Landlords in metro Atlanta have filed an estimated 144,003 eviction cases in just one year, according to Princeton University’s Eviction Lab, with 13,118 filings in the most recent month alone. The tally spans Cobb, Clayton, DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett counties and comes as renters in the area face average monthly payments of about $1,739, a combination that is turning housing stress into a routine part of life for many tenants.
The numbers come from the Eviction Lab’s city tracking system, which compiles dispossessory complaints and related demographic data from county courts, according to Eviction Lab. For the five-county Atlanta region, the dataset covers 572,679 renter households and is updated each month so residents and officials can see where filings are climbing the fastest.
Local reporting by WABE breaks down those filings and shows how unevenly the burden falls. Black renters make up roughly 53% of the metro area’s renter population yet account for about 71% of eviction filings, or around 77,249 cases over the past 12 months. “The scale of the issue in Atlanta … it’s awful. There’s no way to get around that,” Sarah Johnson, a research specialist with the Eviction Lab, told WABE…