Keita Martin worries he’ll be homeless again before the end of the summer.
The 32-year-old Marietta native is one of several tenants at Campus Edge Apartments, who say they’re being booted out of the complex near Kennesaw State University by its new owners.
Campus Realty Advisors, an Atlanta-based real estate development company, confirmed it officially acquired Campus Edge on May 28 and provided residents with written notification the same day. A notice provided to Capital B Atlanta informed renters of Campus Realty’s intent to demolish the 42-year-old compound to build new student apartments in its place later this year. Active leases will be terminated on July 31.
“The current housing is in major disrepair, and it was not built for the students attending the local university,” Justin Pellegrino, vice resident of property management at Campus Realty Management, told Capital B Atlanta via email. “The new community will be built specifically for students with their safety and success as a top priority. New construction will start in late 2025.”
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Martin, who currently pays about $1,300 per month in rent, was one of several Campus Edge residents who attended a Marietta City Council meeting on Wednesday to try to convince municipal lawmakers to delay the compound’s demolition.
He spent months living out of his car last year after a dispute with family members led to him moving out of his late grandmother’s home. He’s struggled to save money to move out of Campus Edge while earning about $2,000 a month working at a Kennesaw State restaurant. He fears rejoining the ranks of metro Atlanta’s growing homeless population, which has been on the rise for three years in a row.
“There’s absolutely people who are going to be [homeless] and not just students,” Martin told Capital B Atlanta during a recent interview. “You’ve got families here who are living paycheck to paycheck. You’ve left them with no other way but to be homeless.”
Martin isn’t alone. For many, it feels like eviction season in Atlanta.
Black residents throughout the metro area — from Atlanta to Marietta to College Park — are fighting to stay in some of the few affordable rental properties left in their gentrifying communities.
“Just walk into the court, and you can see that housing instability absolutely has a racial dimension to it in Atlanta.”
Michael Lucas, executive director of the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation
Local tenant attorneys estimate Black renters make up more than half of the eviction cases they encounter in the Fulton County court system, even though African Americans only constitute about 43% of the county’s population.
“Just walk into the court, and you can see that housing instability absolutely has a racial dimension to it in Atlanta,” attorney Michael Lucas, executive director of the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation, told Capital B Atlanta.
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Lucas estimates that Fulton County deals with as many as 50,000 eviction cases per year, most of which involve Black tenants.
“There’s a lot of reasons to unpack,” he continued. “If you look at the neighborhoods where we see more evictions, they’re the same neighborhood that had more impact in the [2008] foreclosure crisis.”
Evictions expected to increase
Experts fear metro Atlanta’s eviction problem will worsen if President Donald Trump’s proposed federal housing aid cuts are signed into law later this year.
The current One Big Beautiful Bill Act would cut the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s rental assistance programs by more than $26 billion, an estimated 43% reduction.
Many Black Atlantans rely on federal aid to help pay their rent, and could end up homeless if those funds are eliminated.
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In response to the potential cuts, the Atlanta City Council approved a record new fiscal year budget last week to bolster aid programs.
“The city is having to take on more of the burden of the programs that have historically been federal in nature,” Atlanta City Council President Doug Shipman told Capital B Atlanta earlier this month. “We’re going to try to do our best to continue to support folks [with] rental assistance, affordable housing, [and] new units.”
For tenants like Martin, the notice to vacate at the end of July is complicated by the fact that he still has about six months left on his current lease.
No air conditioning and no stove
Lack of affordable housing inventory often forces many low-income tenants to tolerate deplorable living conditions at dilapidated rental units owned by landlords who push to evict tenants who complain or cause trouble.
Georgia is still one of the least tenant-friendly states in America, according to a Consumer Affairs report released in May, which placed it 43rd out of 50.
The Peach State didn’t establish standards for human habitation for rental properties until last year, when Gov. Brian Kemp signed the Safe at Home Act into law.
Torrieanna Goode is one of the many tenants facing eviction at Bolden Townhomes in southwest Atlanta. The 49-year-old single mother, who works as a cook at a restaurant in Peachtree City, said she recently relocated to the Oakland City neighborhood property so she could be closer to her mother and her 12-year-old daughter’s school.
Goode said she pays $1,240 a month for her one-bedroom apartment, one of the few places in the area she can afford.
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Despite paying her rent on time, she says the property manager has been unresponsive to requests for repairs. Goode said a large hole in her bathroom ceiling appeared some time after she moved in about four months ago. Squirrels that she said entered through a hole in the roof can be heard running around through the walls.
Other Bolden Townhomes tenants who spoke with Capital B Atlanta during a visit to their complex had collapsing kitchen ceilings caused by leaky plumbing. Some said they’ve gone about two weeks without electricity and air conditioning despite sweltering June heat because management asked Georgia Power to cut off their power to force them out.
Metro Atlanta native Angela Vaughn, 41, told Capital B Atlanta she was homeless multiple times before moving into the complex, and she’s struggling to find an affordable place to live.
“We don’t have nowhere to go right now,” she said. “They tried to give us 48 hours to be out of here. We can’t just up and leave in 48 hours. It takes time. … I got money put up, but I need more money. It ain’t just easy like that.”
The new stove Goode was promised she would receive after moving in still hasn’t arrived, she said. And the air conditioning unit in her apartment also isn’t working.
“It’s hard for us to sleep in there in that heat,” Goode said. “[We] got a ceiling fan, but the ceiling fan is not doing anything.”
Bolden Capital Group, a Black-owned company that owns and runs Bolden Townhomes, hasn’t responded to requests for comment.
Goode said Edward Bolden, one of the founders of Bolden Capital Group, told tenants the leases they signed with the property manager weren’t valid even though she did work for the company. Some Bolden Townhomes tenants have received eviction notices as a result, despite attempting to pay their rent.
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Frustrated with the company’s lack of response to her concerns, Goode was one of several Bolden Townhomes tenants who participated in a press conference organized earlier this month by the Housing Justice League. Residents said they’ve been accused of squatting at the complex even though they’ve signed leases and paid rent.
Goode said Edward Bolden told her “qualifying” residents may be allowed to stay at the complex if they have at least a 620 credit score and can pay their rent when it’s due. She’s not sure if her credit score is high enough, but said she should be allowed to stay since she already lives there and has been paying her rent.
“I’ve been here for three and a half months. I qualified when we moved in,” she said.
“I just feel like, as a Black person, people take advantage of us because some people feel like we’re ignorant,” she said. “I’m very much overwhelmed right now about the situation.”
