Ten successes your support made possible in 2013!

Happy New Year! We want to thank you for your support over the past year. Together we made significant strides towards making sure that everyone has safe, decent and accessible housing that is affordable. Together we can build on the successes of 2013 to make 2014 an even better year. Our number one success in 2013 was the day in and day out work MTO did to help more than 10,000 renters. Our hotline answered over 9,300 calls! As a result, tenants were able to get heat restored, leaks fixed, evictions stopped, security deposits returned and more.

One example of the effectiveness of our work is demonstrated when two tenants separately called the hotline one afternoon after receiving notices telling them to be out the next day. Staff went immediately into action, meeting with the tenants, contacting an attorney and sending out a press release. While the police were trying to evict the 15 households in front of television cameras, two renters and an attorney were in court successfully suing to stop the vacate orders. All 15 families received an additional 2 weeks to move plus $1200 per family moving expenses. This is what MTO is about!

Our 2013 successes include:

  • Our Tenants Rights Hotline answered over 9,300 calls.
  • Passage of the Source of Income amendment to the Cook County Human Rights Ordinance, which makes it illegal to discriminate against Section 8 voucher holders;
  • The development of new renter mobile phone app, www.SquaredAwayChicago.com;
  • For the first time in our 28 year history, MTO raised more than $1,000,000 to improve the lives of renters.
  • MTO trained 150 volunteers to answer the hotline, meet with elected officials, facilitate meetings, etc
  • Organizers worked with renters to form 50 tenants associations.  The associations won real victories including relocation assistance, a new playfield at Parkway Gardens, stopped illegal evictions, etc
  • MTO nearly doubled our social media presence.  We now have 620 Twitter followers and 192,000 annual visits to our website.
  • The agency started a new project focusing on renters in foreclosure.
  • We joined in citywide advocacy campaigns such as Keep Chicago Renting and Take Back Chicago
  • Our annual HUD Town Hall attracted over 100 subsidized renters.

Meet the Millers: despite battling homelessness, they still found a way to be together.

Debra and Jimi Miller are tenant leaders with MTO. The Millers have been active at MTO over the past year and got involved when they received a housing choice voucher. Prior to receiving the voucher, the Millers had been homeless. Both were able to obtain shelter in transitional programs; however they were staying across the City from one another. Chicago boasts many shelters and transitional programs; but the majority of these programs serve either men or women – not families and not couples. The Miller’s struggled to be together during this period. Due to Debra’s health problems, the responsibility fell to Jimi to commute north everyday for visits. And in the evening, they would watch television programs together over the phone. Needless to say, the arrival of housing choice voucher was celebrated as the first step toward living together again.

That excitement was quickly diminished when the couple realized that their long fight to be reunited had just begun. Despite the fact that it is against the law in Chicago for landlords to refuse to rent to someone based upon their source of income, this practice still takes place. Jimi and Debra had three months to find a place to live before they lost their voucher. Two months into their search, they finally found a place. The discrimination and desperation of their search left them with a desire to work for change.

Debra had been an activist protesting the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. According to Jimi, a veteran, “She’s the resident militant.” When Debra found that she and Jimi were facing homelessness, she was again thrust into activism through 100K. The 100K program was an effort undertaken in cities across the country to get an accurate count of homeless families and individuals living on the streets. Here she met Leah Levinger and got involved with the Chicago Housing Initiative. When she and Jimi received their voucher and were no longer facing homelessness, she began looking for a new social justice focus to lend her support. Levinger pointed her toward the Source of Income Campaign at MTO. MTO was part of a coalition working to get the same type of protections for renters in suburban Cook County which exists in the City of Chicago for voucher holders. Having experienced some of this discrimination first hand, the Millers were eager to get on board. When asked about their motivation to become involved in the Source of Income Campaign, Debra states, “We had to be a part of it!” At the same time Jimi says, “We had to do it.” “It was still personal to us,” explained Debra. They hit the ground running by participating in a rally and demonstration in Oak Park targeting a landlord who advertised “No 8s,” meaning he would not rent to any Section 8 voucher holders.

