A victory in the struggle for safe, healthy housing

Everyone deserves to live in safe, healthy homes. Yet for years, Millennia Housing Management has gotten federal money to rent to low-income families while forcing tenants to live in dangerous conditions. The corporation is one of the biggest affordable housing companies in the country, running over 30,000 apartment units in 280 properties across 26 states.  

The conditions in Millennia properties have been horrific: Tenants lived with rats running through their apartments, roaches infesting their homes, garbage piling up, pipes constantly leaking, and toxic mold that made families sick. Several people have died in Millennia properties, including three people killed by a fire in Arkansas and a mother and child killed by a carbon monoxide leak in Mississippi.  

But after two years of pressure from our Millennia Resistance Campaign—a coalition of Millennia tenants, organizers, and legal allies--we've scored a huge victory: The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has banned Millennia from getting federal contracts for five years, forcing the company to sell all of their HUD-subsidized properties. 

AFSC’s Atlanta Economic Justice Program first began supporting Millennia tenants in 2018 at Forest Cove, an apartment complex in southeast Atlanta where tenants lived with terrible conditions for years. When we first urged HUD to compel Millennia to fix things at Forest Cove, it wasn’t effective. We would report problems, and HUD would simply tell us to accept Millennia’s response.  

Soon, we realized we needed to join forces with other Millennia tenants across the country. In 2022, we launched the Millennia Resistance Campaign, bringing together tenants, organizers, and legal helpers from about 10 states.  

Keeping people connected across such big distances has not been easy. Our Facebook group became an important place where tenants could share updates and stay motivated, even when progress seemed slow. We organized actions online and at Millennia complexes around the U.S. We kept up our pressure on HUD at both local and national levels, providing them with documentation of mismanagement and tenant accounts of onsite mistreatment. 

Eventually, the media started paying attention to the problems. In Atlanta, public scrutiny intensified as conditions at Forest Cove got so bad that a judge condemned the building in 2021, and the city had to spend millions to move almost 200 families to other housing. 

After months of organizing and advocacy, our coalition got our first good news in December 2023: Millennia had been stopped from getting new HUD contracts. A few months later came even bigger news: HUD's five-year ban on federal contracts. This ban led Millennia to put all their properties up for sale. 

This victory—achieved through persistent organizing by tenants across multiple states—is a significant win in the struggle for safe, affordable housing. It demonstrates the power of collective action and shows what's possible when residents unite and demand accountability. 

Today, our Millennia Resistance Campaign is in a crucial new phase. We're working to make sure these properties go to responsible buyers who will fix them up and work with tenants throughout the process. One major buyer is already at the table, and we're in active negotiations. Given the uncertain political situation, we're pushing to finish these agreements as quickly as possible to protect tenants’ interests. 

As Becky, one of our tenants in Memphis, put it: "The fact that it was necessary to form a national movement against a company that's supposed to provide vulnerable people with healthy, safe, and dignified living conditions speaks to the systemic failures in our affordable housing system." But our campaign shows that when tenants organize together, we can win. 

Recent developments—including a federal raid on the Millennia CEO’s home—suggest there may have been even more wrongdoing behind the scenes than we knew. While we celebrate the victories that tenant organizing has achieved so far, our campaign is moving forward, focusing on securing positive outcomes for tenants through this critical transition period.  

Millennia is not the only company profiting from exploiting low-income communities. But by holding this corporation accountable, we are sending a clear message to negligent property owners that their practices will not be tolerated.