In 2014, Megan Franklin moved into Chicago’s historically Black Woodlawn neighborhood with her two children. But, with gentrification, her new landlords, the Lowensteins, increased rent and dangerously neglected maintenance.
Roaches crawled through holes. Rats chewed through wires, peering up at water-damaged ceilings and missing smoke detectors. According to Cook County’s Injustice Watch, the city found 41 violations in 2023 after Franklin unionized with her neighbors. They exercised their right to withhold rent to incentivize making repairs. The Lowensteins retaliated with eviction notices, demanding that money.
In 60% of eviction court cases, judges demand evictions, sending cops to unhouse residents if they refuse. Unlike many, Franklin managed to get an attorney. Still, the judge denied the hazardous living conditions, accusing tenants of sabotaging their homes and threatening them with jail. The Lowensteins continued retaliating.
This stained Franklin’s record, making it impossible for her to find new housing by the September 2024 move-out date. But she says she has no regrets. Her family had survived sharecropping, the foreclosure crisis, and displacement. Tenant encampments and rent strikes helped make the Civil Rights Movement. The capitalist legal system isn’t designed to help tenants. But it’s still worth fighting.
This summer, the Tenant Union Federation launched, organizing tenant justice nationally. Learn more at https://pushblack.news/tfm. Eviction court penalizes tenants by wagering legal and financial power. But we have power, too, when we stand together.