MTO intentionally incorporates tenant leaders in planning and strategizing campaigns. The Millers enjoyed the experience of being at the table and helping to make decisions around how the work would move forward. After the successful passage of the Source of Income Ordinance in suburban Cook County, they continue to participate with MTO as active tenant leaders. Currently they serve on MTO’s Tenant Congress HUD Subcommittee. The Miller’s reside in Rogers Park and are happy to finally be able to come home… together.

View the original post by Chicago Equal Voice here:  http://on.fb.me/Ih4I83

Chicago Tribune: New app aims to improve landlord-tenant relationship

Chicago Tribune: New app aims to improve landlord-tenant relationship

Mary Ellen Podmolik

The Homefront

October 18, 2013

Renters most often seek help from the Metropolitan Tenants Organization when they have problems with a landlord. Now, the longtime Chicago nonprofit is taking to technology in an effort to improve the communication between landlords and tenants while also providing a little protection to both parties.

Squared Away Chicago, a Web-based mobile phone app that the organization is preparing to launch, is designed to help renters and landlords stay in touch, document problems within apartments and create a virtual paper trail if a complaint goes unresolved and an outside party needs to step in to resolve the dispute.

The idea for the app followed a discussion that John Bartlett, the organization’s executive director, had with a friend in social media 1½ years ago. While there’s a wealth of information on the group’s website — it gets more than 10,000 unique visitors a month — Bartlett wondered if there was an easier way to help renters and landlords with the basic issues they face.

Creating such a tool would help not only consumers and landlords, but also the organization. Annually, the group’s two dozen employees and its volunteers help 15,000 renters, and the call center handles more than 10,000 phone calls.

The Web app’s development, funded with a grant from the MacArthur Foundation, allows a tenant with a smartphone to take a time-stamped photo of a problem inside an apartment and send it, along with a form letter explaining the problem, to a landlord. It could be anything from mold growing along a baseboard to a leaking ceiling or even the serial number of a broken appliance. Tenants can rate how severe the problem is and can spell out on the form when the landlord can enter the unit to correct the issue.

For their part, landlords could use the system to track complaints and document what steps they’ve taken to correct them. They also could enter all their tenants into the system so they could notify tenants simultaneously of coming building inspections.

“One of the goals with the app is to create a better relationship between landlords and tenants, or at least make that a possibility,” Bartlett said. “This makes communication easy and easily documented. When you’re on the phone, it’s so easy to forget. There are a lot of ‘he said, she said.’ (This) is a little more formal.”

The app was designed because of the prevalence of smartphones. If low-income renters have access to the Web, it’s most often through their phones, Bartlett said. Among households with income of less than $30,000 annually, 43 percent own a smartphone, according to a study this year on smartphone ownership by The Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

“Smartphones are now becoming the norm,” said Mark Swartz, legal director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing, who called the app’s development “incredibly clever.” It could lead to more issues being resolved outside the courtroom, he added.

“The problem we usually see is that tenants only document problems when things get really awful,” Swartz said. “To be able to document complaints early will protect tenants if there’s an attempt to terminate their lease or otherwise retaliate against them.”

Still affordable. Home prices have been rising as consumer demand outstrips the supply of available homes, but the Chicago area remains one of the more affordable housing markets for the middle class, according to real estate Web company Trulia. In the Chicago area, where the median household income is $58,911, a middle-class family could afford homes under $254,000, assuming that no more than 31 percent of income went to home expenses. Almost 75 percent of homes recently listed locally were priced below that level, it said.

However, that same family in Chicago would have a tougher time buying a house elsewhere because the definition of middle-class can vary when it comes to home affordability. For instance, the median household income in the Los Angeles area is about $53,000, not too far off from Chicago’s, but only 24 percent of its “middle-class” families can afford a home with a median price of $271,000.

Click HERE to read the article at chicagotribune.com

mepodmolik@tribune.com

Twitter @mepodmolik

Copyright © 2013 Chicago Tribune Company, LLC

PRESS RELEASE: Launch of new Web App – “Squared Away Chicago”

 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: MONDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2013 

LAUNCH OF TENANT/LANDLORD WEB APP – “SQUARED AWAY CHICAGO” 
MTO Releases Bridge Building App — First Of Its Kind In The Nation 

CHICAGO — When the Metropolitan Tenants Organization (MTO) launches its new web app,“Squared Away Chicago”, in mid November 2013, renters in Chicago will have access to a new tool for facilitating communications and bringing together landlords and tenants.Squared Away Chicago app will provide access to resources and knowledge about rights and best practices. It will offer the ability to document and share issues between tenants and landlords in real-time, leading to faster issue resolution, increased accountability and fewer misunderstandings.

