This is How We Behave: Landlord-Tenant Relations and the New Paternalism

• In Event: 031 - Section on Community and Urban Sociology Paper Session. Housing

Abstract

Landlord-tenant relationships can have profound effects on the lives of poor renters and their neighborhoods, impacting residential stability, housing quality, affordability, segregation, and poverty concentration. Previous work generally reduces these nuanced social interactions to either market rationality or naked exploitation. In contrast, our paper explores the spectrum of the landlord-tenant relationship and its corresponding effects. We draw on in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations with 125 landlords over a two-year period in Baltimore, Cleveland, and Dallas. Our data suggest a subtle model of power and manipulation, where rational self-interest is only one consideration among others, and pure exploitation is a rare and generally unsustainable business practice. Instead, interactions between landlords and tenants reveal a paternalistic, symbiotic – if unbalanced – relationship. Using a combination of punitive measures, incentives, and surveillance, landlords seek to “train” and create a tenant class that conforms to mainstream notions of fiscal responsibility, accountability, and self-reliance. This dynamic is ultimately self-serving. The “good” tenant that the landlord works to create is one that is most profitable to house; she pays rent on time, makes repairs out of her own pocket, and is attracted to the types of properties with the highest profit margin. These practices have real consequences for the tenant’s rental experience, residential stability, and neighborhood attainment. As gatekeepers to the rental market, landlords act as filters between the whims of the market and the ebbs and flows of demand. Their paternalistic interaction patterns reflect and recreate the patterns of inequality we see in residential outcomes.

Authors

• Eva Rosen, Harvard University

• Philip M.E. Garboden, Johns Hopkins University