How Renters Can Be Neighborhood Advocates

37% of all American residents rent their homes and yet the voice of renters is often underrepresented in local decision-making.

When the existing organization fails you, start your own.

So what should you do if you’ve attended a community meeting and felt that as a renter (or any other type of person, for that matter), your voice was ignored and unrepresented? McGinn says you shouldn’t be discouraged. Many different sorts of groups can help organize around neighborhood issues. In McGinn’s time, he’s seen environmental groups, bicycle groups, tenant unions and immigrant organizations all take a stand on neighborhood issues.

And if none of those coalitions are present in your area or seem to fit your concerns, McGinn recommends just starting your own group. (Check out McGinn’s podcast interview with Sonja Trauss, one of the founders of the YIMBY movement to hear an inspiring story about tenant organizing and activism.) Want to slow cars on a busy street in your neighborhood? Gather five or six neighbors who also care about this, give yourselves a name—the “North Side Association for Safe Streets,” for instance—and start talking about how to make change. You don’t need 501(c)(3) status or even a website—just a group of people who care.

McGinn advises that you don’t completely ignore the more established neighborhood forums, but check in with them occasionally and try to make inroads where you can. With a few neighbors by your side, you’ll have more sway in a conversation. “Even just 5 people standing up in a meeting saying ‘I bike’ or ‘I support this’ helps,” says McGinn. “It’s a lot harder to yell at your neighbor when she’s saying ‘I just want to be safe crossing the street.’”

Organizing around an issue makes a lot of sense from a renters’ perspective. Renters may not have the time or interest in showing up to every single community meeting or be as concerned about plans for a new community center that’s years from breaking ground. But issues like safer streets, bike lanes, and new developments are all tangible, concrete things to rally around.

More Tips for Getting Active

In addition to McGinn’s valuable encouragement to start your own neighborhood group if none of the existing ones work for you, I have three more tips for getting active as a renter:

1. Get to know your neighbors. This can be hard in a rental-heavy neighborhood. If you live in an apartment, you’re probably less likely to encounter people sitting on their porch or gardening since most units don’t have porches or gardens. Additionally, because renters move more regularly than homeowners, it’s more challenging to get to know all of your neighbors before some of them leave and others move in. In the apartments where I’ve lived, there is no culture of bringing homemade cookies or pies over to a new neighbor (although maybe it’s different in other cities). In fact, I only know a handful of people in my building and many residents don’t even say hi to one another in the hallway. I wish it weren’t this way and I’ve tried to break through that, but it’s the unfortunate reality.

Getting to know your neighbors is helpful for personal reasons—new friends conveniently located steps away, someone to hold onto a spare key if you get locked out, etc.—but getting to know your neighbors is even more helpful for community reasons. When the water main outside my apartment broke earlier this year and public works employees seemed to be on my street every day and night for weeks, I was able to talk to my neighbors about the situation. Is your water still cloudy upstairs? Yes. Did you hear that jackhammer at 2am this morning? Yes, I contacted the landlord about it. Did you notice the fire hydrant is still leaking? Yes, I emailed our alderman to complain. Build your coalition with the people around you.

2. Find out when neighborhood meetings are and show up. Before you invest in starting your own group, do take the time to visit the existing neighborhood organizations to see whether they’re involved in the issues you care about. This will give you a sense of present concerns in your neighborhood and the process for advocating, as well as connect you with local leaders. If, in the end, you decide it’s not for you, you’ve still given yourself a better picture of the neighborhood landscape.

3. Work through your landlord. Get to know your landlord and figure out what his/her involvement is in local issues. Does she live two hours away and hardly ever visit the property? Or does she live upstairs? If your landlord is more present in the community and you’re able to develop a good relationship with this person, you can work with them on issues you care about. If the landlord owns several properties, that person’s voice could have more sway with local leaders. Of course, working with your landlord can be challenging, especially if they’re not very easy to reach or communicate with. But it can also be very productive; after all, they need their tenants in order to make money and if a dissatisfied tenant threatens to leave because of issues in the neighborhood, that might encourage the landlord to step up.

I want to conclude this essay by saying I’m not writing this because I’m an expert at neighborhood involvement. Not by a long stretch. But one of my biggest goals of 2017 is to get better at it, so I hope to be able to build my knowledge and share it with you as I go.

This article was originally published by Rachel Quednau on Strong Towns, https://www.strongtowns.org .

Rachel Quednau serves as Communications Director for Strong Towns and has been a regular contributor and podcast host for Strong Towns since 2015. Rachel is a Midwesterner currently living in Milwaukee, WI. Previously, she worked for several organizations fighting to end homelessness at the federal and local levels. She draws from her experiences living in New York City, Washington, DC, Walla Walla, WA and Minneapolis, MN to help her build better places wherever she is. You can find her musings on Twitter @rquednau. One of her favorite ways to get to know a new city is by going for a run in it.

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