Building Community: How This Atlanta Landlord Is Tackling Poverty And Transforming Lives

Like food and water, having a roof over your head is essential for survival. But with housing costs continuing to climb, many Americans are struggling to secure this basic human need. In fact, a recent report shows a record 12 million U.S. households now spend more than half of their income on rent. But there’s a landlord in Atlanta, Georgia, who is working to change this—one affordable community at a time.

From Board Game To Board Room

Margaret Stagmeier was in sixth grade when she was crowned the Monopoly champion of her class.

“I knew right then and there I wanted to be a landlord,” she told Southern Living. “And that's effectively what I do for a living. I buy real estate and play Monopoly… and I try not to ever sell!”

She said this is a key element not only in the classic board game, but in real life. “Especially in the large apartment communities where we invest, having that stable ownership truly helps stabilize the families and the community.”

As President of TI Asset Management, Stagmeier has purchased and transformed 3,500 units in the Atlanta area over the past three decades. She credits the accounting degree she earned from Georgia State University for teaching her how approach these projects with a different perspective.

“Not necessarily how to make money on a day-to-day basis, but how can you use real estate as a tool to create value,” Stagmeier explained. “And what that's morphed into is using real estate to create value not only for the landlord, but for the tenants as well.”

Creating Community From Chaos

Creating value is not an easy task when you consider most of the blighted apartments Stagmeier acquires are plagued with high rates of crime, damaged infrastructure, and tenants living in extreme poverty. So how does she do it? She said it begins with building trust.

“You can't have community capital for a community without neighbors trusting each other,” said Stagmeier. “Number one, you've got to make them safe. You've got to hire the armed security to come in and get rid of the tenants that are bad actors and who are not following the rules.”

Next comes the issue of kids and education. Often these low-income communities are surrounded by low-performing schools. Stagmeier said the reason boils down to student transiency.

“Research shows that every time a child moves, they lose three months of education in a nine-month school year. And that's the difference between an affluent school and a low-performing school,” she stated. “All the landlord has to do is raise rent $100 and that family is going to move and take their children out of that school.”

To combat this, Stagmeier offers her tenants free after-school programs and academic tutoring through her nonprofit group, Star-C.

“The families that had their kids in the after-school program were single parents living on seven, eight dollars an hour. But what the after-school program did was it gave them peace of mind that their children were safe after school. And I noticed that these tenants renewed their leases and they tended to be better citizens at the apartment community.”

Star-C provides other resident services such as wellness programs run by local healthcare clinics, free energy upgrades to help lower utility bills and eviction relief scholarships. The group also collaborates with Kaboom! to set up community playgrounds where residents can interact and make social connections.

Once these wrap-around services are in place, Stagmeier said, “Then we start renovating. We start investing in the interiors and the exteriors to make the properties function better, be healthier, and to be aesthetically pleasing.”

But beyond the physical changes taking place, she said there is something bigger and far more important developing.

“All along we're building community,” she said. “They now know their neighbors. And the tenant sees that we're taking care of them, we're taking care of their children and providing them resources to help improve their lives.”

Building For The Future

The self-proclaimed “Compassionate Capitalist”, as seen on her Instagram profile, has now chronicled one of her success stories in her book Blighted: A Story of People, Politics, and an American Housing Miracle. Through personal interviews with tenants and stakeholders, Stagmeier lays out the important link between marginalized housing and intergenerational poverty and how her proven process can help break the cycle.

Stagmeier has her sights set on expanding beyond Georgia’s borders in Southern cities such as Chattanooga, Charleston, and Birmingham. She also hopes to partner with other housing organizations and nonprofits to create a national best practices model.

“There's really no personal goal other than to help people improve their lives and to create a better model for housing,” she said. “And I think that there are more landlords out there that think like me.”

When asked if she still dabbles in the game of Monopoly, Stagmeier said, “Actually, I do. And I lose! The kids beat me!” She laughed and said it gives her hope that the next generation will take over her mission.