Money was tight for Harriet Feggins even before the COVID-19 pandemic dealt a blow to her pocketbook. An asthmatic and insulin-dependent diabetic, she has trouble moving around and was living off of federal disability benefits, supporting herself and her two teenage daughters on meager monthly checks of less than $1,000.
Then, last November, a stray bullet wounded Feggins’ then-14-year-old during a shooting at Atlantic Station, and in May her 16-year-old gave birth to a baby boy. Medical bills and other expenses piled up, and Feggins, a longtime Vine City resident, found herself three months—or $1,450—behind on rent. She figured her landlord, the Westside Future Fund, which pays part of its tenants’ rents, would soon file for eviction.
“I didn’t know what I was going to do,” Feggins told Atlanta Civic Circle. “Am I going to sell a kidney? Am I going to sell a lung? I don’t know. I couldn’t sell plasma; my doctor didn’t approve of it, because of my asthma.”
Feggins’ predicament, though extreme, was hardly unique. She’s one of countless low-income Atlanta renters whose finances have taken a hit during the pandemic—and whose housing stability was abruptly thrust into question.
Tinisha Dixon lives in Bankhead with her husband and their seven children, who are between one and 13 years old. All nine of them contracted COVID-19 simultaneously—twice. “We were sick for months at a time,” she said in an interview. “The younger kids didn’t go to daycare for at least six months.”
The couple, both employed pre-COVID-19,, couldn’t work. They fell 12 months behind on rent, racking up about $6,000 in arrears. “I thought we were going to lose our place,” Dixon said.
But in June, the Westside Future Fund—the nonprofit housing developer and landlord to Feggins, Dixon, and more than 200 other low-income renters—erased all its outstanding rent debt, spending $300,000 in philanthropic…
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