Drivers heading down I-285 near Camp Creek Parkway have been faced with a billboard unlike most of the others they pass.

Displayed across a black background, bold white letters in all caps read: BLACK PEOPLE ARE BEING PUSHED OUT OF ATLANTA.

That controversial message, referring to gentrification in the city, comes at a time when concerns about affordable housing have been increasingly in the spotlight.

In March, the Rev. Joe Beasley, a longtime civil rights activist in Atlanta, accused former Atlanta mayor Shirley Franklin in an email of causing "the gentrification of Atlanta."

A couple months later, a group of housing activists were at City Hall calling for new policies to help renters and homeowners squeezed by rising housing costs and stagnant wages.

When Journey Men's Shelter closed in November after more than 30 years in Atlanta, its executive director named the increase of housing costs and gentrification in the area as reasons more are at risk of losing their homes.

And those are just a few examples.

Along with the attention-grabbing message, the ad also includes a date, a website URL and a disclaimer that it's paid for by Black Channel Films.

It’s promoting a new documentary, "Gentrified.” The website says it explores “the unspoken ethnic component behind the most devastating socioeconomic movement in American society today.”

The film will be shown 6 p.m. Saturday at the Shrine of the Black Madonna Cultural Center and Bookstore in Atlanta. It will be followed by a Q&A with Mary Gill of WAOK 1380 AM. Tickets are $20.

It is also playing in New York, Chicago, London, Detroit, Houston and Washington D.C.

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An aerial view shows construction on a residential home in a North Dallas neighborhood in Texas. (Smiley N. Pool/The Dallas Morning News/TNS 2020)

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Laurence Walker, a volunteer with the Cajun Navy Relief, left, takes two volunteers out on his boat on Lake Oconee to search for Gary Jones, Tuesday, February, 18, 2024, in Eatonton, Ga. The Putnam County sheriff is investigating and searching after Spelman College instructor Joycelyn Nicole Wilson and an Atlanta private school coach Gary Jones went missing on Lake Oconee over a week ago, Saturday Feb. 8th. The body of Wilson was found Sunday, Feb. 9th and Jones has not been found. (Jason Getz / AJC)

Credit: Jason Getz / Jason.Getz@ajc.com