Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation (AVLF) is a nonprofit that gives free legal help to qualified people. It helps with eviction and landlord problems and with protective orders for survivors of intimate partner abuse. Help starts with a phone call, not a visit to the main office.
Housing Justice League is a group in Atlanta where renters and homeowners organize to defend their right to stay in their homes. They run a tenant hotline, give out eviction defense manuals, and help neighbors form tenant associations. Volunteers also knock on doors to tell people facing eviction about their rights.
S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that works to stop housing discrimination. People who believe they were treated unfairly while renting, buying, or financing a home because of their race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability, or family status can call or go online to file a complaint for free.
Metro Fair Housing Services is a nonprofit civil rights group in Atlanta that has worked since 1974 to stop housing discrimination. It takes housing discrimination complaints, gives free housing counseling, teaches classes on fair housing, and tests and investigates possible violations.
Atlanta Economic Justice is a local program of the American Friends Service Committee. It teaches organizing skills to grassroots groups and young leaders. It also backs campaigns for housing rights, safe renting and water rights in the Atlanta area.
Mad Housers is a volunteer-run Atlanta nonprofit that builds small, simple shelters called huts for people sleeping outside. The huts give people a locking door, a roof, and a safe place to keep their belongings, and the group also speaks at schools and community events about homelessness.
This program helps longtime homeowners in certain Westside and Southside Atlanta neighborhoods near the BeltLine stay in their homes as property values and taxes rise. It pays the yearly increase in property taxes above what a qualifying homeowner owed in 2019, through 2030, for people who bought and have lived in their home since before March 2017 and meet income limits.
Central Outreach and Advocacy Center is a downtown Atlanta nonprofit that helps adults who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Staff help with IDs, birth certificates, Social Security cards, food stamps, Medicaid, SSI/SSDI, and job readiness classes. Partner groups also come on site for health care, eye clinics, and more.
Frontline Response is a Christian nonprofit in Atlanta. It works with people who are homeless and with people caught in sex trafficking, and it runs programs for children. This winter it is teaming up with the City of Decatur and DeKalb County on a warming center for people without housing on dangerously cold nights.
HUD is the federal housing agency. It has a regional office in Atlanta at 77 Forsyth St. SW. HUD answers questions about FHA home loans and points people to housing counselors, local housing agencies, and 2-1-1 for shelter. It does not run shelters itself.
NACA is a national housing group that helps people buy a home and keep it. It teaches free classes, gives one-on-one counseling, and offers a home loan with no down payment, no closing costs and no fees. Homeowners who struggle with their payment can ask NACA to work with their lender for a lower payment.
This is the Georgia office that licenses and oversees insurance companies and agents, and looks into reports of insurance fraud. It also works on fire safety through inspections, education, and reporting. If you have a problem with an insurance company, an agent, or a claim, you can file a complaint with its Consumer Services Division.
Atlanta Legal Aid Society gives free help with civil legal problems to people who cannot afford a lawyer. This is the Fulton County downtown headquarters office. They help with things like housing, debt, family and domestic violence issues, disability and health rights, and help for seniors and veterans.
The Justice Resource Center is a self-help legal center inside the Fulton County court complex in downtown Atlanta. It helps people who are handling a court case without a lawyer. You can get family law forms, legal research tools, a free monthly family law clinic, and short talks with attorneys. Staff are not lawyers and cannot give legal advice.
Georgia ACT is a statewide nonprofit that supports organizations and professionals working on affordable housing and community development across Georgia, including metro Atlanta. It holds an annual fall affordable housing conference, trainings, and advocacy days, and informs the public about housing policy issues.
PSL Atlanta is the local branch of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, a socialist political party. It runs the Atlanta Liberation Center, a community space in Candler Park where people can attend free rallies, political education classes, study groups, and community events like cultural fundraisers and breakfasts.
This is the Georgia Department of Community Affairs program that gives rent-help vouchers to very low-income people and families. The voucher pays part of the rent straight to a private landlord. DCA also runs special vouchers for people who are homeless, fleeing abuse, veterans, and young adults leaving foster care.
Develop & Empower USA (D&E) is a HUD-approved housing counseling agency with its headquarters in East Point, Georgia. It helps people get ready to buy a home, buy one, and keep it, with credit counseling, homebuyer classes, and foreclosure help. It also runs job training, youth, senior, and veteran programs.
Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership (ANDP) is a nonprofit that builds, fixes up, and pays for affordable homes and apartments in metro Atlanta. It sells homes to buyers with low or moderate incomes, rents out apartments and a few houses, lends money to housing developers, and trains neighborhood leaders for free.
HUD is the federal housing agency. Its Georgia page sends people to the right place for housing counseling, public housing and Section 8 vouchers, FHA home loans, disaster help, and housing discrimination complaints. HUD says it is not a direct service provider, so most help comes through other groups it points you to.
