The Atlanta Lawyer February 2018 | Page 14

IN THE COMMUNITY Helping Tenants in Need: Fulton County's Housing Court Assistance Center Cole Thaler Atlanta Volunteer Lawyer's Foundation [email protected] Andrew Thompson Housing Court Assistance Project andrew@andrew thompsonlaw.com Mary Christopher could see the paper fluttering on her apartment door from half a block away. Re- turning home after a long waitress- ing shift, she came face-to-face with the harsh reality that faces about 40,000 Fulton County resi- dents every year: a dispossessory summons filed by her landlord. Mary did not know much about Georgia evictions. Although she sometimes heard through the grapevine that one neighbor or another got evicted, she had never gone through it herself. She read the dispossessory summons care- fully. It said that she was “com- 14 February 2018 manded and required personally or by attorney” to go to a certain room at the courthouse “on or before the seventh day from the date of service of the within af- fidavit and summons…to answer the affidavit in writing or orally in person.” Mary did not understand ev- erything that the dispossessory summons said, but she recog- nized that she was supposed to go to the courthouse to respond. She had been through many dif- ficulties with her apartment, but she wasn’t sure how much to tell the court. Should she write it all