The owners of the Fairburn & Gordon I and II Apartments complex in southwest Atlanta paid more than $35,000 on Friday to settle an overdue civil penalty, but their tenants say that’s not enough. Some residents want the entire complex condemned and demolished after the city relocates them to better housing.
“I would like to see it torn down,” resident Clovis Lyons told Capital B Atlanta on Monday. “It’s not safe. It’s not sanitary.”
Last week, Atlanta Municipal Judge Christopher T. Portis set a deadline of 5 p.m. Friday for Fairburn & Gordon’s parent company, A&B Apartments LLC, and its owners, Behzad Beroukhai and Abraham Beroukhai, to pay an outstanding $25,000 fine and additional fees. The property owners had failed to do so ahead of a June 20 hearing concerning a long list of required repairs.
On Monday, the judge’s office confirmed via email that A&B Apartments paid $35,003 to the clerk of court ahead of its deadline. By paying the fine, Fairburn & Gordon’s owners avoided a potential order of demolition by the judge, according to Atlanta Deputy Solicitor Erika Smith, whose office is prosecuting the case.
Illness-causing mold, decaying walls, floors and ceilings, gas leaks, and electric hazards are among the many repair problems city and federal investigators have discovered at Fairburn & Gordon, where a number of federal housing aid recipients live at taxpayer expense.
Condemning and demolishing the property is something Section 8 tenants like Lyons say they want to see happen. The recently hired Delta Air Lines ramp agent and single mother of four said she and her children, whose ages range from 8 to 14, haven’t had a working stove for two years and weren’t able to use the bathroom in their three-bedroom apartment for nearly three years due to the ceiling caving in.
A&B Apartments LLC and its attorney David Dolinsky couldn’t be reached for comment Tuesday afternoon.
Lyons, 40, said Fairburn & Gordon’s management team also allowed what appeared to be “poop water” to flow into her apartment from the unit above hers beginning some time after the cave-in.
She said management refused to fix her bathroom until March, roughly a month after the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development began the process of canceling its public housing contract with Fairburn & Gordon due to its living conditions.
“We would have to go downstairs and use Ms. Emma’s bathroom,” Lyons said of her downstairs neighbor, Emma Williams. “Every time I expressed my concern about it, I was told I was playing the victim.”
Fairburn & Gordon failed a Nov. 29 HUD inspection that revealed 155 “deficiencies” at the property, including 31 violations classified as “life-threatening.”
The city of Atlanta has filed more than 300 housing code and nuisance violations against the complex’s owners, who signed a consent agreement in May to complete a long list of repairs in 30 to 90 days.
The owners have made progress on that list, but failed to meet their 30-day obligations before last Thursday’s hearing. Their next status hearing is set for July 18.
The judge’s office said A&B Apartments and the city can present evidence at the hearing regarding whether the owners have met their consent agreement requirements.
Smith said her office will ask the judge for an order of abatement allowing the city to either board up or demolish Fairburn & Gordon within 270 days if the owners don’t meet their obligations by the July 18 deadline.
“If non compliance is found, the City may request an Order abating the public nuisance,” the judge’s office said via email. “In some instances abatement may be demolition, but not in all cases.”
If the order is issued, the city’s Housing Help Center will help Fairburn & Gordon tenants who aren’t on Section 8 find safe and suitable homes. HUD has already announced plans to move Section 8 tenants out of the complex.
Smith said Fairburn & Gordon is one of several properties that the city is working “tirelessly” to bring “up to par” in conjunction with Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens’ Safe & Secure Housing program. Housing Help Center officials and HUD staffers are set to meet this week to discuss Fairburn & Gordon tenant relocation efforts, she said.
“We’re working along with the mayor’s office so that every citizen of Atlanta will have not just affordable housing, but safe and secure housing as well,” Smith said.
Correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly reported the last name of one of the owners of the Fairburn & Gordon II Apartments. The owner’s name is Abraham Beroukhai.