“The Squared Away Chicago app provides resources to both tenants and landlords to improve communication and access to information, setting the stage for better rental practices and elevating the dialogue between tenants and landlords to build relationships that can ultimately lead to longevity for the rental life cycle and improve the quality and livability of housing stock,” said John Bartlett, executive director, Metropolitan Tenants Organization.

Unresolved housing-related issues are often the result of a lack of awareness of rights and poor communication practices. The result negatively impacts tenants through unsafe housing conditions or unnecessary evictions and also has a detrimental effect on landlords through lost rental income, costs associated with turnover and a devaluing of property. The Squared Away Chicago app is designed to support both tenants and landlords by enabling them to:
  • Document and communicate repair issues or problems in the quickest, most effective way possible.
  • Track and manage landlord’s building tenants and respond quickly to tenant inquiries or issues.
  • Prevent and remedy common housing problems before they become larger and more insurmountable.
  • Collects data to inform policy makers of trends in the rental housing market.
  • Improve the landlord-tenant relationship through increased communication and accountability.

Squared Away Chicago is a web-based app that users will access through a URL link, squaredawaychicago.com, on their mobile phone browser or by tapping a link they receive through an email. The app automatically detects and adjusts the display enabling all users to have access no matter what type of smartphone they use. The design and development team for the app included Chicago firms: Greater Good Studios, Philamonjaro Studios and DevMynd.

 

The app development was funded through a grant from the MacArthur Foundation and support provided by the Marguerite Casey Foundation and the Chicago Community Trust.

“Squared Away has the potential for nationwide adoption and can serve as a resource for members of the Marguerite Casey Foundation‘s family-led Equal Voice Campaign.Squared Away Chicago will support informed and engaged tenants and landlords and will ultimately serve to build awareness of renters’ housing rights and options,” said Edgar Villanueva, program officer at Marguerite Casey Foundation.

 

FEATURES FACILITATE COMMUNICATIONS & BUILD RELATIONSHIPS

Through our 28 years of experience serving renters in Chicago, MTO has found that almost all renter households at one time or another face a housing problem that threatens their tenancy. Many tenants come to MTO for assistance to navigate what is often an emotional process of communicating and negotiating with their landlord. Likewise, landlords have their own set of challenges in providing information and updates to tenants and maintaining constructive communications.

 

With the Squared Away Chicago mobile app, tenants and landlords will have these four features at their fingertips:

  • Residential Landlord Tenant Ordinance (RLTO): Accessing the law provides users with knowledge about the rights of tenants and landlords.
  • Photo Sharing: Tenants can take/upload photos of issues, creating a visual record that is instantly accessible to the landlord.
  • Letter Templates: Specific details of housing-related issues can be inserted in template documents and then accurately and quickly shared with landlords.
  • Open A Ticket: Provides the ability to track communications about issues and organize and save the string of communications for reference and documentation.

“Effectively resolving housing crises is important to the tenant’s long-term future and theSquared Away Chicago app will be an important tool for creating rental housing stability by helping tenants speak with greater credibility through initiating and documenting communications and building productive relationships with landlords,” said Bartlett.

 

BRIDGING THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

The digital divide between those who have ready access to computers and the Internet, and those who do not, is slowly closing as a result of mobile devices.

In 2010, the Pew Research Center conducted a study of wireless users and found that 46% of households earning less than $30,000 per year are wireless Internet users. An estimated 54% of African-Americans and 53% of English-speaking Hispanics access the Internet on a handheld device.

While thousands of renters currently use MTO’s website, proving the need for web-based rental housing information, the Pew study demonstrates the need for an app or internet access compatible with mobile devices since low-income renters may not have access to a computer, but many have access to a phone.

