Leaders of some of Georgia’s most prominent tenant advocacy organizations are calling for a moratorium on evictions in response to the scale of the region’s eviction crisis and its oversized impact on Black families.
Members of the Housing Justice League, Georgia Advancing Communities Together, and the Party for Socialism and Liberation issued demands Saturday for state lawmakers to take legislative action. They hosted a “Housing Can’t Wait” press event at Liberty Plaza downtown aimed at stopping the displacement of the local area’s legacy Black population.
About 35 protestors wielding signs with slogans like “Priced out. Pushed out. Fed Up,” “We Need Keys, Not Excuses,” and “Housing Is A Right, Not A Reward,” stood in the shadow of the Gold Dome. Motorists driving by honked their horns in support.
A block away, dozens of unhoused men and women sat, slept, and congregated on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard near the Catholic Shrine of the Immaculate Conception aid center. This has become a common sight across the street from the halls of government, where leaders have failed to stop the homeless population in and around Georgia’s capital city from growing each of the past four years.
The activist demonstration was organized in response to news that the largely Black metro Atlanta region comprising Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Clayton, and Gwinnett counties led the nation in evictions last year and is on pace to do so again in 2026.
Black folks make up about 53% of renters in the region, but are about 69% of folks facing eviction. Those revelations reported to local elected leaders by Princeton University’s Eviction Lab nonprofit in September created an uproar on social media in the weeks that followed.
The sobering data wasn’t surprising for Housing Justice League Executive Director Alison Johnson. Her organization has sounded the alarm for years during demonstrations at the Capitol amid Georgia’s annual 40-day lawmaking session about how the region’s affordable housing crisis is impacting low-income Black residents.
Johnson and others noted Saturday that metro Atlanta has the nation’s highest serial eviction filing rate. Eviction Lab’s research showed a small number of landlords in the region are filing multiple evictions against the same cost-burdened tenants. Capital B Atlanta’s reporting has shown this practice has forced some tenants to pay excessive junk fees that boost the building owners’ profits.
Johnson pointed out many state lawmakers are also landlords who may benefit directly from limiting tenant protections while doing the bidding of real estate lobbyists who want to preserve the status quo.
“This is not a coincidence. This is a pattern. This is policy,” Johnson said during the protest. “When the same communities are systemically targeted by serial filers, denied legal representation in court, and left without protection by the state law, that is not market failure. That is structural discrimination with a filing attached to it, and it must be named as such.”
Johnson and others called on state lawmakers to pass legislation that would directly address the region’s eviction crisis. That includes a law that will repeal the statewide ban on rent regulation so local governments can enact policies that limit the monthly cost of leasing some apartments.
Multiple previous bills addressing the issue have stalled in committee at the behest of real estate lobbyists and the lawmakers allegedly doing their bidding.
Matthew Nursey, Housing Justice League’s organizing director, said his group is working with state House and Senate Democrats to introduce legislation that would increase the amount of time tenants have to pay back-due rent, require sheriff deputies to give tenants notice before executing an eviction, and mandate landlords safely store an evicted tenants’ possessions instead of throwing them out on the street.
He advised locals concerned about evictions to vote for lawmakers on Nov. 3 who have been most vocal on the issue and make their voices heard inside the Gold Dome next year.
“If housing is an issue you care about, I would say do your homework on whose rhetoric seems like they will represent tenants,” Nursey said. “We will be having regular rallies during [next year’s] legislative session. We would love for folks to join us inside the Capitol to advocate to legislators.”
The housing justice community has long felt ignored by the most powerful lawmakers inside the Gold Dome. Johnson said housing activists aren’t just here to document people’s pain and suffering, and vowed to continue making the voices of largely Black renters heard next year.
“We are here because solutions do exist, and because those with the power to act are not choosing to act,” she said.
Georgia’s next 40-day legislative session is scheduled to begin on Jan. 11.
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