Atlanta's Working Homeless (Forest Park, Millen, Clayton: low income, cheap apartments, renter)

[cqholt]

Stories like this happen all over the city to renters, who do not benefit from rising intown demand and property prices. Instead they are evicted with 30 days notice, move out of their communities they've called home for years or decades. Only to find themselves pushed further from jobs, friends and family. Sometimes to areas with no transit coverage and forced to spend more on transportation.

Atlanta, the third-fastest-growing metropolitan area in the country, is illustrative. For the city’s working poor, there’s an inverse relationship between their ability to remain housed and Atlanta’s much-celebrated renaissance. Between 2012 and 2016, the city’s low-income housing stock declined by 5 percent each year, to the point that today, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, there are only 25 affordable rental units for every 100 poor families in the Atlanta area who need them.

https://newrepublic.com/article/1546...richest-cities

[Need4Camaro]

Originally Posted by cqholt

Stories like this happen all over the city to renters, who do not benefit from rising intown demand and property prices. Instead they are evicted with 30 days notice, move out of their communities they've called home for years or decades. Only to find themselves pushed further from jobs, friends and family. Sometimes to areas with no transit coverage and forced to spend more on transportation.

https://newrepublic.com/article/1546...richest-cities

Are they being evicted due to non payment or are their homes being bought out from under them? If for non payment, asside from their property tax ... its not like their mortgage changed due to the increased value of their homes. If they were renting and the new lease came out to be much higher however that is different...

Either way though If the city is the fastest gentrifying city in the country there is a price for that. Lower / Middle class income dwellers are going to be forced further away from.the core (which is an argument I strongly emphasized upon when everyone suggests moving 6 million people ITP for better commute options) ... this is another reason transit in the suburbs is so important.

[DreamerD]

I'm going to come back to this thread but off the bat I want to address her pay. I know that this lady is very hard working because with $9 an hour, her pay is basically what she had to pay in rent, which means she was working over time and/or having to work for a private family. I do hope that she can get the employment she needs. For her job, she can get up to $15 an hour and some pay more but the thing with this is these are often competitive (yes, I know...$15 and hard to get a job for this) as well as under the table. When applying for an apartment/house, you have to provide pay stubs and for anything under the table, they won't take your word for it.
And speaking as someone who a week ago had about 2 weeks to move out (my situation has since changed), 30 days comes SO FAST. I looked at one place and was shocked when application/administration fees were over $350 alone. I don't know how the working poor are making it because that 3X the rent rule...I mean can teachers even make that? LOL. It definitely explains why I see so many Millennials living with so many roommates.

[orum400]

Plenty of cheap apartments in Clayton County and OTP

[cqholt]

Originally Posted by Need4Camaro

Are they being evicted due to non payment or are their homes being bought out from under them? If for non payment, asside from their property tax ... its not like their mortgage changed due to the increased value of their homes. If they were renting and the new lease came out to be much higher however that is different...

Either way though If the city is the fastest gentrifying city in the country there is a price for that. Lower / Middle class income dwellers are going to be forced further away from.the core (which is an argument I strongly emphasized upon when everyone suggests moving 6 million people ITP for better commute options) ... this is another reason transit in the suburbs is so important.

Did you read the article or just comment?

Originally Posted by orum400

Plenty of cheap apartments in Clayton County and OTP

Eventually, Goodman came across a listing for a house in Forest Park, which was a 20-minute drive from their current neighborhood.

Of course there is a reason why the home in Forest Park she found was so cheap and the landlord forego-ed a credit check.

In exchange for the first month’s rent and a $1,000 security deposit, in cash, he agreed to forgo a credit check and any other requirements. Goodman decided that she had no choice but to take the place.

On October 19, Goodman heard DJ, her 12-year-old son, scream from the kitchen. He’d been doing the dishes, and had gotten an electric shock as he reached his hand into the dirty water. He was crying, saying how bad it hurt. Goodman was livid. She suspected the shock had been caused by exposed wiring in the basement, where there was a pool of standing water. In some states, she could have withheld her rent until these safety issues were addressed. Georgia granted tenants no such rights. Nothing prohibited landlords from kicking a renter out for reporting hazardous conditions to the authorities, what’s referred to as “retaliatory eviction.” (A state law banning such practices has since passed.) Later that day, Goodman spotted a group of firefighters down the street and asked one of them, Lieutenant Brett Boyle, if he could take a look around. Within an hour, a group of officials from code enforcement, sanitation, Georgia Power, and the fire department had gathered on the lawn. Ken Flemming, a code enforcement officer, had been to the house before. “As soon as he saw it, he started shaking his head,” Goodman said. The electric company, discerning an immediate danger, physically cut the wires leading into the house. Dudar showed up, was handed a citation, and quickly left. A fluorescent orange notice was taped to the front window:

[DreamerD]

Originally Posted by orum400

Plenty of cheap apartments in Clayton County and OTP

Do you mind sharing what you would consider cheap? Even if these are "cheap," it doesn't address the difficulty of keeping a roof over your head earning only $9 an hour (what the lady in the article is earning working a full-time job). The problem with working OTP is the transport issue. A lot of jobs require reliable transportation and it's not just oh they're just saying that. Because of today's workplace demands where an increasing number of businesses are engaging in "just-in time" scheduling, you don't have the luxury of knowing your schedule a week+ in advance. With UPS I wouldn't know my schedule until sometimes before 9 p.m. at night, which is crazy when they can have you start work any time between 3:15-4:30 a.m. and this does not include the fluctuations during holiday season.



