“We’re human! The way y’all treat us?! [It’s] like we’re dirt!” Deborah Love shouted at one of the accused slumlord owners of her rundown apartment complex late Wednesday afternoon during an arranged town hall meeting in southwest Atlanta.
“We have rights!” Love continued, shaking as tears streamed down her face. Other meeting participants and organizers tried their best to console her. “We don’t have to live like that! Fallin’ down ceiling! Mold all through our damn house! We can’t breathe! Do you understand that?!”
The 73-year-old disabled grandmother’s fury was directed at Behzad “Ben” Beroukhai, one of the co-owners of A&B Apartments LLC, the parent company for the Fairburn & Gordon I and II Apartments complex where Love said she has lived since July 2021.
Fairburn & Gordon is home to an estimated 110 tenant households, nearly all of which are Black. Love lives in one of roughly 23 taxpayer-funded, Section 8 tenant households at the complex, where low-income renters have spent years complaining about unsafe, inhumane conditions, including rat and roach infestations, suffocating mold, collapsing ceilings, rotting floors, and decaying walls.
Housing aid advocates say the ongoing conditions at Fairburn & Gordon and similar apartment complexes throughout Atlanta are symptomatic of the city’s affordable housing crisis. Weak tenant protection laws in Georgia have allowed delinquent landlords to receive federal taxpayer money to provide substandard housing to low-income, primarily Black renters. These tenants are often desperate to find and keep affordable homes to avoid leaving the city — where many have spent most of their lives — or ending up homeless.
A&B Apartments co-owner Abe Beroukhai wasn’t present at the meeting on Wednesday. City officials say he, his brother, Ben, and their attorney, David Dolinsky, agreed to participate in the gathering at the behest of Atlanta Municipal Court Judge Christopher T. Portis, who has presided over their months-old municipal housing court case.
The city of Atlanta has issued citations for hundreds of housing code violations and at least one more-serious nuisance case offense against Fairburn & Gordon’s owners since a Capital B Atlanta inquiry last October.
The offices of Mayor Andre Dickens and Deputy Solicitor Erika Smith arranged Wednesday’s meeting with help from the Partnership for Southern Equity, a social justice organization, to give Fairburn & Gordon tenants a chance to address their landlords face-to-face.
For most, it was the first time meeting the owner of their complex.
Atlanta City Council member Andrea Boone and state Sen. Sonya Halpern, D-Atlanta — whose districts include Fairburn & Gordon’s Adamsville neighborhood — were also present. Representatives from the Mayor’s Housing Help Center, including Donell Q. Woodson, who has been providing aid and counsel to Fairburn & Gordon’s tenants amid the city’s court battle with their landlord, also attended the gathering.
Roughly 10 Fairburn & Gordon tenants showed up for the meeting, which took place inside the C.T. Martin Natatorium and Recreation Center late Wednesday afternoon. Some brought their children and grandchildren to the gathering.
“We’re not going to stand for this”
Tenant Linda Ford told Beroukhai and his staff that Fairburn & Gordon was an “A1 property” when she moved into the complex roughly 15 years ago. That changed, she said, some time after Beroukhai acquired the property around 2011.
Ford said management, including property manager Kathy Baker, has allowed the complex to deteriorate in recent years, while ignoring maintenance complaints from Ford and others. The 60-year-old grandmother said maintenance workers previously refused to respond to her complaints about raw sewage flooding the floor in her home due to leaky plumbing in an apartment above hers.
Ford previously told Capital B Atlanta she had to catch at least 15 rats inside her home by herself a few years ago because management declined to help. She told Beroukhai on Wednesday that she’s lived without heat for the past three years and hasn’t been provided a working air conditioner since 2022.
“They won’t fix nothin’,” Ford told Beroukhai during the meeting. “It’s heartbreaking because [when] you go up there, the maintenance man gets mad at you if you say somethin’. It’s not right.”
Tenant Crystal Brown called into the meeting and complained about management withholding utility checks provided by HUD to pay some of their bills.
Multiple tenants complained that management hasn’t given them a new lease to sign in years. One of them was 68-year-old Emma Williams, one of several tenants who also complained about mold in their apartments making them and their loved ones sick.
“I’m just dealin’ with a lot of mold,” Williams told Baroukhai. “My daughter got sick last week from the mold in her room. I told the management. She said, ‘Ain’t no mold.’”
Baker couldn’t be reached for comment on Friday.
Beroukhai could be seen taking notes as the tenants spoke during the roughly two-hour meeting. He said he’s been personally overseeing maintenance work at Fairburn & Gordon since January and promised to continue making improvements.
