen their homeownership journey.
📍 New Black Wall Street Market
8109 Mall Pkwy, Stonecrest, GA 30038
🗓️ Saturday, June 28 | 9 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Whether you’re just getting started or looking for guidance, this event is packed with support from trusted homeownership partners.
What’s the status of the Community Foundation’s $200 million affordable housing pledge?
It’s been two years since Frank Fernandez, the CEO of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta, announced that the nonprofit had secured an “unprecedented” $100 million in donations from the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation and the Joseph B. Whitehead Foundation to build and preserve housing for lower income people — and that the group planned to raise another $100 million in matching funds.
Since then, the Community Foundation has raised $54 million of that $100 million match. So far, it’s allocated $121 million to build and renovate nearly 5,000 affordable housing units across metro Atlanta, according to Sarah Kirsch, its managing director of housing funds.
The Community Foundation has closed 24 deals to provide $64 million in gap financing for affordable housing projects to 18 nonprofits and six for-profit developers since late 2023, Kirsh said. These projects will ultimately offer 2,356 rental and homeownership units priced as affordable for households earning as much as 80% of the area median income ($86,000 for a family of four) or as little as 30% of the AMI ($32,250) or below.
→ Read our full report.
Atlanta braces for the loss of federal Emergency Housing Vouchers
As federal Emergency Housing Voucher (EHV) funding allocated by the Biden administration dries up over the next 18 months, more than 1,000 low-income Georgians could lose the critical housing subsidies that keep some 60,000 Americans from homelessness.
Congress’s decision not to renew the pandemic-era EHV program in the current mammoth spending bill has left homeless-prevention nonprofits and state and local housing authorities, including Atlanta Housing (AH), scrambling to shield renters from eviction.
Atlanta Housing, the largest public housing authority in the Southeast, received 202 emergency housing vouchers from HUD in 2021. The housing authority hopes to ameliorate the blow of the EHV program’s sunset by offering rental assistance to everyone who loses those subsidies, according to an AH spokesperson.
“HUD has informed Atlanta Housing that the Emergency Housing Voucher program will be funded through fiscal year 2026,” AH said in an email. “Upon its expiration, Atlanta Housing will absorb EHV vouchers to ensure the families we have housed remain housed.”
Still, thousands of residents are likely to wind up unhoused, according to Ann Olivia, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness. That is, unless Congress rejects the cuts to housing funding in Trump administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill” and boosts housing funding.
Today’s newsletter was written by Sean Keenan and edited by Meredith Hobbs. Your donation makes Housing Happenings and ACC’s housing reporting possible. Support local, nonprofit journalism that empowers Atlantans to improve their communities.