Real estate investors are buying up Chattanooga area apartment complexes for prices that have shot up 35% to 40% over the past several years, and rents are rising along with those values, leaving some tenants struggling to hang onto their housing.
“We’re all mad. It ain’t right. But it doesn’t make a difference,” said Britney Cordell, 34, who has lived at Rainbow Creek apartments on Standifer Gap Road for more than a decade.
In December 2019, Philadelphia-based Springer Capital – which bills itself as a proactive real estate private equity firm – bought the 200-unit Rainbow Creek complex for $9.1 million. In the past year, residents of the complex said, the new owners let leases expire and go month-to-month and ended the property’s acceptance of federal Section 8 housing vouchers for low-income residents. They began renovating the apartments.
In a series of letters posted on doors, the new management told dozens of current residents in the coming weeks they would need to pay the new price, around 40% more, to live in what would later be marketed as The Emery. A two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment now leases for $1,049 a month, according to local listings.
The Rev. Sheila Harris can see the work crews renovating Rainbow Creek from the parking lot of her church next door, St. James A.M.E. Church.