Editor’s Note: Tara Woods is located in unincorporated Jonesboro and thus falls under the jurisdiction of the city’s Board of Commissioners.
One building has an entire piece of a roof missing. On others, there are either missing window panes entirely or boarded-up windows. Online complaints on the Clayton County Code Enforcement app, Click Clayton, talk of rat-infested apartments, terrible customer service, and being tricked into renting subpar apartments after being shown the models during tours.
The Tara Woods apartment complex, located in Jonesboro, has been in the news before. In July 2023, the water services were cut off by the Clayton County Water Authority due to an unpaid balance. The landlord/owner of the property at that time was Red Apple Group, Inc., a New York-based real estate and energy company. Red Apple Group, Inc. paid the balance five days after the water was shut off, but that was after residents, some of whom paid their rent, were subjected to having to temporarily move out of their apartments.
Tara Woods is back in the pages of The Atlanta Voice, but this time for blight. A new three-part series of housing stories on metro Atlanta apartment buildings that are in disrepair, and worse, Urban Blight, is beginning with Tara Woods.
Forbix, a Los Angeles-based real estate lender, foreclosed on the property and took over ownership not long after. Ventana Capital is the targeted next owner of Tara Woods, but that transaction is going to take some doing, according to Jules Stein, Ventana Capital’s managing advisor of supportive housing.
Financing is at the heart of any real estate deal. Whether it’s a loan to support some of the cost of purchasing property or money to go towards what needs to be done in order to bring a property up to snuff. In the case of Tara Woods, it is the latter. Ventana Capital will need several million dollars in order to fix what is wrong inside Tara Woods.
“Hopefully, within the next 45 days, we will have the funding in place, and we will begin to make a difference,” Stein said.
Listings on the Tara Woods apartments website and on Apartments.com have 2-3 bedroom apartments listed between $1,295 and $1,495. The average cost of a one-bedroom apartment in Atlanta is now $1,758, according to data provided by RentCafe.com. So an apartment at Tara Woods, which is located a few feet from Tara Blvd., a busy intrastate highway that is a few miles from I-75 and minutes from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, feels like a steal.
The photos of the apartments on the Tara Woods apartments website show brightly lit rooms, clean floors, and new appliances. The reality for residents of Tara Woods is much different. On a walk through the apartment complex on Tuesday, May 20, the on-site management office was closed. A sign in the window made that point clear.
Phone calls to the Tara Woods management about whether there are plans to do something about the condemned building were returned to The Atlanta Voice. According to an employee in the management office, there are plans for the demolition and rebuilding of the apartment building.
The Atlanta Voice also contacted Clayton County Code Enforcement by phone and via the Click Clayton app for information on whether or not Tara Woods is violating residential codes. By the time of the publication of this story, there has been no word from Clayton County Code Enforcement.
However, Jonesboro’s mayor returned a phone call regarding Tara Woods.
“We have to have protections in place so the counties can do what we need to do in cases like that,” Jonesboro Mayor Donya L. Sartor said. “There needs to be legislation that includes housing.”
Stein says if the deal goes through, Ventana Capital won’t handle the property and its residents the way previous ownership has done in the past.
“We’re going to do it right,” Stein told The Atlanta Voice by phone Tuesday afternoon. “I can’t imagine that it will fall apart from here.”