How do renters participate in shaping the city?

I walked into the library in South Chicago around 9:50 AM for the alderman-led meeting that was scheduled to start just a few minutes later. There were police officers standing at the front desk near the large metal detectors and sign-in desks stationed near the entrance of the small auditorium where the meeting was scheduled to be held. 10:00 AM came and went, and I heard someone behind me ask “What time does the meeting start?” The alderman came out onto the stage with a microphone, a polo, and jeans to say good morning to the crowd. “Good afternoon,” someone shouted back, and the audience—now about 50-60 people large—laughed. The alderman smiled and apologized for the delay due to some technical difficulties they were addressing backstage and promised to start the session soon before disappearing again.

The meeting started a few minutes later, and a projector displayed a presentation on the stage. The alderman discussed different operations currently ongoing in the neighborhood such as clean-ups and the upcoming developments scheduled to take place. As they talked, people raised their hands with questions, many full of a clear passion for their neighborhood. One spoke about the visual culture of a store that seemed insulting, another lamented over the death of five neighbors who were shot in the park on Father’s Day, and another man expressed his frustrations about the area near his house. “This used to be a beautiful little area,” the man said, exasperated by all the efforts he had made to get the city to act on the trash and violence happening in that space, “I don’t know what the heck happened. I mean…are they renters?”

  • “The homeowners have a stake in the community, so they're more apt to do things rather than renters that come and go."

    Alex (North)

  • “Everything is just a little bit more transitory. People aren't as invested in making those improvements. I feel like there's more litter around and it feels not…established."

    Wiliam (North)

  • “We're in our buildings. Ideally, we want a nice-looking place, but owners are out there cleaning up their own building or anybody else's building. They sometimes say, ‘You’re a renter; why do you care about the neighborhood?’”

    Ethan (North)

  • “Before I bought this house, I was a renter. And I was still very interested in what was happening in my neighborhood. Sometimes people would say, well, you're just a renter, and I say well, it's still my neighborhood, and I'm still very interested in it. I’m not saying renters aren’t involved, some renters, or especially the corporate nomads who are traveling around and get moved every couple of years, don't have a stake in the neighborhood like I would having lived here so long.”

    Jerry (North)

  • “People would like to delineate between owners and renters and say that an owner has more of a voice than a renter. I just don't agree with that. I think that it's manipulated to make renters perceive that they have less of a voice than an owner.”

    Naomi (Souh)

  • “I sometimes think that I don't have as much right, because I don't actually own property...I think it's internal. Or maybe external. Maybe like, just like a cultural thing, like a society kind of thing.”

    Brenda (North)

  • “As a community organizer, it's easier for me to access someone, even if they're a renter, in a single-family structure than in an apartment building because there's no access to their interior. So, I can't leave a flier. I can’t access their mailboxes. Everything is locked down. So those large apartment buildings, in my community, unless I know someone inside, I can't get my information to those people. So, I think that we lose a lot by the type of housing style that you live in. And that I think exacerbates that difference. I think they do care, but…we can't reach them.”

    Ruth (South)

Quantitative Considerations

Due to the common association among interviewees of renters and trash, I use Chicago Department of Health (CDH) data on the percentage of people within a community area who said their neighborhood was generally free of litter as a metric for neighborhood care and clean-up. In Figure 15, I compare this figure in each community area with the reported percentage of housing units occupied by their owners (ACS) as a metric of renter versus homeowner presence.

There is a significant correlation between home ownership and lack of litter. Another interesting phenomenon is that for communities with similar homeownership rates (most visible around the 37-62% ownership range), factors of Hardship[1] are correlated with higher or lower levels of litter—a lower Hardship score puts communities above the trend line (less litter) while a higher Hardship score puts communities below the trend line (more litter). In short, there is a significant correlation between the lack of home ownership in a community and the presence of litter. This pattern reinforces stereotypes that homeowners make about renters not being as invested as they are in the care of the community. However, the further distinction in the presence of hardship on the presence of litter indicates that there may be more at play in the visual appeal of the neighborhood than just home ownership status.

[1] The Hardship Index is described as “a composite score reflecting hardship in the community (higher values indicate greater hardship)” originally created by the Brookings Institute in 1906 (Chicago Health Atlas). Further details are in the Demographics chapter.

Conclusion

Altogether, invested renters (as I would categorize the ones I spoke to), are aware of the stereotypes that homeowners make about renters, and may even agree with the sentiment at large. However, these invested renters also distinguish themselves from these stereotypes by the amount of time they have spent in the neighborhood and assert their right to involvement in changemaking despite their renter status. Both elements connect back to the two parts of the ownership definition established by

residents at the start of this chapter (temporal investment and change making abilities). In addition to the stereotypes that may prevent renters who want to engage with the community from doing so, there are also logistical barriers to engagement that can make mobilizing them with traditional outreach methods difficult.