By Ashley Benkarski
SHELBYVILLE, TN — Shelbyville’s City Council voted unanimously to pass a resolution recommended by the city’s Safe and Affordable Housing Committee and organizers with the Bedford County Listening Project (BCLP) seeking accountability from landlords receiving public funds.
Back in late August, the BCLP released their report Defending Our Homes: Addressing the Housing Human Rights Crisis in Rural Middle Tennessee and displayed a public art installation documenting the experiences of renters in their own words, taped to the backs of folding chairs. Although about 170 Shelbyville renters spoke to the BCLP, only one was willing to be named publicly. Retaliation by landlords against tenants for filing complaints was a common fear in the narratives.
During that event BCLP members were joined by the town’s Mayor, Randy Carroll, City Manager Scott Collins and a few of the Councilmembers to hear the testimonies of their constituents.
“People from out of town see Shelbyville as a good, quick investment opportunity where they can buy something up and flip it. And they’re using other people’s money to do that,” BCLP’s Dr. Tristan Call said. “And that’s going to continue. It’s going to happen this year; it’s going to happen next year. And it’s something that we can’t pretend isn’t happening, and we can’t pretend that it’s not threatening hundreds of households and having worse and worse conditions as it’s happening.”
Call said now that the resolution has passed, it will be sent to the Federal Housing Finance Agency next month.
“Not a lot of local governments weighed in on this, and so I’m excited to hear people did . . .
We certainly hope that they adopt all four of the requests that came today out of Shelbyville, which includes regulation of how much rent can be raised in those properties that are [purchased with] federally backed loans.”
The other three requests are to “require landlords to do repairs and provide liveable conditions specified in a clear, publicly-available lease agreement; ban landlords from retaliating (i.e. through threats, punitive charges, or evictions) against residents who speak with federal regulators, make complaints to local codes departments, or speak publicly about the conditions in their housing complexes; establish a landlord registry including the name and phone number of the owner.”
According to the study’s appendix, there are at least four apartment complexes in Shelbyville bought with federally-backed loans within the last decade.
Call said, “It gave us an opportunity to really tell people and educate and let people know about why things aren’t getting fixed, why rents are going up, and why nobody knows who’s doing it.”
He noted that the BCLP is planning to send a delegation to meet with the FHFA in November. He expects that a number of people from other states will join them.
Call remarked, “We probably are gonna have to put a little bit of pressure on the Biden administration that they actually do their job now, which this is something they can do.”
Though Call admits the resolution was a small step, getting this far has taken a lot of work.
The last time tenant advocates showed up at the town square, police were called on them. Now, he said, the City is on record with its support for renter protections.
“I think that’s validating for people to hear,” Call said. “It also gives you a little bit of hope that after years of work educating people who might not know that they can actually begin to understand others’ experience and maybe even back them up.”
He added “the real test” will be to see what actions the Council takes on local laws.
“This was an indication of their willingness to take the issue seriously and say someone should fix it. Now it’s our job to come back to City Council with things that we are expecting them to actually act on locally.”
City officials have come and gone since that adversarial encounter, and that’s helped. Councilmember Stephanie Isaacs is one of those new faces, and she was elected in part due to her advocacy for tenant rights. Isaacs is a renter herself.
“It lets the city and the county and everybody know that renters matter, people matter, and they deserve to have a good place to live here, they deserve to raise their families in good housing,” she said. “People don’t want extravagant things, but they want heat in their homes. They want food on their table.”
Of course, the issue isn’t constrained to Shelbyville; what’s happening there is happening across the nation. Stories of rising rent, property mismanagement, and unjust evictions by landlords are nothing new. But Bedford County’s residents, and others like them, are creating a movement, making their voices heard and holding their local governments to account.
“Sometimes it does take a process. Sometimes the state is involved, but it just goes beyond a local level. So please keep that in mind,” said Councilmember Marilyn Ewing at the Aug. 26 event. “We all care. We feel the pain. We see all of this. It’s heartbreaking.” Along with Isaacs, Ewing visited Bedford Manor residents who had handrails taken out of 27 stairwells after the company was bought by a Boston-based owner. “It’s heartbreaking with no restroom, bathroom. It’s heartbreaking with holes in the floor, holes in the wall. It’s heartbreaking to see roaches and this, that, and the other.”
Isaacs said that what’s been done in Bedford County can be done anywhere, as long as people organize to make things better. “We have to start caring about our neighbors. That’s how we’re going to make it,” she said.
You can find the BCLP at bedfordcountylp.org.