Why Atlanta Has Become The U.S. Capital Of Eviction Filings

Metro Atlanta apartment landlords led the nation in eviction filings last year, even surpassing the number of eviction filings initiated in New York City.

Apartment and rental housing owners moved to evict just over 144,000 metro area renters in the 12 months through February, according to the Princeton University Eviction Lab, an organization that tracks eviction data in 37 U.S. cities, regions and states.

A quarter of all 572,600-plus rental households in Metro Atlanta faced eviction proceedings last year amid rising rents and inflation, leading the nation in Eviction Lab’s study.

New York landlords overseeing more than 2.29 million renters filed eviction papers against just over 108,000 residents, according to Eviction Lab. Even when compared to states, Metro Atlanta came out on top. The state of Virginia comes in second over the past 12 months through February, with more than 136,300 eviction filings.

“Atlanta has about 17% of the renters that New York has but far more eviction filings,” said Sarah Johnson, a research specialist with Eviction Lab. “It also signifies affordability is just a big issue in the city.”

Affordable housing professionals told Bisnow there is a tangled set of causes for the elevated level of eviction notices in Metro Atlanta, including surging rents, laws that favor landlords over renters, and even a culture of nonpayment fostered during the pandemic. 

“It doesn’t surprise me, given the housing price increases here in Metro Atlanta. It’s difficult to afford anything here anymore,” said Terri Lewinson, an associate professor of health policy and clinical practice at the Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth College and an expert on homelessness. 

The Eviction Lab tracks filings for evictions, not the results of those filings. Data on actual dispossessions is difficult to come by because of the decentralized way evictions are carried out in municipalities across the U.S. 

A 2022 study by Georgetown associate professor of law Nicole Summers, then at Northwestern University, found that eviction rates vary wildly throughout different jurisdictions depending on the rules in place for the eviction process. In Boston, some 45% of those served with eviction notices eventually are evicted, but in Denver, 79% of those served eventually are evicted. 

Atlanta’s rate of evictions per filings may not have been analyzed recently by researchers, but Summers cited a separate study that found the actual eviction rate in rural Georgia to be about 12% of those served notice.

While rent increased modestly between 2024 and 2025, climbing just over 1.5% to $1,532 per month on average for all units, rents skyrocketed 17% between 2022 and 2023, according to data compiled by iPropertyManagement. 

Declining new apartment and housing construction is set to help rents surge more than 4% this year, the second-highest rate among major U.S. metros, according to CRE Daily, citing data by Marcus & Millichap.

Rent increases since the pandemic have forced households to stretch their paychecks further to pay for a roof over their head, Atlanta Legal Aid Society Director of Advocacy Craig Goodmark said. And any hiccup in the overall economy will lead to a spike in evictions.

“If there’s not a good inventory of stable housing at a good income level, then they have to go up, [and renters] have to take on more,” Goodmark said.

Georgia had more than 67,000 previously affordable rental units slip out of the affordable range in the past three years, one of the steepest declines in the U.S., Atlanta News First reported in January, citing data from the Harvard University Joint Center for Housing Studies. 

Developers and housing advocates say local taxation on apartments and rental housing is partly to blame, with tax rates that outstrip a landlord’s ability to cover affordability measures. This is especially true for units under the low-income housing tax credit program, which requires developers to keep units affordable for as long as 30 years, they said.   

Dominium President Nick Andersen, an affordable housing developer in Georgia, told ANF that property taxes can take a quarter to half of a project’s total revenues.

“Our rents are capped. We’re being taxed like our rents are not capped,” Andersen told the publication. “At that point, you’re losing money, and you can’t afford to stay open.”

Rent increases have definitely played a role in elevated evictions for the metro area, said Margaret Stagmeier, a partner with the affordable housing developer and operator TriStar. But she said rental fraud and “a culture of nonpayment due to all the rental assistance funding” have also left landlords with little choice but to weed out delinquent renters. 

Two years ago, rental fraud became an epidemic itself in Metro Atlanta as residents obtained apartments using fraudulent pay stubs and documents. The eviction system, struggling with a backlog of evictions from the pandemic, was slow to process fraudulent renters, allowing them to stay in units for longer than would be typical in such cases, Bisnow previously reported.  

While some landlords have reported they were able to tamp down the spike in fraudulent behavior with better fraud detection technology in the application process, Stagmeier said the problem is still rampant.

“The renter’s fraud is a real issue with several landlords I know,” she said. “Several large institutional investors have pulled out of investing in Atlanta due to the high economic vacancy rates.”

While there is a cost of doing nothing when a renter fails to pay rent, the cost of doing something is also significant. 

A 2024 study by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that the process of evicting a tenant will end up costing landlords about two to three months' worth of rent when all is said and done.

The cost for filing is modest, but the filing itself likely disincentivizes some renters from paying during the eviction process, and the landlord can’t fill the space until that process is complete.

The study’s researchers found that some 15% of those evicted likely would have resumed paying rent if given the chance. 

Atlanta Legal Aid, which assists households at up to 125% of the poverty level with housing and family law, handled 20,000 cases last year, half of which were related to housing issues, Goodmark said. Economic uncertainty going into this year will likely only exacerbate the requests for help among low-income families when it comes to battling back eviction attempts.

“When things get chaotic as far as in the world, that usually translates into uncertainty and the issues that impact low-income families,” he said. “I don’t imagine it’s going to slow down.”