“MTO believes that the Squared Away Chicago mobile phone app will offer the broadest access for today’s renters and a means for landlords to be in touch with their tenants, further bridging the digital divide to level the playing field for low-income renters,” saidBartlett.

FOR MORE INFORMATION:

Laurie R. Glenn

Phone: 773.704.7246

E-mail: lrglenn@thinkincstrategy.com

###

 

The next Tenants Congress is September 18th!

The Tenants Congress is a citywide coalition of tenants who meet every other month to strategize on effective campaigns to address the various issues that affect housing in Chicago. We’re hopeful that more renters will join our fight to strengthen our communities through better housing!

Topics at the upcoming congress include:

-How new Foreclosure and Bed Bug laws can work for you

-Recent organizing successes for HUD tenants

-Introduction to organizing

-Understanding your building’s finances

We look forward to seeing you there. Spread the word and let your neighbors know, it’s time to exercise your renters rights!

Facebook Event: https://www.facebook.com/events/219431021549496/?notif_t=plan_user_joined

Nonprofit Challenges New Ordinance Excluding Voucher Holders From Protection Against Discrimination

The following open letter to Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle was submitted by Open Communities, regarding Glenview’s recent landlord ordinance allowing landlords to deny rent to Section 8 applicants.

Dear President Preckwinkle,

On behalf of Open Communities and eleven other fair housing advocacy agencies throughout Cook County, I attach a formal letter to the County alerting you to a recent action taken by the Village of Glenview that directly contradicts the County’s strong commitment to affirmatively furthering fair housing.  We are requesting prompt and firm reaction from the County.

Glenview amended its Municipal Code to exclude Housing Choice Voucher holders from protection against discrimination based on their source of income to pay their rent.  Glenview took this action to prevent the implementation of the County’s new and praiseworthy addition of voucher status as a protected class under the County’s human rights ordinance.  Given that voucher holder discrimination is often used as a cover for discrimination against race (primarily Black), disability, and familial status, and Glenview is only one percent Black, Glenview’s new ordinance is a barrier to open, integrated housing in the Village.  The details of Glenview’s actions are attached in our letter as well as their own ordinance and accompanying statements to the press.

We are asking the County, as a recipient of HUD funding that must hold its jurisdictions accountable for affirmatively furthering fair housing, to inform the Village of Glenview and the Northwest Housing Partnership of its intention to withhold federal housing and community development funds unless Glenview amends its ordinance to end discrimination against persons utilizing Housing Choice Vouchers or rescinds it altogether.  The County’s actions will send a strong message to other local Home Rule subrecipient governments within Cook County intent on following Glenview’s actions.

Please feel free to contact us, the Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, or the Sargent Shriver Center on Poverty Law for more information.  We look forward to hearing from you.  Thank you in advance for your serious attention.

Sincerely,
Gail Schechter

Executive Director
Open Communities

 

Illinois’s 33%: The Illinois Poverty Report

Over 48.5 million people in the United States are living in poverty, 1.9 million of them in Illinois. The scale and conditions of poverty make it one of the most pressing social issues facing our state and nation.  Poverty will touch the majority of Americans at some point during adulthood. On average, 60% of 20 year olds in America will experience poverty at some point during their adult years, and about half of adults will experience poverty by the time they are age 65.

We know that we can’t end poverty without fully understanding the nature, scale, and scope of the issue. This year’s Report on Illinois Poverty brings us back to these basics. It explores who is poor in Illinois, why poverty exists in the first place, what hardships being poor induces, and how we can end poverty. It also gives voice to our neighbors experiencing poverty as they talk about their challenges living in, getting out, and staying out of poverty.

At its core, poverty exists because of employment-related reasons. But characterizing it in this way is an oversimplification that fails to account for the why: why people aren’t working, why they aren’t working enough, and why they aren’t making enough money. There are large economic forces at play, like high unemployment, declining wage levels, and growing inequality, that help explain these employment-related causes of poverty and point to how structural inequities translate to racial and gender disparities in economic well-being. But even this expanded view of the economic forces behind employment realities is too limiting for understanding the complex nature of poverty. Factors related to education, housing, health, and assets also contribute to a person’s chances of being able to succeed through work—and not experience poverty. Furthermore, as much as these factors contribute to poverty’s existence, they are also symptoms of poverty, existing in a symbiotic relationship whereby hardship can induce poverty and poverty can reinforce hardship.

