Hold landlords accountable for unsafe apartment complexes
Congratulations, AJC investigating team, for your solidly researched three-part anguishing report, “Dangerous Dwellings.”
Nobody, especially our legislators, can now pretend not to know about “Unsafe; Unhealthy; Unlivable” apartment complexes in metro Atlanta. It was shocking to learn about federal, state and local governments and even law enforcement agencies’ indifference to the residents who are daily suffering from rats, roaches, crimes and intruders.
This while greedy absentee owners exploit and enrich themselves with impunity. This official complacency is tantamount to complicity!
The final harrowing story of one apartment complex is emblematic of other 250-plus abominations trapping their residents into these transformed urban “plantations.” The non-transferable HUD rental vouchers, paid to the landlords’ projects, tie tenants to them, so there is no escape from these places of last resort.
And worse, “in disputes between landlords and residents, state law ensures landlords usually win.” Georgia legislators who “have done little to hold landlords accountable” should stop coddling them and pass new laws to guarantee apartment dwellers their basic human rights to live in decent units with safe drinking and cooking water.
NIZAR MOTANI, ATLANTA
Second Amendment should be repealed and replaced
The United States Constitution is an evolving document. It has been amended since its inception. Ten Amendments were added almost immediately. It has been amended 27 times, including the 21st Amendment, which repealed the 18th Amendment.
When the Second Amendment was written, firearms were hand-loaded, cap-and-ball devices where three shots per minute, in war, was the goal. There is no way the founding fathers could have foreseen the killing machines of today.
As was done with the 21st Amendment, the Second Amendment should be repealed and replaced with a more up-to-date statute.
A.W. SMITH, MARIETTA
