When the skies opened up this past weekend to unleash a downpour that snarled traffic, felled tree limbs, and throttled the power grid, few places felt the storm’s wrath more than the Westside’s Woodland Heights apartment complex.
Rain burst through doorways, slipped around window panes, and even oozed through drywall, drenching clothes, furniture, electronics, and groceries.
“The water was flowing into my living room,” said Tracy Walker, who’s lived at the complex with her two young children for years. “It came up to my ankles.”
This was nothing new for Walker and the hundreds of other tenants who call the Section 8 complex home. Many residents have told Atlanta Civic Circle they’ve faced leaks, floods, and worse for years — and that the landlord has not made repairs, despite their repeated requests.
“All my kids’ beds and stuff got wet from the rain, and they act like they can’t do nothing about that,” Alysia Wallace, another tenant, said of her attempts to get help from the complex’s maintenance team. “Water was coming through the door. It was coming up from under the floor. It was coming from the light fixtures. It was coming from the smoke detector.”
Neither the property owner, a California-based LLC called Rolling Bends | Preservation Limited Partners, nor the property manager, Ambling Property Investments, responded to requests for comment about the condition of Woodland Heights, which is located at 2500 Center Street and 2591 Etheridge Drive.
The US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has oversight over the 354-unit complex, due to its Section 8 contract with Preservation Partners. However, HUD awarded the complex high inspection scores — 96 in April 2024, and then 81 in December 2024 — indicating that it has not identified any major problems. December was the last time HUD inspected the complex.
As of August 2024, Woodland Heights had racked up over 100 code violations with the city of Atlanta. That prompted a consent order with the city in which the landlord, Preservation Partners, agreed to make repairs.
But Walker and Wallace said they’ve watched mold bloom in their apartments for years. So have Shakenia Harbin, Nikki Rainwater, and other tenants who spoke with Atlanta Civic Circle, on and off the record. Each knows the rain, the leaks, and the flooding will only make their mold problems worse.
Walker shared videos on Monday that show her squishing across her damp carpet in slippers. Harbin also shared video footage that shows patches of black mold infiltrating her kitchen and bullet holes pockmarking her walls. Rainwater provided her own photos that show where rats have chewed through loaves of bread.
But none of them know how to pressure Preservation Partners to make the repairs and remediation they need — much less, how to make HUD strengthen its oversight policies.
Few repair remedies for low-income tenants
Woodland Heights is far from the only Section 8 complex in metro Atlanta where tenants are struggling with deferred maintenance, mold, mildew, and pests. The unhealthy and dangerous living conditions reflect systemic oversight failures that leave poor renters with little recourse when problems arise.
There are few legal remedies in Georgia for low-income tenants seeking repairs and remediation from their landlords. Under Georgia law, tenants are unable to withhold rent until repairs are made — depriving them of a significant source of leverage. Instead, the tenant must pay out of pocket, then deduct the repair cost from their rent. And even then, the landlord could dispute the expense.
But that tactic doesn’t work for tenants like the Woodland Heights residents, who rely on HUD rent vouchers to pay most or all of their rent, because the federal government is paying the rent to the landlord on their behalf.
Another tactic would be to file code-enforcement complaints with the city of Atlanta. But Woodland Heights tenants are still struggling with leaks, water damage, and mold, almost a year after their landlord, Preservation Partners, entered into the consent agreement with the city to make repairs.
“I have been doing this for 16 years now, and I have not found an effective way to actually force a landlord to effectuate meaningful repairs — unless you have a landlord who has a serious pattern of non-compliance [with local housing code] or failed inspections,” said Erin Willoughby, a housing attorney with the Atlanta Legal Aid Society.
But even that approach can be fruitless if HUD views a property as up to snuff, or if the landlord is content to pay the fines for code enforcement violations, which in Atlanta max out at $1,000 per offense, instead of shelling out for more costly, complex-wide fixes.
Georgia became one of the last states in the nation to establish minimum habitability standards, when the state legislature in 2023 passed the “Safe at Home Act.” The legislation requires landlords to maintain rental units in a condition that is “fit for human habitation.”
However, the new law lacks the teeth to fulfill that promise. “There are a number of get-out-of-jail cards built into the Safe at Home Act, which came into it at the insistence of the landlord lobby in Georgia,” Willoughby said.
The biggest problem is that the law doesn’t define “habitability.” There are no provisions, for instance, spelling out that mold, rat infestations, or structural hazards make a property unfit for tenants. Instead, deciding if a property is habitable is up to a judge’s discretion, Willoughby said.
What’s more, low-income tenants almost never have a lawyer, which sharply diminishes the chances of winning a “habitability” case in court against a landlord who more than likely does.
Suing a deep-pocketed landlord — much less HUD — to force repairs or win compensation for damages is expensive, confusing, and time-consuming, Willoughby said. “You’ve got to have the wherewithal to figure out who you’ve got to sue, to sue them, and to have preserved and be able to present your evidence,” she said. “I have almost never seen a tenant be successful.”
For tenants trying to get their landlords to make repairs, Willoughby offered some advice: Record everything. Take photos and videos of everything that could provide evidence of negligence, she said.
Atlanta City Councilmember Dustin Hillis, who represents the Westside district where Woodland Heights is located, advised anyone with a non-responsive landlord to file as many code enforcement complaints with the city of Atlanta over specific maintenance and safety problems as possible. (Tenants can file complaints online here.)
Even then, Willoughby said, “It’s very much a David and Goliath problem.”
“David, definitely the underdog, ultimately won against Goliath in the story,” she continued. “But Goliath stomped a lot of little guys before David came along.”