‘They Treat Me Like a Piece of S—’: Raphael Warnock’s Church Pays for His Home. It’s Also Trying To Evict the Poor From Theirs.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
ATLANTA—"Unemployment benefits have expired, rent is due today, and many Georgia families are at risk of eviction in the middle of a pandemic," Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) wrote in a tweet in August 2020, charging that by failing to act, his political opponents were "clearly only concerned with serving their own interests."
It may be good political rhetoric, but Warnock’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, where the senator serves as senior pastor—drawing a salary as well as a generous $7,417 monthly housing allowance —has moved to evict disadvantaged residents from an apartment building it owns, one of whom it tried to push out on account of merely $28.55 in past-due rent.
The church is the 99 percent owner of the Columbia Tower at MLK Village in downtown Atlanta, according to documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon , which describe the building as a home for the "chronically homeless" and those with "mental disabilities."
A dozen eviction lawsuits were filed against Columbia Tower residents over the course of the coronavirus pandemic, the first one in February 2020 and, most recently, in September 2022. The total sum of past-due rent cited in the lawsuits is just $4,900, a figure that could have been covered by one of Warnock’s monthly housing stipends from the church.
The lawsuits were filed by Ebenezer Baptist Church’s business partner, Columbia Residential, the 1 percent owner of the building, which manages its day-to-day operations. The revelations threaten to undermine Warnock’s efforts to cast himself as an ally of struggling Georgians working to meet rent in the face of pandemic-era challenges.
Ebenezer is not hard-up for cash—audited financial statements obtained by the Free Beacon show that Ebenezer closed out 2021 with cash and "cash equivalents" exceeding $1.2 million—and it is unclear why Columbia Residential moved so aggressively to evict its tenants.
Columbia Tower residents, who told the Free Beacon they were unaware that Ebenezer Baptist Church owns their building, described living under the rule of landlords who don’t hesitate to go to court to evict them and their neighbors, even if they’re just a few days short on rent.
"They treat me like a piece of shit. They're not compassionate at all," said Columbia Tower resident Phillip White, a 69-year-old African American who says he served in Vietnam and received an eviction notice on Sept. 20 for failure to meet a $192 rent payment. It was Columbia Tower’s second attempt to evict White, who received his first eviction notice in September 2021 for $179 in past-due rent. That case was dropped after White paid up, plus an additional $325 in fees, he told the Free Beacon .
The eight Columbia Tower residents who have been served dispossessory notices since early 2020 owed, on average, just $125 a month in rent, and five lawsuits sought rent less than one month late. Two resulted in court-ordered evictions carried out by the Fulton County Marshal’s Department. Six other eviction lawsuits were either voluntarily dismissed by the building administration or closed out by a judge for inactivity. Four others, including White’s, were filed in late September and remain open.
Beyond the building partnership, there are ties between Warnock and Columbia Residential, the property manager of the building. Columbia Residential founder and CEO Noel Khalil, who led the company until his death in October 2021, donated $14,000 to Warnock’s 2020 Senate campaign and runoff, according to Federal Election Commission records.
Months after Columbia Residential filed its first pandemic eviction lawsuit in February 2020, Warnock charged in December of that year that his Senate opponent, Kelly Loeffler (R., Ga.), was failing to protect Georgia families because she did not support COVID-19 eviction moratoriums.
Pandemic unemployment benefits and eviction protections will expire this month.
And it's all because @Kloeffler and Senate Republicans refuse to fight for families.
Pandemic relief is at stake in the #GASen race. #GASenDebate #VoteWarnock
— Reverend Raphael Warnock (@ReverendWarnock) December 7, 2020
It is unclear whether Warnock was aware of the actions of Ebenezer's business partners and the evictions they were overseeing as he was railing against such actions, and he did not respond to a request for comment. But on Aug. 17, 2020, the Fulton County Marshal’s Department executed a court-ordered writ of possession against a Columbia Tower resident who was sued in February 2020 for $28.55 in past-due rent. Court records show the resident had already vacated the apartment when the order was carried out. Had she been present, the authorities would have forcibly ejected her from the building.
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Kudos to Hershel Walker for stepping up and teaching the Reverend Warnock a about charity.
“I will pay…”
…whatever it takes to get me off the hook.
And put Warnock on it; where he damn well belongs.
Democrats have surpassed themselves in finger pointing and unmitigated gall.