At one point I saw Wal-Mart conducting a survey on split shifts...let me give an example: You'd come into work let's say 10 a.m.-12 p.m. and then return to work 6 p.m.-9 p.m. They wouldn't pay you obviously for the time in between and for both shifts you would likely get no break. They basically would own your entire day and hardly give you any work for it.

The point I'm trying to make with the above is that for many poor, they'd find it extremely difficult if not impossible to maintain a job due to not having a car. Clayton and OTP transit is really crappy and it would be a huge hindrance in searching for a new job/keeping a current one. Come to think of it, this is probably the reason the lady in the article can't get higher paying under the table jobs because she needs a car as they tend to be all over the metro.



Something important I want to talk about is also being network poor as I've discussed this in a few threads. The assumption for whatever reason is that people are poor because they choose to be. Those making these comments/suggestions usually come from a background where they have support from family and/or friends. My closer friends don't live near to me and so I have to rely on family. This woman doesn't have family to rely on and so for poor people like her, it's difficult to build yourself up as there is nothing/no one to fall back on.

Another thing I want to shed some light on is how expensive it is to move. People tend to forget what goes into application/admin fees. You then have to connect power, which there's a fee for. Everyone needs internet and there's a fee for that. It's very expensive to move, especially when you are single. This obstacle alone can break someone. If they had $600 in savings, poof it's gone.

I find it pretty sad the lack of rights tenants have in GA. I didn't know that the woman wouldn't be legally able to withhold rent until her electrical issues were addressed. I know that I have strongly demanded my things to get fixed when need be but a lot of people in GA, especially poor don't have this knowledge and/or don't feel strong enough to fight for themselves. In the past I have threatened that I would have the repairs done myself through hiring an outside company and then take the money I paid the contractor out of rent. I'm pretty sure this is legal but again, people don't know or feel as if they don't have a voice.

[ATLTJL]

She obviously has a really big heart adopting two children after they were abandoned.

But maybe six children isn't the best thing to do when you make $9 an hour? I can't even comprehend what agency approved such a thing. I think there must be a much bigger story here.

Just sayin'.... though I do feel really sorry for her.

[DreamerD]

Originally Posted by ATLTJL

She obviously has a really big heart adopting two children after they were abandoned.

But maybe six children isn't the best thing to do when you make $9 an hour? I can't even comprehend what agency approved such a thing. I think there must be a much bigger story here.

Just sayin'.... though I do feel really sorry for her.

The story didn't specify and so I wouldn't assume that the kids were processed through the system. It could have been family and she didn't want to point out which family member.

I think what she's doing is honorable and I would hope that she'd get help but with the way "welfare" is demonized, I'm pretty sure she's doing this all on her own. The article didn't specify and so I'd have to assume this much.

[brown_dog_us]

The long term solution is moving people from renters to homeowners. Yes they will need help with the down payment and budgeting, but in the long run it's worth it. How much you want to bet her 12 year old son would have a better future if his mother was a homeowner?

[cqholt]

Thanks Reaganomics

Once upon a time, mass homelessness did not exist in the United States. The population of people without stable living situations periodically surged, but these waves were temporary, subsiding as the economy improved. The phenomenon we now know as homelessness—pervasive, unremarkable, seemingly intractable—arose only in the 1980s. What had been anomalous suddenly became “the common misery of millions,” observed the writer and activist Jonathan Kozol in his 1988 book Rachel and Her Children: Homeless Families in America. Set in a towering New York shelter that Kozol likened to an urban refugee camp, the book sought to excavate the causes of this great displacement. Kozol refused the dominant explanations, all of which emphasized some mix of individual and group pathology: teenage pregnancy, mental illness, drugs, a “culture of poverty.” He offered a different view. In 1970, the United States had a surplus of 300,000 affordable rental homes; under President Reagan, federal spending on low-income housing plummeted from $32 billion to $7 billion. (“We’re getting out of the housing business. Period,” said a top HUD official at the time.) Affordable units evaporated, and with them many of the legal safeguards allowing poor tenants to stay in the relative few that remained. Kozol condensed his findings into a single italicized sentence: “The cause of homelessness,” he wrote, “is lack of housing.”