Residents talk about negative impact, code violations of corporation-owned homes

ATLANTA — A new report is diving into the number of code violations by corporation-owned homes.

Channel 2 Action News has reported on how corporations have bought thousands of properties and rented them to Atlanta residents.

On WSB Tonight at 11 p.m., Channel 2′s Michael Doudna found the bigger the corporation...the more likely the homes were to have a code violation.

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More than 30,000 metro homes are owned by 10 corporations.

A new study shows that a corporation was four to five times more likely to be the subject of a code violation than a rental home owned by an individual.

Trash and debris littering lawns, next to unkept houses. It’s not what you want to see around your home.

“I’m currently not renewing my lease now because of an issue with my house leaking,” said Key, a renter.

Key is a renter, and one of the thousands of metro Atlanta residents renting a house owned not by a person, but by a corporation.

A corporation, she says, prioritizes quick fixes instead of long-lasting repairs.

“You can tell how they are covering these things up. Like, y’all are not fixing it up. You are just covering it up,” she said.

“As a whole group, large corporations are very different from medium, small, and individual landlords,” said Georgia Tech’s Brian An.

An and a team of researchers looked into the data, crosschecking code violation reports with ownership records.

What he found is that operators who rented out only one property had a code violation rate of around 5%. But corporations that owned at least 50 metro area homes were four to five times higher at 20 to 25%.

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“It’s not just one corporation or two corporations. As a group, they show this problem,” said An

And the impact goes beyond renters.

“It waters the neighborhood and sense of community down,” said Abriana Haney, a homeowner.

Haney owns a home in the Mechanicsville neighborhood.

She says the rise in corporation-owned homes has priced out people from her community, leading to a deteriorating sense of community.

“It makes it so the people who live here don’t have the same stake as a homeowner,” said Haney.

Researchers say the reason behind the higher rate of code violations for corporations likely is a combination of factors; From more properties to keep up, to buying homes that may have issues to begin with.

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