Monae Edgerson Pettaway was already in a state of “financial crisis” before she was forced to move out of her one-bedroom apartment at McAuley Station in Atlanta in December.
The 55-year-old disabled Atlanta native says the management team at the 170-unit apartment complex — located near Selena S. Butler Park in the city’s Sweet Auburn neighborhood — refused to renew her lease last month, allegedly in retaliation for her complaining about unaddressed repairs and unauthorized entries into her former home.
Edgerson Pettaway said McAuley Station’s property management team took five months to respond to her complaint filed in March about a water leak in her apartment, which she said led to a bug infestation. She said management sent maintenance men who entered her apartment to address an unrelated repair issue without her permission while she was showering one day in August.
That incident was extremely traumatic for Edgerson Pettaway, a formerly unhoused woman who said she has survived multiple incidents of sexual assault.
“They illegally forced their way into my place while I’m naked in the bathroom,” she told Capital B Atlanta.
Last October, Edgerson Pettaway received a notice from management telling her the company intended to file an eviction claim against her for violating her lease by refusing to let maintenance crews into her apartment to address needed repairs.
A follow-up letter clarified that the company wasn’t evicting her, but was declining to renew her lease in January. Edgerson Pettaway now lives in Union City in an apartment complex where her rent is $100 more per month, which she said she can’t afford to pay much longer.
“I’ve been in great despair with very [possibly] being homeless again,” she said in a recent text message.
Advocates say it’s common and often legal in Georgia for landlords to refuse to renew leases or even evict tenants they perceive to be problematic. The issue has contributed to a rise in evictions and homelessness since 2023 that has surpassed pre-pandemic levels.
“We do see quite a bit of this type of conflict that arises out of communication breakdown,” Craig Goodmark, director of advocacy at the Atlanta Legal Aid Society, told Capital B Atlanta. “This seems to be a situation where the landlord and the tenant have not communicated effectively, and now it’s caused the matter to escalate in a way where there’s now a dispossessory, which we do see a lot.”
Edgerson Pettaway is one of many Black renters in metro Atlanta experiencing higher levels of housing insecurity due to elevated rent prices and historically weak tenant protection laws, according to Alison Johnson, executive director of the Housing Justice League, which advocates on behalf of low-income renters.
When reached for comment, Lee Reedy, a spokesperson for McAuley Station’s parent company, Pennrose, declined to address the specifics of Edgerson Pettaway’s case, but said all residents’ expectations and requirements are spelled out in their leases.
“This particular resident has failed to consistently meet those expectations and those requirements,” Reedy told Capital B Atlanta in December. “This was not a one-time occurrence. This is not retaliatory at all, but we do have a responsibility to our other residents and stakeholders to uphold those lease requirements.”
Edgerson Pettaway stressed that she paid her rent on time every month, and it was not the reason she was asked to move out of her apartment.
An additional former McAuley Station tenant who spoke with Capital B Atlanta said he was evicted for being behind on his rent by 11 days.
Johnson noted that the 2024 Safe At Home Act only requires landlords to give tenants a three-day notice to pay past due rent or vacate their rental homes before filing for eviction. The landmark law also requires leases in Georgia to include provisions that state rental properties are “fit for human habitation,” but said the law itself doesn’t provide defining guidelines for habitable premises or spell out what happens to landlords who break the law.
She compared Georgia and Atlanta’s tenant protections with cities like New York and Washington, where the law requires tenants get a minimum of 14 and 30 days to resolve past due rent disputes before a landlord can file for an eviction.
Mediation between landlords and tenants is commonly used to resolve disputes before renters lose their homes.
“The dynamics in those two spaces are very different than Georgia, and that is just really hinged on the fact that these spaces have real strong tenant protections, and also there are state entities and there are local entities [that] work together to ensure that those tenant protections are guarded,” Johnson said. “We see what happens in our communities because we don’t have strong tenant protections.”
Feeling powerless
Lack of tenant protections often leaves low-income renters like Felicia Morris feeling like they have no recourse when their landlord refuses to address maintenance issues.
Morris, 66, who goes by Ms. Peaches, is a former resident of Forest Cove, the dilapidated former complex in southeast Atlanta’s Thomasville Heights neighborhood that was condemned in 2021 and demolished in 2024 after years of complaints about hazardous conditions.
She now lives in the Steede Apartments, a complex for 55+ residents in South Atlanta, where she says property management overcharges some tenants for rent and has failed to properly address maintenance issues, including a roach infestation and a broken call box that makes it hard for guests to enter and visit their elderly loved ones.
“I have to walk down a long hallway and throw my key over a banister to my grandson or either my daughter so they can get in,” she said.
Morris said many of her neighbors are too afraid to speak out about how they’re treated at the complex, fearing management will evict them for complaining and they’ll end up homeless.
In an emailed statement on Friday, the Steede’s property management company, Asset Living LLC, said the issue with the callbox has “been addressed with [the] property owner as well as the installing contractor and are out of property management control.”
The company said its contract pest control service provider addresses any reported concerns during weekly service visits.
“We take all residents’ concerns seriously,” the company said. “ This is an income restricted apartment community, and all rents are carefully reviewed internally and approved, before any resident is approved for move-in. All maintenance concerns brought to our attention are addressed promptly.”
The Housing Justice League says forming tenant associations to collectively bargain with landlords and creating city-level tenant-landlord mediation departments to work out disputes can help residents like Morris feel more empowered to deal with negligent or rude property managers.
Matthew Nursey, organizing director for the Housing Justice League, said the organization wants the city of Atlanta to create an Office of the Tenant Advocate to tackle these concerns the way they are often addressed in cities like New York and Washington.
Establishing a program to provide tenants with free legal representation during court dispossession proceedings is another policy solution. While people facing criminal charges are legally entitled to receive a court-appointed attorney, those in civil dispossession hearings are not. Nursery said many low tenants end up representing themselves in eviction proceedings, which sets them up for failure.
“Basically they have no chance,” he said. “It’s like a conveyor belt, and tenants are just going in and getting [evicted] at high rates and pretty much predetermined outcomes. … The big thing is, right to counsel, which would provide low-income tenants with legal representation.”
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