This post was originally published at The Cost of Living Project
U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff listened this week as tenants and housing attorneys described unsanitary and even dangerous conditions in the places where they lived
Visiting Roswell on Monday, U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff listened as a series of metro Atlanta tenants and housing attorneys described unsanitary and even dangerous conditions in the places where they lived. Ossoff, who chairs the Senate’s Human Rights Subcommittee, was collecting testimony on what he described as the “mistreatment of Georgia families and children by landlords”—who, rather than make needed repairs to their units, sometimes retaliate against the tenants who request them. Cost of Living Fellow J.P. Irie also attended the meeting. Below, he shares quotes that stood out most to him.
“How are we allowed to live like this?”
Witnesses shared stories about uninhabitable conditions, with crumbling floors and rats. Miracle Fletcher recounted raw sewage repeatedly flooding her apartment for months. Plumbing became so backed up that when her daughter took a shower, feces came out of the drain and covered her feet. “How? How are we allowed to live like this?” she asked. DeAnna Hines said she lived in a dilapidated unit with unstable floors and a collapsing ceiling, describing two occasions when falling pieces narrowly missed hitting her children.
“There is no guarantee that anything will be done to remedy the situation”
Hines’s apartment, Ossoff noted, passed inspections by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2021 and 2023. “When HUD or the [Georgia] Department of Community Affairs inspect, they either are missing the worst issues in occupied units or they simply take the landlord’s word for it that issues have been repaired,” said Esther Graff-Radford, a tenants’ rights attorney who spoke at the hearing. According to Ayanna Jones, senior litigation counsel at the…
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