Georgia Senator Raphael Warnock is a respected pastor of the world-famous Ebeneezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. Martin Luther King used to deliver his thundering sermons from the pulpit there. People make pilgrimages to visit this shrine of the civil rights movement and politicians from both parties have spoken there.
But did you know that in addition to being the Senator from Georgia, Warnock is also a slum lord? It’s true. As pastor of the Ebeneezer Baptist Church, Warnock is responsible for overseeing a property owned by the church, Columbia Tower at MLK Village. Last Friday, Warnock angrily denied that any tenants from Columbia had been evicted, saying they were “false charges” and were an attempt to “sully the name of Ebeneezer Baptist Church.”
But records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show that Columbia Towers filed eviction notices against three residents — one of whom owed just $115.
“If you don’t pay your rent by the fifth, a dispossessory notice comes out that week,” a resident told a Free Beacon reporter. “They won’t accept the payment after the fifth.”
All told, six residents received eviction notices during the pandemic after Warnock said highlighting the eviction notices was an attempt to smear his church.
The records conflict with Warnock’s statements over the past week denying that Columbia Tower—which is 99-percent-owned by the Ebenezer Baptist Church, where he serves as senior pastor—has tried to oust anyone. Fulton County marshals carried out two court-ordered evictions on residents at the property, one in August 2020 and the other in February 2022.
“There have been no evictions, full stop,” Warnock said when asked about the Free Beacon report during a debate on Sunday. Warnock claimed the news was “one more example of Herschel Walker and his allies lying” and “trying to sully the name of Dr. King’s church, John Lewis’s church, for short term-political gain.”
Warnock did not respond to a request for comment.
Technically speaking — and I mean “technically” in a purely legal context to be able to claim that Warnock was not responsible for the evictions — it’s correct to say that Warnock is not personally liable for evicting tenants or for developing policies relating to evictions.
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But by any measurement, he is morally responsible. He’s also morally responsible for the pests, the filth, the garbage piling up in trash rooms, and the poorly maintained elevators that force some residents in wheelchairs to call the fire department to get up and down the stairs.
Court filings reviewed by the Free Beacon appear to back up claims from Columbia Tower residents that there are problems with the living conditions at the building.
Two men filed separate lawsuits against the building in February and May of this year claiming they were injured after the elevator ceiling collapsed on them in May 2020.
One of the alleged victims said he “was in an elevator at Columbia at MLK Village Towers as the elevator ceiling abruptly fell down,” knocking him unconscious and resulting in injuries that cost him over $50,000 in medical bills.
The property was given a $5 million grant from the state of Georgia — part of the cash haul given to states as part of the American Rescue Plan.
“They’ll cut the grass and the bushes, and fix the elevator sometimes,” a resident said. “But the vents haven’t been blown out for years. The dust, it’s sickening, actually.”
“They change the furniture. The furniture is new or different from when I moved in here, but that’s the most I’ve seen. I haven’t seen any upgrades or anything like that,” the resident told the Free Beacon.
Warnock can pretend to wash his hands of this mess. But he is no better than the building owners he and other activists refer to as “slum lords.”
