Tenants Quotes

“When tenants relinquished protections by falling behind in rent or otherwise breaking their rental agreement, landlords could respond by neglecting repairs. Or as Sherrena put it to tenants: “If I give you a break, you give me a break.” Tenants could trade their dignity and children’s health for a roof over their head. 13 Between 2009 and 2011, nearly half of all renters in Milwaukee experienced a serious and lasting housing problem. 14 More than 1 in 5 lived with a broken window; a busted appliance; or mice, cockroaches, or rats for more than three days. One-third experienced clogged plumbing that lasted more than a day. And 1 in 10 spent at least a day without heat. African American households were the most likely to have these problems—as were those where children slept. Yet the average rent was the same, whether an apartment had housing problems or did not. Tenants who fell behind either had to accept unpleasant, degrading, and sometimes dangerous housing conditions or be evicted. But from a business point of view, this arrangement could be lucrative.”

“When tenants relinquished protections by falling behind in rent or otherwise breaking their rental agreement, landlords could respond by neglecting repairs. Or as Sherrena put it to tenants: “If I give you a break, you give me a break.” Tenants could trade their dignity and children’s health for a roof over their head. 13 Between 2009 and 2011, nearly half of all renters in Milwaukee experienced a serious and lasting housing problem. 14 More than 1 in 5 lived with a broken window; a busted appliance; or mice, cockroaches, or rats for more than three days. One-third experienced clogged plumbing that lasted more than a day. And 1 in 10 spent at least a day without heat. African American households were the most likely to have these problems—as were those where children slept. Yet the average rent was the same, whether an apartment had housing problems or did not. Tenants who fell behind either had to accept unpleasant, degrading, and sometimes dangerous housing conditions or be evicted. But from a business point of view, this arrangement could be lucrative.”

“Sure, cried the tenant men, but it's our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it's no good, it's still ours. That's what makes it ours-being born on it, working it, dying on it.”

“For many landlords, it was cheaper to deal with the expense of eviction than to maintain their properties; it was possible to skimp on maintenance if tenants were perpetually behind; and many poor tenants would be perpetually behind because their rent was too high.”

“The Hinkstons expected more of their landlord for the money they were paying her. Rent was their biggest expense by far, and they wanted a decent and functional home in return. They wanted things to be fixed when they broke. But if Sherrena wasn’t going to repair her own property, neither were they. The house failed the tenants, and the tenants failed the house.”

“But, even granted that doubts, raised in the course of time against the tenants of the Christian faith, have long since robbed you of faith in the immortality of your spirit, you have nevertheless left one tenant undisturbed, and still ingenuously adhere to the one truth, that the spirit is your better part, and that the spiritual has greater claims on you than anything else”

“Evictions were deserved, understood to be the outcome of individual failure. They “helped get rid of the riffraff,” some said. No one thought the poor more undeserving than the poor themselves.In years past, renters opposed landlords and saw themselves as a “class” with shared interests and a unified purpose. During the early twentieth century, tenants organized against evictions and unsanitary conditions. When landlords raised rents too often or too steeply, tenants went so far as to stage rent strikes. Strikers joined together to withhold rent and form picket lines, risking eviction, arrest, and beatings by hired thugs. They were not an especially radical bunch, these strikers. Most were ordinary mothers and fathers who believed landlords were entitled to modest rent increases and fair profits, but not “price gouging.” In New York City, the great rent wars of the Roaring Twenties forced a state legislature to impose rent controls that remain the country’s strongest to this day.Petitions, picket lines, civil disobedience—this kind of political mobilization required a certain shift in vision.”

“We are only tenants, and shortly the great Landlord will give us notice that our lease has expired.”

“What we have, we all must lose—that applied to everything, even to that which we thought we had the greatest right. We were tenants of this earth—nothing more.”

“It seems to me that the earth may be borrowed but not bought. It may be used, but not owned. ... We are tenants and not possessors, lovers and not masters.”

“Poverty is a relationship that involves a lot of folks, rich and poor alike. I was looking for something that brought a lot of different people in a room. Eviction does that, embroils landlords and tenants, lawyers and social workers.”