For some groups, such as minorities and women, their overrepresentation in poverty represents a legacy of unequal opportunities that have hindered economic advancement. For others, like children and youth, their poverty story is intertwined with their families’ and with a broken safety net that lets children remain impoverished. Yet others, like workers, come face-to-face with the shortcomings of our market economy or have unique, sometimes challenging disadvantages to deal with.

Just as there is no single pathway into poverty, there is no single pathway out—no magic bullet policy or program that will single-handedly eradicate poverty. There are, however, myriad solutions that target each issue area related to poverty—employment, education, housing, health and nutrition, and assets. The Illinois Poverty Report has identified the following policy changes to address these issues:

EMPLOYMENT – Increase Illinois’s minimum wage and index it to inflation to maintain a baseline investment in Illinois workers. Expand the categories of workers covered by the minimum wage to include workers receiving tips, domestic workers, and workers under the age of 18.

EDUCATION – Increase access to Illinois’s 529 college savings program, making it easier for more families to take advantage of this important college savings tool. Exempt 529 accounts from the asset limit test on TANF, create a safe default investment option, and implement a matched savings program.

HOUSING – Return homeless prevention and homeless service program funding to their historic levels as an effective way to help families maintain housing stability in the face of temporary hardship and prevent the personal and financial costs associated with homelessness.

HEALTH – Expand access to health care by fully implementing the Affordable Care Act’s Medicaid expansion and state-based health insurance exchange and supporting Illinois’s transition to care coordination programs in order to improve health outcomes and maximize cost-effective strategies.

ASSETS – Expand retirement savings opportunities by creating an automatic retirement account program for Illinois workers that utilizes employer payroll systems and gives workers the option of depositing a portion of earned wages into approved retirement accounts.

Illinois’s 33% aren’t just a statistic. They are our neighbors, our friends, and our family members. It’s clear that we have our work cut out for us, but together, we can end poverty in Illinois.

To download the full PDF version of the Illinois Poverty Report Click Here

To view the Illinois Poverty Map Click Here

Source: The Social Impact Research Center, a Heartland Alliance Program: http://ilpovertyreport.org

 

 

Study Finds No Relationship Between Housing Choice Vouchers and Increased Crime Rates

A recent study, conducted by Professor Michael C. Lens at UCLA’s Department of Urban Planning and published in Urban Studies, finds that there is no correlation between the number of voucher holders residing in an area and the crime rate in that area.

To test the frequently used argument against voucher holders that their influx into a community is sure to increase levels of criminal activity, Lens analyzed HUD public housing data, U.S. Census socioeconomic data, and FBI crime data from 215 U.S. cities between the years of 1997 and 2008 to determine whether vouchers and crime are indeed linked. He controlled for a wide array of variables, from national and local trends in criminal activity to demographic differences to variances in employment rates. Because about half of voucher holders currently reside in the suburbs and the strongest opposition to vouchers has been concentrated in these communities, Lens specifically focuses on suburban areas.

Lens found “virtually no relationship” between the pervasiveness of voucher-holders and crime rates in his analysis of both cities and suburban areas when controls are added. His statistical analysis seeks not only to determine relationships between his variables but also to determine cause and effect. For example, though a higher prevalence of vouchers may appear to correlate with more incidences of criminal activity in an area, vouchers do not necessarily cause crime but rather are more common in areas where crime rates are rising because rents in those areas are more likely to be low.

Though it is unlikely to put an end to the divisive debate surrounding subsidized housing, Lens’ research provides promising statistical evidence for advocates supporting more vouchers and additional low income housing in general.

Access “The Impact of Housing Vouchers on Crime in US Cities and Suburbs” study at: http://bit.ly/1cKyuwX

Access an article from The Atlantic, titled “Moving Poor People into a Neighborhood Doesn’t Cause Crime,” which discusses the study’s results at: http://bit.ly/1etf6CG

Source: The National Low Income Housing Coalition | nlihc.org | 727 15th Street NW, 6th Floor Washington, DC 20005