Facebook page targets Atlanta’s property code violators
Kent D. Johnson, kdjohnson@ajc.com
At 1727 S. Gordon St. in a southwest Atlanta, large sections of the brick home’s roof are caved in and noticeably rotted out.
At 750 Cascade Place also in southwest Atlanta, the abandoned apartment complex is now nearly hidden from the street due to overgrowth. On a new Facebook page dedicated to highlighting properties in violation of the city’s code compliance ordinances, one commenter called the building “a drug den and crash pad” for the homeless. Another asked, “Can somebody explain to me how this is allowed to continue…?”
The Facebook page, Atlanta Code Enforcement Problems, states upfront that it is “unofficial” and not connected with the city, but its purpose is clear: to give Atlantans a place to post photos and information about code enforcement violations and problem absentee property owners.
It’s not as if the city doesn’t know it has a problem, which has been made worse by a flood of foreclosures and absentee owners who either don’t have the money or refuse to spend it to bring the properties back up to code.
On Thursday, the city demolished a longtime eyesore in southwest Atlanta, a privately owned abandoned Jewel Point complex at 2020 Allison Court. (An earlier version of this blog erroneously referred to the Wishing Well apartments, which were demolished last year).
Demolition of 2020 Allison Court was ordered in 2010 but it’s taken this long to prepare it for destruction due to asbestos removal and other challenges, including funding, officials said.
Last year, Mayor Kasim Reed put the city’s code enforcement under the direction of the Atlanta Police Department, which set out to eliminate more than 4,500 backlogged cases and deal with 1,200 inactive code enforcement cases.
“We understand the community’s frustration in wanting these properties demolished immediately upon the order being granted,” Maj. Cerelyn Davis, who heads the Code Enforcement Section, said in a statement on the Allison Court demolition. She said the APD assures citizens “we are moving forward on many similar properties.”
The Facebook page reflects the frustrations of residents who have to live near or pass by dilapidated structures, which police concede are not only eyesores that bring down already falling property values but also pose potential public health hazards, are havens for crime and erode the quality of life.
Many photos so far on the Facebook page are of properties in southwest Atlanta, like the boarded-up residence at 1616 Derry and the burned-out home at 1535 Beecher St. Some are abandoned construction projects that have either been stopped by the builder, like the home at 668 Lawton St, or by the city due to the lack of a building permit.
While the problem can’t be eliminated overnight, do you think the city is moving aggressively in dealing with dilapidated and abandoned properties, and wayward absentee owners?
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
69 comments Add your comment
Benjamin check
August 24th, 2012
11:23 am
It’s racism and classism plain and simple. All the other intown neighborhoods don’t have this problem. What many fail to realize is MOST of these destroyed properties are owned by banks, reo’s, shady llc’s and SUBURBAN white residents collecting section 8. They don’t live there and as long as they get their section 8 rent the area can go to hell for all they care. The properties you see that ARE taken care of are usually owned by older blacks and younger homeowners both black and white. policing in Atlanta is development based. Look at how quickly Lowery and Bankhead is being cleaned up. 6 years ago it looked very different. Now a new overpass, demolished houses, newly paved and renamed streets, new streetlights and sidewalks. It’s the next gentrifiable area people can live in without having to suffer the stigma of saying they live in “SW” Atlanta. They’ll change the street names and come up with a trendy new name for “Bankhead” like west midtown or something stupid like that.
mb
August 24th, 2012
11:44 am
@ Benjamin check – Cry me a river. “All other intown neighborhoods don’t have this probelm.” WRONG. I live in Buckhead. Yes, we have this problem. We take care of it ourselves. We don’t sit around waiting for the city to do its job. WE clean up the vacant lots, the parks, the abandoned houses, the foreclosures, WE repair broken city sidewalks at our own expense. How you dare classify that as racism, I have no idea. I classify that as laziness and lack of pride on your part. Pick up a garbage bag and a weed wacker and stop complaining! You sense of entitlement is unreal.
