A win for renters in Shelbyville shows strength in organizing
“The one thing I think people just realize and are starting to come into more is that they have more in common with other renters than they do with their landlords,” says Tristan Call, longtime activist and author of a report looking at rental housing conditions in Bedford County about 60 miles south of Davidson County.
Call and others with the Bedford County Listening Project, a dedicated group of renters, organizers, and advocates, released a groundbreaking report earlier this year that sheds light on the escalating housing crisis in Shelbyville in Bedford County. Titled Defending Our Homes, the report presents a comprehensive analysis of the challenges faced by renters in the community and calls for immediate action to address these pressing issues.
Over the course of six months, from February to August 2023, the Bedford County Listening Project conducted an extensive research initiative, including door-knocking, conversations and in-depth interviews with Shelbyville’s renters. The report revealed alarming, but not necessarily surprising, findings about the rent burden on rural renters.
Renters in Shelbyville are grappling with an unprecedented rent burden, with an average reported 31 percent increase in rent within just one year. A staggering 46 percent of respondents now allocate more than half of their income to housing, while 10 percent spend more than three-quarters of their earnings on housing.
The report takes to task neglected repairs, noting that renters report that landlords are failing to address critical repairs, jeopardizing renters’ health and well-being. Renters are hesitant to seek help from the city due to fears of eviction and homelessness.
“The power imbalance we see just means that so many people don’t have a choice but to accept those conditions,” Call says. “Most people will not choose to lose their housing, and so it happens that they’ll end up in conditions that are less than they deserve because they absolutely have no other choice.”
The report showed widespread and persistent discrimination and racism in renting practices in the rural community, causing harm to individuals and hindering efforts to unite for better housing policies. Most folks wouldn’t expect a county an hour away from Nashville to have close to the same housing costs, but the National Low-Income Housing Coalition also estimates that a Bedford County renter would need to work three full-time jobs at minimum wage to afford a two-bedroom apartment, with a calculated Housing Wage of $25.96 an hour.
On top of that, there’s often a lack of accountability once things are reported. Landlords frequently disregard housing and discrimination laws with impunity. Renters urgently require the enforcement of their constitutional right to organize and associate freely to improve housing conditions.
And once they get to court, they face unfair treatment in housing court, according to the report. A significant 78 percent of renters report feeling unfairly treated in housing court. The report underscores the need for renters to have access to free legal representation to level the playing field as most landlords come with the upperhand in civil courts and there’s no burden on the government as it stands to provide counsel on these matters. For example, one renter reported that she was evicted after her landlord found out she had a child and was already paying more than 50 percent of her income in rent before eviction.
This report, and a number of actions by the BCLP, worked toward a recent win in Bedford County: The Shelbyville City Council voted in favor of renters’ rights and a commitment to adhere to federal housing guidance in public housing within the city. The Shelbyville City Council supported comments made by the Safe and Affordable Housing Committee to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, advocating for protections for tenants in federally-subsidized properties.
“Essentially, we’re just trying to say that if landlords are going to take loan money from the government to build housing and then accept government money for section 8, the government should be following up with the money they give for these projects and making sure its investment is protected,” Call said.
The Bedford County Listening Project’s both calls for attention to these pressing issues and safeguard the rights and well-being of Shelbyville’s renters, but also set forth a set of actions and requests to put priority to solving the problem, asking the county for the following:
- Guarantee Support for Renters in Housing Court: Bedford County and the City of Shelbyville should collaborate with the Bedford County Listening Project to establish free universal legal counsel for renters facing eviction.
- Extend the Shelbyville Renter Committee Charter and Establish an Office of the Tenant Advocate: The City of Shelbyville should continue the Safe and Affordable Housing Committee’s charter and establish an Office of the Tenant Advocate to assist renters in exercising their rights and accessing resources.
- Establish a Landlord Registry: The City of Shelbyville should create a landlord registry for landlords renting out more than five housing units, including name and contact information.
“There should be a better way for people in small communities to be able to seek out information and find out if someone is a decent person to rent from, or if they’ve changed hands or ownership several times recently, they should be able to know that easily,” Call said.
One item the report also called for was a Renters’ Bill of Rights:
- Renters need a codes department that is accessible and responsive to substandard housing
- Renters need protection against retaliation from landlords when reporting needed repairs, both to codes and to those landlords
- Renters deserve for repairs to be made in a timely manner and to not be stuck with the bill when the repair is not their responsibility
- Landlords need to have a clear, published process for how tenants can report and request repairs and track the progress of those repairs.
- Renters need notice and legal representation when facing eviction.
- Renters deserve city, county, and state officials that care about and respond to their issues.
- Renters deserve safe housing free from bugs, mold, leaking roofs, pipes, toilets, broken floors, and unsafe electrical issues.
- Renters need to feel safe in their housing and landlords should give notice before entering their homes.
- Renters need a copy of their lease.
- Renters should be free from high non-refundable move-in fees.
- Renters deserve accommodations for disabilities.
- Renters should be protected from illegal evictions, lockouts, and utility cutoffs.
- Renters should not have exorbitant late fees.
- Renters need notice when their rent will be raised and limits on how much it can be raised.
- Renters deserve to know who their landlord is and have contact information for the owner of their home.
- Renters’ right to organize and ability to freely exercise their constitutional rights to speech and association should be protected.
- People’s right to exist, occupy public space, and access public services should not be limited based on their perceived socioeconomic status or housing status.
Call acknowledges that while a win with the council in Shelbyville is meaningful, cultural change and shifts will need to happen. The release of the Defending Our Homes report and Shelbyville’s willingness to note the need for more protections for renters, marks a turning point in the fight for safe, affordable housing in Shelbyville, Call said, and offers an outline for how other communities can fight for housing justice in their own backyards. Call notes that many in the state call Nashville a blue dot in a red state, but the more you spread out and talk with folks rurally, the more they realize they have in common.
“And then we can talk about how much overall power people have together,” Call said.