“Since January, I can promise you any dollar I receive, my money, I spend it on the property,” Beroukhai said. “The condition is better. It’s not optimal. … We’re not going to stop. I’m hoping we can see much better results in the next few months, maybe sooner.”
Beroukhai and his attorney noted that only a handful of tenants showed up for Wednesday’s meeting, suggesting that as proof that Fairburn & Gordon residents are pleased with the maintenance work that’s already been done.
“A lot of tenants that are not here, they saw the changes we made,” Beroukhai said.
Tenant Jasmine Hinton pushed back, saying some tenants are “scared” to speak out. Housing advocates say low-income renters in Atlanta have been evicted for dubious reasons after suing or complaining about their landlords. Some tenants told Capital B Atlanta they had to work or were in the process of moving and couldn’t make it to the meeting.
Love told Beroukhai the repairs made to Fairburn & Gordon since January are mostly cosmetic.
“Those are not changes,” she said. “Those are cover-ups.”
Williams said maintenance crews still haven’t addressed the mold problem at the complex.
“It’s in the wall[s] and it gotta be gutt[ed] out,” Williams said. “If you don’t gut it out, it’s gonna destroy the next person [living] there.”
The dialogue became tense when Senator Halpern demanded to know the names of the other local apartment buildings owned by Beroukhai and A&B Apartments.
Dolinsky, Beroukhai’s attorney, said the question was “inappropriate.” He tried to stop Deputy Solicitor Smith from answering when Halpern posed the same question to Smith.
“There needs to be just a little more respect coming towards this side,” Dolinsky said in apparent frustration.
The remark ignited a chorus of groans from some in the room. Meeting moderator Charles Peterson, a just opportunity associate with the Partnership for Southern Equity, tried to restore calm.
“Mr. Dolinsky, with all due respect, I don’t think there’s been an exchange of disrespect,” Peterson said. “I think there’s a fair amount of frustration.”
Council member Boone continued demanding an answer to Halpern’s question and reminded Dolinsky that Halpern is an elected official.
“The senator still wants to know what property he owns,” Boone said.
Beroukhai’s LLC also owns Martin Manor, Pavilion Place, and Colonial Square, according to the deputy solicitor’s office. Martin Manor and Pavilion Place were listed in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s award-winning “Dangerous Dwellings” series in 2022, along with Fairburn & Gordon.
Pavilion Place was “brought into compliance” more than a year ago. Smith said the city has an open housing court case against Martin Manor. The next Atlanta Municipal Court hearing is set for Sept. 25.
Boone announced plans to visit Martin Manor in the near future. The daughter of civil rights activist Joseph E. Boone began speaking out about Fairburn & Gordon and other nuisance properties several years ago. She urged the mayor’s office and the deputy solicitor to show “no mercy” on Beroukhai.
“We’re not going to stand for this in the city of Atlanta,” Boone said.
A history of neglect
It’s been more than a year since Fairburn & Gordon tenants asked Capital B Atlanta to report on the maintenance complaints they’ve filed with city and federal officials, which they said had gone unaddressed for years due to Fairburn & Gordon’s management team misleading inspectors who responded to the property.
When inspectors from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development showed up and asked to see apartments that renters complained about, the tenants said Baker — Fairburn & Gordon’s property manager — would redirect the officials to inspect units that were in better condition.
Capital B Atlanta brought this to HUD’s attention in October. A major crackdown inspection the same month unveiled 81 housing code violations, including 13 classified as “highly hazardous.”
HUD found 155 “deficiencies” — including 31 that were considered “life-threatening” — during a Nov. 29 follow-up inspection. In response, HUD officials announced in March that they were canceling their contract with Fairburn & Gordon’s owners.
Relocation counselors hired by HUD have been working with Section 8 tenants this summer to find safer apartments, as the lack of affordable housing in Atlanta leaves low-income renters with very limited options. Fairburn & Gordon tenants say new people have moved into the complex in recent weeks despite the negative publicity it has received in local news media.
It’s legal in Georgia for renters to refuse to accept Section 8 tenants. As such, Love told Capital B Atlanta that she and other Section 8 tenants have struggled to find apartments that take Section 8 vouchers that are also in better condition than Fairburn & Gordon.
“Most of the places we can afford are in the same condition these places are in,” she said.
Love said she felt empowered after speaking out at the meeting, but regrets becoming emotional.
“I felt really good after I got it out,” she said. “I wanted to show my enlightenment and power without the tears.”
Love also said she’s concerned about the market-rate renter neighbors being left behind at Fairburn & Gordon who don’t have the income or the aid to move into better conditions.
“We stay here because we have no place to go,” she said.
The next Fairburn & Gordon housing court hearing is set to take place at 9 a.m. on Thursday.