mb
August 24th, 2012
11:45 am
*your*
Benjamin check
August 24th, 2012
12:01 pm
@ mb, kiss my ass. I’ve cleaned up sidewalks, parks, trash, bums, dead dogs, crack houses. Sense of entitlement? I pay taxes and own property, why the hell do I have to demolish a house? Why do I have to live next door to fraudulently burned up houses? I don’t give a rats ass about sidewalks. Clean up the HOUSES. And you don’t have abandoned burned up houses in buckhead. The property is too valuable to just leave a house, someone will buy it and build something or fix it or you’ll cry to your councilman and they’ll get it fixed. You’re the typical stupid buckhead, suburb resident, making assumptions about where you don’t reside or go. In fact, since you swear you do all this stuff, inform me of how I demolish someone’s house that isn’t mine. Inform me of how I can make code take appropriate steps after a thousand emails, phone calls, and trips downtown. How do I overcome all the shady property owners who live IN BUCKHEAD and Gwinnett county who could care less about their properties because they know the city is inept and they don’t live there? You’re an idiot sir, and I’d thank you to keep your stupid comments about what you don’t know to yourself. Entitlement….that’s you’re racism right there, assuming I have my hand out. I’m from DC, born and raised, a MUCH more cosmopolitan city than this racist hell hole you call Atlanta. I call it like I see it, whites on one side, blacks on the other, Asians and Mexicans in their little areas. Save it for the tourists and convention attendees.
mb
August 24th, 2012
12:24 pm
Wow, Mr. Check, you are certainly bitter. Perhaps you should leave this, as you termed it, “racist hell hole” and return to the North. One must wonder why on earth you continue to live here, if it’s so awful as you claim?
Mary
August 24th, 2012
1:29 pm
In my neighborhood, we all take care of the vacant properties. Neighbors mow the lawn, tidy up the outside and we keep an eye on the vacant houses.
We don’t call anyone, we just get out and do it ourselves. We have no idea what happened to the home owners, and that’s not our business, but we do take care of each other, and we DO NOT want dilapitaded houses in our ‘hood.
If every one would pull together, instead of saying “its not my problem”, you would see results. Send a teenager with a mower to the property overgrown.
Benjamin check
August 24th, 2012
1:54 pm
Mb, I’m down here working and trust me, i have plans to return to dc before my daughter is school age so I don’t have to have her educated in the south or pay pedeia or the children’s school 20k for an education matched by PUBLIC schools where I’m from. So she isnt raised in a red state asylum full of racists and ignoramuses black and white, where the most tolerant and educated people are not locals, but transplants. Yea I’m bitter. I’m bitter about stupid people like you who make asinine assumptions about where they don’t live, go, or spend money. And I’m still waiting on all this magic information you swore you had. How you violate property laws to fix up vacant houses. What’s the address of the vacant properties that have laid burned and without roofs for 5-7 years in your neighborhood, with the taxes paid. All that was is smoke and mirrors to make yourself feel important. First you insult me along several lines, then use a code word like “entitlement” like I’m some project dweller eating up YOUR tax money with wic and section 8. Then you play the victim like you always do and try to accuse me of being bitter when i call you on your bs and act surprised like how dare Ii get testy. I’m bitter about this burned up house next door I have to look at everyday that I can’t buy and demolish myself. I’m bitter it mysteriously burned a week after a tree fell on it, damaged my house, costing me the $1500 bucks their insurance should have coughed up that was taken out if my claim, then changed hands 3 times in 6 months. All to the same 2 companies. I had a few million to just waste to prove a point I could prove it in less than 12 months. I’d buy a couple of houses in nice areas in buckhead, Roswell and piedmont, gut them and burn them, and watch how quickly there is a news truck outside. Id bet MY truck that they would be gone in less than a year. I guarantee it. The code and inrem process would work pretty smoothly then.
Benjamin check
August 24th, 2012
2:03 pm
And we’re not talking overgrown. I’m talking houses with no roof and a tree in the middle. Gutted by fire, structurally unsound. Infested with vermin. Missing windows, doors, walls, places you can’t even SQUAT in. Places crackheads don’t even go. Overgrown…..I’m taking 5000 dumped tires in a garage we paid to have removed. Rats as big as loaves of bread, families of opossums, raccoons. Roaches the size of Bic lighters. Overgrown….I’d be glad to have it simply overgrown, 15.99 worth of Ortho’s ground clear takes care of that!
Delta
August 24th, 2012
2:11 pm
Benny Check:
Are there no jobs in DC? This is the one area of the country that has been recession proof. We are ready when you are to fly you out of here…..and on a sidenote…..just across the Potomac from DC is the dreaded South you hate. Just thought you might like to know. Good luck in the wonderful public schools in DC…LMAO!!
