It’s deeply regrettable that legislation which would have offered some protection to tenants at troubled apartment complexes was left undone by the Georgia Senate when the Legislature adjourned last week.
House Bill 404 amounted to a decent start toward protecting vulnerable Georgians who live in – and too-often-suffer deplorable conditions at -- substandard apartment communities around this state.
Yet, it never came up for a final vote in the Senate. Think of the bill lying among the piles of legislative paper tossed about like confetti in the final minutes before lawmakers closed up shop at the Capitol. That is a sorry visual that reflects poorly on the Georgia Senate and the new Lieutenant Governor who oversees it.
In our view, Lt. Gov. Burt Jones and the senators he oversees should reacquaint themselves with the high calling that should govern their work. They could start with the very first sentence of the preamble to Georgia’s Constitution, which invokes the need to “insure justice to all, preserve peace, (and) promote the interest and happiness of the citizen and of the family … .”
By not bringing HB 404 to a vote this year, the Senate failed to help make that civic ideal a reality.
Worse, they failed many hardworking, at-risk Georgians who needed their help to improve living conditions.
As a result of this inaction, substandard, dangerous and at-times terrible conditions will likely continue to exist at many apartment communities across this state.
An investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution chronicled these problems in the series, “Dangerous Dwellings.” This newspaper examined more than 1,000 apartment complexes in Fulton, DeKalb, Cobb, Gwinnett and Clayton counties. Our reporters spent more than a year examining dangerous conditions at about 270 metro Atlanta apartment complexes.
We found appalling conditions that put life and health at risk. Failings such as broken toilets or water pipes, raw sewage leaks, mold, overflowing trash containers and the free run of rats and other vermin. Too many Georgians are forced to live with that.
This prosperous state shouldn’t tolerate such conditions. HB 404 would’ve been a decent start toward making things better.
Yet the bill did not come up for a vote Wednesday night.
What could have been more important for lawmakers to address as the Senate lurched toward adjournment Sine Die?
What could have trumped the state constitution’s requirement that “Protection to person and property is the paramount duty of government and shall be impartial and complete?”
Nothing that we can think of.
If the State Senate thinks otherwise, its members should quickly explain themselves to us all, given this newspaper’s recent polling showing that 90% of respondents believe Georgia should set minimum living requirements for rental properties.
Senators should also absorb our reporting which found that the worst apartment complexes, combined, account for at least 281 homicides and 20,000 serious crimes over the past five years.
Or, senators could have simply looked down the hall while the legislature was in session.
On the other side of the Gold Dome, the Georgia House of Representatives admirably did its part to help improve this terrible situation. They passed HB 404 last month as a standing ovation erupted in the House chamber.
The applause was justified.
As we reported last week after the legislature adjourned, the bill would “provide one of the most significant boosts in Georgia tenant protections in decades.”
The 7-page bill seemed a commonsense start toward addressing a dangerous public safety and public health problem. As we reported last Thursday, “HB 404 would for the first time require Georgia landlords to provide rentals that are ‘fit for human habitation.’ "
And our reporting has noted that “Georgia is one of only three states lacking such a standard, and housing advocates rallied behind the measure, calling it a meaningful step toward making housing safe and decent for families.”
So, what blocked a final vote this year? Georgians deserve to know.
After all, the problems at the worst apartment complexes don’t stop at the often-decaying or even-nonexistent gates. They affect -- and cost -- all of us.
We pay an expensive tab daily in dollars and time spent to police or prosecute frequent crimes at these places. And there’s a cost to local communities trying to, often-ineffectively, improve decaying apartment buildings by using inadequate laws to hold negligent landlords to account.
HB 404 was not perfect.
Experts said that it fell short of giving tenants key protections they need to fight back against unscrupulous landlords. Unlike in 41 other states and the District of Columbia, tenants can’t withhold rent to force repairs of dilapidated housing, no matter how dangerous or unsanitary.
HB 404 would not have changed that.
But it was a start.
And it was better than a status quo that, in effect, turns a blind eye to negligent landlords.
As we wrote in a January front-page editorial addressed to lawmakers, “Human decency and our common desire for public safety demand that you act.”
“Please don’t let us down.”
By adjourning without bringing HB 404 to a vote, the Georgia Senate did indeed let down the state it should be working to uplift and support.
Which means all of us will continue to pay a price -- in criminal mayhem, squandered dollars and squelched decency as a society -- for at least another year.
Georgians deserve to know why.
The Editorial Board
