Two decades ago, Sandy Hartman gained national attention as Atlanta's tough-love landlord and pistol-packing protector of her properties. Spotlighted by then-Housing Secretary Jack Kemp and CBS News anchor Dan Rather, Ms. Hartman was lauded for transforming dirty, decrepit apartment buildings into decent living quarters for the working poor. She kept them that way by enforcing a code of conduct for renters and by keeping drug dealers at bay even when it meant patrolling the premises herself with a gun.
However, she paid a steep price for her choosiness when it came to tenants. Because she wouldn't tolerate drug users or dealers, her occupancy rate declined, and she was unable to keep up payments on bank and federal housing loans. Although Georgia lawmakers spoke on her behalf here and in Washington, she lost all her apartment complexes in 1990.
With characteristic pluck, she picked herself up and started over again. Within a few years, she was back buying and refurbishing an extended-stay hotel and several apartment blocks and later built several houses in the Garden Hills neighborhood.
"Sandy did the work that Dr. Martin Luther King urged us all to do -- to serve the underserved," Atlanta City Councilman Kwanza Hall said. "She provided affordable housing for low-income families at considerable physical and financial risk to herself."
Sandra K. Hartman, 60, of Atlanta, died of cancer Dec. 31 at Hospice Atlanta. Her memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Saturday at the Academy of Medicine Building, 875 W. Peachtree, Atlanta. Donations in her memory can be made to Furkids, a dog and cat rescue organization, at www.furkids.org. R.T. Patterson Funeral Home, Lilburn, is in charge of arrangements.
Born into poverty in Illinois coal mining country, Ms. Hartman set out for Atlanta after finishing high school with little more than $60 and a 1955 Chevrolet. Breaking into the real estate and mortgage business, she managed to amass $10,000, with which she started her own real estate investment company in 1978.
At first, she bought, rehabbed and sold houses -- 72 of them by 1982. As an example of her resourcefulness, Ms. Hartman once needed approval from a city agency before she could sell a house that she had rehabbed. The trouble was, the previous owner had built an addition that was too close to the property line. Ms. Hartman's solution, said her partner of 21 years, Suzy Berliner of Atlanta, was to order a workman to cut a foot off the addition with a chain saw. Then she and her employee worked overnight to build a new exterior and inner wall for the sawed-off room, and she was able to get the necessary city approval the next day.
As a redeveloper of apartment complexes, she was hard on some issues -- tenants had to be employed and were fined for littering -- and soft on others -- rents were extremely reasonable and tenants could work at her properties. She even bought winter jackets for tenants' children.
Ms. Hartman had an equally soft spot for animals. "She must have found homes for at least 100 stray dogs and cats that showed up on her properties," Ms. Berliner said. Later, Ms. Hartman became an enthusiastic fund-raiser for the Furkids rescue group.
Her determination as an entrepreneur was matched by her competitiveness in sports. "She was good at anything she tried -- fast-pitch or slow-pitch softball when she was young and golf and tennis years later," Ms. Berliner said.
That prowess included cards -- poker, rummy, pinochle. A longtime friend, Cindy Branch of Atlanta, recalled watching Ms. Hartman win $86,000 playing blackjack in Las Vegas. "Sandy liked to live life large," she said.
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