Fulton County announced this week that it is reviving a $1.2 million rental assistance program covering Alpharetta and Milton renters facing housing instability, with the Board of Commissioners approving the renewed agreement Wednesday, Sept. 2.
The program, called Hope to Home, uses federal funding to help eligible residents pay a portion of their rent, CBS Atlanta reported. The county partnered with the Urban League of Greater Atlanta to run it, and the Urban League said applications will open soon. Applicants must live in Fulton County but outside Atlanta city limits and earn no more than 80% of the area median income under HUD guidelines.
The county originally launched Hope to Home in 2019 but paused it after 2023.
The revival comes as new data paints a stark picture of evictions across the region. The Princeton-based Eviction Lab found the five-county Atlanta metro area recorded 142,047 eviction filings in the 12 months ending this September, GPB reported Monday, Sept. 14. That works out to a 24% filing rate, or one case for every four renter households. The national average is 7%.
No city-level eviction numbers for Alpharetta or Milton appear in the report. The highest filing concentrations are in Norcross, Stone Mountain, Jonesboro, Redan and Forest Park, according to Rough Draft Atlanta. But both cities sit in the five-county footprint where the crisis is concentrated.
Alpharetta's rental landscape
Alpharetta maintains a policy capping rental housing at 32% of its housing stock, with the remaining 68% reserved for for-sale properties, Community Development Director Kathi Cook said at a March 11 town hall, as Appen Media reported. The city also requires rental developments to be part of a 25-acre mixed-use project.
Neither Alpharetta nor Milton officials have publicly commented on the Eviction Lab data or announced any local policy response.
Why filings are so high
Eviction Lab researcher Peter Hepburn, an associate professor of sociology at Rutgers University-Newark, presented the findings at an invitation-only session at the Atlanta History Center on Thursday, Sept. 10. He compared the metro area's filing rate to 5% in New York, 9% in Houston and 9% in Nashville.
One driver: Georgia requires landlords to give tenants only three business days' notice before filing. Filing fees in the metro range from $54 to $75, well below the $110 national average.
"The national average is $110, so it's cheaper here," Hepburn said at the Sept. 10 forum. "And if you look next door at Alabama, it's about $250. And you know what? There are a lot fewer eviction cases that get filed in Alabama."
Ninety-five percent of metro Atlanta eviction cases involve nonpayment of rent, and the typical tenant is only one month behind, according to Rough Draft Atlanta. About 65% of filings are ultimately dismissed after tenants pay. Even dismissed cases leave a record that can follow renters when they apply for future housing.
Atlanta Chief of Staff Courtney English said at the forum that the city is focused on preventing evictions before they happen. Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens' administration has created a $2 million eviction diversion program and has 14,600 affordable housing units built or in the pipeline, according to Rough Draft Atlanta.
Fulton County residents outside Atlanta city limits who need rental assistance can contact the Urban League of Greater Atlanta about the Hope to Home program.
