Reflection #1
I believe that I have a solid plan for my research and project this semester. I will focus primarily on renter’s rights specifically in the Cahokia area. Renter’s rights in Cahokia are very relevant to the current situation in Cahokia because a big portion of the residents in Cahokia Heights do not own their homes. Homes in Cahokia are often damaged from water related issues and as a lessee (someone who rents a home) you should be aware of your responsibilities when it comes to maintaining your home as well as the owner’s responsibilities.
First, I planned on conducting my own background research on Illinois renter’s rights law codes so I could be well versed in my topic. I collected a handful of sources that I found credible and scanned them for what I think the most important codes are to know for a lessee. I found the sources that came from the Illinois Attorney General’s office to be the most helpful. The websites provided information on renter’s rights and responsibilities, landlords’ rights and responsibilities, security deposits, rent increases, lease termination, discrimination, the eviction process, and eviction defenses. The five codes that I will choose to highlight for my final presentation will most likely be:
- A landlord is required to keep the rental unit in compliance with state and local health and housing codes
- A landlord must make all necessary repairs to a home
- the Illinois Retaliatory Eviction Act prohibits your landlord from evicting you for complaining to any governmental authority
- if your landlord fails to pay a bill for which they are responsible, you may pay the bill and deduct the payment from your rent.
- A landlord must file a lawsuit to properly evict you; they cannot make you move by turning off utilities or removing private property.
These five codes/laws were chosen because I feel that Cahokia home lessees can be more likely to encounter these issues with renting homes while living in an area where flooding and water damage to homes are so common. Because Cahokia is generally a lower income area and the current issues pertaining to water systems there, landlords could feel like they can get away with illegal actions against tenants.
My next step will most likely be to develop and send out surveys to Cahokia lessees and potentially even people who rent out their homes in Cahokia. I want to ask questions about their experiences of renting a home in Cahokia and if they have ever had issues with the renters’ codes previously stated. I also hope that I am able to conduct at least one oral history interview this semester. The oral history interview I conducted with Arianna from the Cahokia Public Library last semester was very helpful in getting a deep insight of what is going on in the area and I feel another interview would be useful for this project as well. The biggest obstacle that I can see for this project is just getting participants for surveys and interviews. I’ve previously seen that it can be difficult to get participants for studies, especially when there isn’t really much that can be offered to benefit them.
Reflection #3
I am about to go to the Cahokia Public Library to give out physical copies of my survey and hopefully I get to talk to more residents in Cahokia Heights to pick their brains about the area and hopeully get some more insights on what it is like renting property in Cahokia.
When I previously talked to our community partners about my ideas for my implementation plan my feedback was positive, but it wasn’t really a lot. They liked the idea of looking into renter’s rights in Cahokia Heights and thought it was very prevalent to the area. I was pointed to an organization called Action St. Louis. They are a grassroots organization that focuses on relief efforts for the homes that were damaged in North St. Louis from the tornado that took place over the summer. This organization could be helpful to me by getting me more familiar with how landlords are generally supposed to handle a situation where outside factors make their property inhabitable. Arianna from the Cahokia Public Library pointed me towards the Illinois Landlord Tenant Act. This act contains very specific laws that pertain to rental property and the relations between a landlord and a lessee. Some of the codes I felt were too specific for my section of the website, but I will utilize the codes that mention habitable living, liability, and revenge from landlords in my section of the website. In the past Arianna from the Cahokia Public Library has helped me a lot in my research because she is knowledgeable on everything going on not just in Cahokia Heights, but it seems like all the metro east. The last time we met I conducted an interview with her that ran for about forty minutes. In this interview she told me about multiple experiences she has had owning property in Cahokia. Before I go back to the library, I am going to listen to the interview again to develop some more questions that I can ask to help further my research.
When talking to people who live in Cahokia Heights, I must keep in mind that talking about the struggles and injustices that have been going on there can be a sensitive topic because it is their lives that I am asking questions about. With that in mind I need to keep a filter in my brain that determines if anything I ask could be overbearing. I also need to be able to recognize when someone is attempting to steer away from a topic or the conversation in general.
A couple of weeks ago I published a survey about renter’s rights that is targeted to residents in Cahokia who rent property there. So far, I have gotten five responses and three of those respondents rent a home in Cahokia Heights. Out of those three, two of them said that their homes are not in suitable living condition and their landlord does not respond to them in a timely manner. I am happy that I have had a couple of participants in the survey and the data I have gotten so far supports my hypothesis about what it could possibly be like renting homes in Cahokia. Whenever I get to the Cahokia Public Library, I hope to get at least three more participants for my survey.