Picking Battles with Buildings

• In Event: 078 - Section on Sociology of Culture Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 03. Material Culture Network

Abstract

How do building inspectors decide what counts as a building code violation? Building inspectors play a vital and manifold role in the city: penalizing property owners, demanding improvements to unsafe housing conditions, and providing a source of revenue for the municipality. Yet, we know little about how inspectors decide whether to cite a property for violations. Nor do we know whether these decisions reinscribe inequality by disproportionately penalizing property owners in low-income neighborhoods, or whether inspections might ameliorate inequality by insisting on improvements to hazardous housing conditions. My research investigates who building inspectors fine (as well as who they do not), for what, and why. Drawing on interviews with inspectors in Chicago, this paper asks which characteristics of buildings, residents, landlords, and property owners, inspectors consider in their assessments. I find that inspectors rely on particular conflations of buildings and people to make decisions, thus exposing how living in certain kinds of buildings may make people more or less susceptible to fines and regulations, but also amenable to improvements to poor and dangerous housing conditions.

Author

• Robin Bartram, Northwestern University