By Jay Ahmed, ATLEJ Home Defender
Two things have happened over
the last 6 months: 61 ultra-wealthy billionaire landlords saw their wealth increase by $24.4 billion, and I worked as an Enrollment Specialist for a
non-profit organization that was one of dozens contracted by the City of Atlanta to distribute well over $20,000,000 in COVID-19 emergency
housing relief aid. I will explain how the two are related. The organization I
worked for, and most other organizations that distribute rental assistance, operated under a basic system of:
1. Having individuals fill
out applications for assistance.
2. Screening applicants to
ensure they have valid leases, mortgages, and financial documents proving COVID-19
hardship.
3. Filling out income verification forms, eligibility letters, W9's, landlord rental verification forms for
applicants with leases, among other forms.
Once we verified with landlords or property managers that applicants were indeed current residents
with outstanding balances, we would then submit the complete application to the
data team/financial department for checks to be sent out and files audited.
Within its first few months,
the popularity of the program had spread and it was not long before an influx
of applicants and a lack of staffing caused my nonprofit's quality checks and standard
practices to loosen. Specifically, after 3 months of administering the program, our rule stating that applicants
needed to have an outstanding balance was not practiced. It became common to
have applicants applying for prospective rental assistance-- for example, John applies for May rental assistance in April, before May rent is due.
Because the process time from application
to check takes about a month, we began to pay property managers and
utility companies for individuals who in the beginning of the program would not
be qualified to receive assistance.
Additionally, late fees were not paid by the COVID-19 Emergency Housing Assistance Fund at first, but a
revision changed that. Our "training" stated that it was
our responsibility to negotiate late fees with property managers or landlords, but after speaking to a majority of my co-workers I found that
none of them negotiate late fees.
Late fees can often make up 20%-35% of the assistance we send to property managers and landlords. When
this is extrapolated, the amount of financial assistance wasted on landlords
immorally charging tenants late fees during a pandemic and economic crisis is morally disturbing. What is worse is that my nonprofit facilitated this on a
daily basis.
I would often catch
individuals applying with what I knew was an obvious fake lease and forged
separation letter. When I would bring these concerns to my manager, I would
often be told "you're not paid to be a detective" or something similar in
a dismissive fashion. To my supervisors' credit, they were just trying to
logistically get through as many applications as possible. But an important
observation I made while working in that system is that the City of Atlanta (and
most of Georgia) has virtually no regulations for what can considered reasonable
late fees. I’ve seen late fees that charge $15 for every day the rent is
late, with no cap limit. The contractual language in the leases I’ve seen are
textbook ‘predatorial’.
Nonetheless, this pandering
to landlords and misuse of government funds specifically meant to
help tenants is a microcosm of the bigger issue at hand: the continued wealth
extraction from poor communities of color by thieving landlords, rental assistance organizations that enable landlords, and the courts and law that make these
egregious acts legal.
Yesterday healthcare and global justice advocates gathered to protest President Biden’s drive-in rally in Atlanta celebrating his first 100 days. The demand is that he commit to providing global access to COVID-19 vaccines, as he said he would while he was a presidential candidate. This was part of a national week of action with protestors gathering at pharmaceutical company headquarters and Congressional offices in New York City; Boston; Atlanta; Washington, D.C.; Seattle; San Diego; Atlanta; and more. This comes amid mounting political pressure from more than 80 congressional Democrats, 170 former heads of state and Nobel laureates, and new polling showing that 60% of U.S. voters want President Biden to support a temporary waiver on patent protections for the COVID-19 vaccine. 
