KATIE KING | November 22, 2017

The story focuses on Starwood Waypoint Homes, the largest owner of single-family homes in the country, and their bad track record when it comes to making repairs.

Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation Deputy Director Michael Lucas was featured on ABC’s Nightline on Thursday, November 16, as part of a story called “Billion-Dollar Landlords: Rental home giant once led by Trump ally is under fire from some tenants, critics.” The report was syndicated on local news stations across the country, including in Atlanta. 

“Billion-Dollar Landlords” focused on Starwood Waypoint Homes, a company based in Scottsdale, Arizona, that owns over 80,000 rental properties nationwide. Aaron Glantz of Reveal described the company as “the ultimate, out-of-state, far-removed, absentee landlord,” consistently putting “profits over people.” Although the real estate group owns properties throughout the country, Georgia remains their biggest market with 12,301 rentals in the Atlanta-metro area. 

“They’re more likely just to have a policy that says if you’re a day late and a dollar short, we’re going to evict on this timeline,” Lucas said.

The removal of corporate landlords like Starwood Waypoint Homes is a startling trend, according to a Federal Reserve report Lucas co-authored earlier this year. In Fulton County, the study found corporate landlords were twice as likely to file an eviction as a smaller owner. This is especially important since the same study found one in five renters in Fulton County were served eviction notices in 2015.

“They’re more likely just to have a policy that says if you’re a day late and a dollar short, we’re going to evict on this timeline,” Lucas said.

According to ABC’s article, “with homeownership rates hovering near historic lows and the newly merged company owning a significant share of the middle-income rental market in several large cities, critics say renting from corporate landlords is increasingly becoming the only viable option for thousands of young families who might have once become homeowners.”

Watch the entire story on Nightline now.

AVLF has received lots of attention in the press recently, especially for our innovative, place-based program Standing with Our Neighbors. 

 Haven’t heard of Standing with Our Neighbors? There’s a great video explaining how it works. 

Katie King

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Katie handles all of the online communications for AVLF, overseeing the organization’s social media campaigns, newsletters, and website. She is passionate about community engagement and the city of Atlanta. Katie holds a B.S. in Journalism from Boston University and an M.A. in Southern Studies from the University of Mississippi. Follow her on social media at @katiecarterking.