Acting Up : how community organizations work with, around, and against city hall for housing justice in Chicago

Abstract

This thesis argues that community organizations in Chicago, from the Loop to Pilsen to Kenwood, pursue housing justice by employing three modes of action, each of which embodies a particular relationship to the state. They act with the state by ordinance to pass laws and engage in electoral activity; around the state by convening to leverage relationships in the absence of formal legislation; and against the state by contesting to challenge centralized decision-making. Using community planning theory, this view builds on conceptions of collective efficacy by focusing on the relationship of community organizations to the state's regulatory power rather than on indicators of social capital or civic action. The research is based on over 30 interviews with leaders and activists in neighborhood associations, community development corporations, and independent political organizations working on prominent housing justice campaigns since the 2008 foreclosure crisis. These campaigns include a rent control ballot initiative, the introduction of several anti-eviction ordinances, an affordable housing preservation program, and the establishment of a community zoning board. In each of these cases, the varying isolation, interaction, and blending of the three modes of action complicates dichotomous portrayals of the grassroots -- state relationship, providing an analytic lens through which to understand how and why certain issues become important on both neighborhood and citywide scales and how neighborhood groups position themselves and mobilize via-a-vis the state.