Mike
August 24th, 2012
2:17 pm
I have been down in the Simpson Street area where every other home is abandoned. One solution used in my hometown of Springfield, Massachusetts is to give the dilapidated homes to a court appointed receiver who is then charged with bringing it up to code, allowed to live in or rent the property, and allowed to foreclose on the property after a period of time if the homeowner does not pay for the repairs. Another solution is to take the homes and sell them for a dollar to anyone willing to live in it for 3yrs.
To: Mr. Check
August 24th, 2012
2:40 pm
All of the nicer neighborhoods in Atlanta have Landlords too. It’s not the Landlords that have done the damage to your neighborhood but the people that have lived in your neighborhood. Landlords don’t steal the copper plumbing, paint the graffiti and break the windows.
I’ve lived in the South Side of DC and it’s worse than where you live. I couldn’t even lock my car at night or the windows would be broken.
It wasn’t the teachers in the nicer parts of Atlanta that had to cheat so their students could move from grade to grade. That was due to parental guidance or the lack thereof.
I Tell You the Truth!!
August 24th, 2012
2:52 pm
@Sick and Tired of the Racial Argument, and everyone else that speaks of the racial thingy – Look Racism is ALIVE here so don’t fool yourselves! However, I agree with your point- as a neighborhood, we should take care of our area. Ignoring the racial comments that you folks are making, the truth is just that!! we need to take care of our own until help arrives (whenever that may be). Stick together and fight for what you believe you deserve. The government entities fight for more money in their pockets and so on–and win! There is Power in numbers. So gather up folks and fight (politically, not physically). I am a SW resident, have beenfor years, I work, pay my taxes and I raise #$** when things are not going the way I believe it should. I go to the neighborhood meetings when I can AND I have beautiful, wonderful neighbors. We do the best we can with what we have, but we will continue to fight for more. My people, pay attention to how “other” people get what they want.
Who will eventually pay to clean up?
August 24th, 2012
3:04 pm
It will be paid mostly by the taxes on the more expensive real estate in the nicer areas.
To: I'll tell you the truth
August 24th, 2012
3:24 pm
You say: “when help arrives.”, “fight for what you …… deserve.”, “we’ll fight for more.”, “get what they want.”
How fast and how much of other people’s taxes do you deserve?
How many tax dollars do you think will be spent on the demolition of dilapidated homes in Buckhead?
Reality.
August 24th, 2012
3:34 pm
To everyone who complains about Buckhead/Va Hi etc… being more well maintained… You get what you pay for. When you only pay a few hundred to a couple thousand in property taxes a year, don’t complain that no one comes and cleans up all of your messes for you! I pay about $6k in property taxes so you better believe I’m going to be up in arms when the city lets something go to sh!t. You can’t pay for a beer and expect to get a bottle of champagne in exchange!
Clean up your neighborhood and maybe people will give a damn about it. Look at Grant Park – went from a pit to a very nice area now. Same can be said for Candler Park.
Thadeis Trundle III
August 24th, 2012
8:09 pm
Most white folks are fascist and suck the blood from our thriving neighborhoods. It is a hate crime to allow our neighborhoods to decline. Stimulus money should go to people of color to offset this injustice. I was promised a mule and 40 acres! Where’ my mule and where is my land? This country still smells of rascism.
Sean
August 24th, 2012
10:59 pm
I live in cabbage town. I haved lived in atl for 15 years. I think one thing both sides of I-20 can believe in is that the city is not doing its job when it comes to code enforcement ( or in other services ).
Many people in my neighborhood do take care of their home. I go to Adair Park many times to play softball & they also seem to take care of there homes as well.
I wish all parts of the city would come together and complain about the quality of our services and demand more for our tax $$$. I think there is a lot of waste in the city govt & if people put this racism stuff aside we could get more out of them.
rooster
August 25th, 2012
12:03 am
JASon: I have to agree with you about Terminus and much of what the Novare Group has done, but 1180 Peachtree is a beautiful building, in addition to being, I think, the largest LEED building in town.
Like you, when I saw the headline I thought the story might be about things built by people who have all their taste in their mouths. I was sure I’d see the stupid plastic flame on the tower just north of the Varsity at the top of the list.
Ole Snarkey
August 25th, 2012
9:51 am
Fulton, you need to get over it. I am totally disabled and don’t appreciate you calling it unemployed as if I am getting a handout from the government. Disability is paid for by the individual and/or his employer. So, please educate yourself before cutting down people with disabilities! Be. Thankful you aren’t disabled yourself!