Ms. Juliet, a low-income, elderly widow with chronic health issues living in Decatur, Georgia, is being evicted from her home of 27 years. Ms. Juliet’s case is emblematic of systemic issues surrounding evictions and segregation in Georgia, where hundreds of thousands evictees do not receive adequate assistance or media coverage.
While Atlanta was the first city to create public housing in 1936, they began to demolish public housing buildings over concerns about their appearance after the 1996 Summer Olympics. Simultaneously, the houseless population of Atlanta was subjected to numerous police sweeps. By 2011, Atlanta became the first city in the U.S. to close all of its last public housing projects. As a result, there is no safety net to protect residents from the onslaught of rising rent prices and gentrification.
Unfortunately, Ms. Juliet is just one of many victims of gentrification and evictions that have continued to rise exponentially in Atlanta throughout the pandemic. Landlords continuously displace and exclude low-income, often Black and brown residents, from their home communities in the interest of making a profit on properties in newly desirable locations. Due to gentrification, nearly half of all Atlanta neighborhoods have experienced an increase in housing costs in the last 20 years, and 13% of all low-income households are in neighborhoods at risk of gentrification or displacement.
Furthermore, ongoing trends indicate a pattern of advancing exclusion in the city’s northern counties and active displacement in the southern counties and other prominent neighborhoods. These housing patterns correspond with Atlanta’s long legacy of race-based housing segregation and structural changes that promote urban revitalization — a necessary precursor by which citizens are attracted to major cities most commonly through advancing infrastructure. Independently owned properties will continue to be bought up by corporate investors, just as they have for years. However, financial profit should not come at the expense of someone else’s home.
Atlanta has not counteracted the negative effects of gentrification, and in some cases, expedited them. Despite originally envisaged as a development project to revitalize a run-down rail line as a walkable greenway, the Atlanta Beltline lacks affordable housing for people who have lived in the area for decades as well as an inability to preserve low-costs for low income residents.
With the federal government ending the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s eviction moratorium in August, residents like Ms. Juliet have no institutional support left.
Though federal Emergency Rental Assistance provided Georgia with $552.3 million to aid Georgian residents behind on rent, only a fraction of it has been paid out. Most either didn’t apply because they weren’t aware of its existence or applied and never received anything in return. Neither has local media covered her case, rendering her story unknown by the local community. As Atlantans, we should be the force rallying behind her in support. So sign Ms. Juliet’s petition, donate to her GoFundMe and spread them as widely as possible. This is a chance to make a material difference in the life of one person in real need. We would be cruel not to take it.
The above editorial represents the majority opinion of the Wheel’s Editorial Board. The Editorial Board is composed of Viviana Barreto, Rachel Broun, Kyle Chan-Shue,Sara Khan, Martin Li, Sophia Ling, Demetrios Mammas, Daniel Matin, Sara Perez, Sophia Peyser, Ben Thomas, Chaya Tong and Leah Woldai.
