Shana Brooks-Wilhite woke up one morning this past December to the unsettling beep-beep-beep of a carbon monoxide alarm in the three-bedroom house she rents in the Henry County city of Stockbridge.
In fight-or-flight response, the U.S. Navy veteran opened doors and windows and fled the house with her teenage son, Emmanuel. She saw the potential presence of the poisonous gas in her home as an obvious danger, even though she wasn’t sure what to do next because she had never had a gas leak before.
Invitation Homes, the company that rented her the three-bedroom house, didn’t treat the leak with the same urgency, she said.
When she called the firm for help, she was routed to an overseas call center to report the emergency. From the other end of the phone, a representative told her the soonest maintenance could pay a visit would be three weeks, according to Brooks-Wilhite.
“She didn’t escalate the call. She didn’t change her response. She just said: ‘That’s all we have,’” Brooks-Wilhite said Monday during an oversight session at U.S. Sen. Jon Ossoff’s office in Atlanta.
A company representative’s advice to Brooks-Wilhite on how to stay warm in the winter after the utility company shut off the gas and told her she had two major leaks? Open the windows if she used the fireplace, Brooks-Wilhite said.
The company did not repair the leak until Jan. 6, 2025, according to Brooks-Wilhite.
“My family lived for over three weeks with no stove and no heat during the holidays, we had to eat out every day, which put enormous stress on our household budget,” she said.
Stories of mistreatment by corporate landlords of tenants are not uncommon, according to Ossoff, who has launched an investigation into the rental practices of big, out-of-state companies like Invitation Homes.
He is taking a closer look at how corporate landlords have altered the metro Atlanta housing and rental landscape, and says they are raising rental and home prices — echoing the findings found in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s investigative series, American Dream for Rent.
His scrutiny of corporate landlords comes as he ramps up efforts to win reelection in what is expected to be a tough 2026 race for the vulnerable Democrat.
The senator said his office has already interviewed 160 witnesses, and heard accounts of corporate landlords mistreating and abusing their residents.
“Georgians have reported to my office that when they call their landlords to report erroneous charges or mysterious fees or maintenance requirements nobody answers the phone, and in some cases, they receive eviction notices,” Ossoff said.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
The AJC investigation made similar findings in 2023.
Invitation Homes spokesperson Kristi DesJarlais said there are over 200 company employees who live and work in Georgia, and who “dedicate themselves to providing our local residents a positive experience throughout their stay with us.”
“In those instances where we miss the mark, we acknowledge the mistake and work hard to make it right,” DesJarlais said. “We stand by our work and the important role we play in the housing market for the growing number of Georgians who count on the flexibility and savings of leasing a home.”
David Howard, CEO of industry group the National Rental Home Council, added that Ossoff’s probe was not an official U.S. Senate investigation, and “is nothing more than him calling it an investigation.”
Invitation Homes reached a $48 million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission last year. The federal government accused it of charging renters junk fees, withholding security deposits and undermining eviction protections during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to an April report by Atlanta news outlet, 11Alive, more than 1,000 complaints were filed in the Peach State against Invitation Homes in the past three years. A study last year found that Invitation Homes was one of three companies that own 11% of single-family rental homes in five metro counties.
Another renter, Patrick Colson-Price who also spoke at the oversight session, said he plans to leave his Invitation Homes rental when his lease expires at the end of June. He said the backyard of his home was littered with large shards of glass, measuring up to six inches in length, broken bottles, razor blades, nails, oyster shells and batteries.
Colson-Price, who shares the home in Smyrna with his husband, said they discovered the glass when their dog, London, cut his paw in the backyard.
When Invitation Homes failed to act, he said, the couple contacted the city and local news outlets.
The city issued a citation to Invitation Homes and vendors eventually did grade and sod the backyard, he said, uncovering buried tires and automotive equipment in the process. But to this day, there are still sharp objects in the grass, he added.
Colson-Price decided to speak out because people living in rentals “deserve a safe place to live.” He added he shouldn’t have to fight for years to feel safe in his own backyard.
“I worry about the next tenants … or if they have a child who will step on something extremely sharp,” he said.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Chamblee-based attorney Esther Graff-Radford said corporate landlords prioritize getting the cheapest bids possible for repairs. Renters often have to deal with the repairs themselves, shouldering the costs and taking time off from work.
“Under Georgia law, the landlord is responsible for maintenance and repairs, but these big corporate landlords will threaten tenants with fines and even eviction if the tenant doesn’t do that work for them,” she said.
According to the attorney, corporate landlords have also send out eviction letters, without proper verification.
“These are automatically generated in bulk and dropped into families’ lives like tiny bombs,” she said.
Ossoff said the investigation was still in early stages, and did not get into specifics on any proposed legislation. But he said he hopes the probe can lay the foundation for local ordinances, and state and federal legislation.
Several bills were proposed to rein in institutional investors during the 2025 Georgia General Assembly’s legislative session.
House Bill 555 proposed capping ownership of single and multifamily homes. Another bill, House Bill 374, floated the idea of a housing management database, or a rental registry, to identify owners of 10 or more properties.
Both bills failed to get across the line.
One bill, HB 399, did pass. It requires landlords with single-family or duplex homes to assign a local agent for tenant complaints. Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed the bill into law last week.
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com
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