Rendering Renters as a Risk

• In Event: Housing as an Asset

Abstract

In this paper, I use the case of homeowner association (HOA) membership to look at how formal organizations and their members use risk categorizations to treat certain groups as risk objects. I illustrate how macro classifications of renters and investors as “risks” for insurance and mortgages directly translates to owner-occupants’ definitions of who causes the most risk in an HOA. These understandings come from strict percentages of membership created by institutions and by long-standing social perceptions that homeowners are the most responsible type of citizen. I provide background on how the sociology of risk is central to understanding how renters and investors are perceived of as risks in HOAs. I go over my methods used to write this paper. Then, I discuss my findings in which I show how HOA owners and professionals depict renters and investors as cultural and institutional risks. I unpack why, despite so much agreement about the risks, HOA boards do not universally ban renters. I also highlight a unique power dynamic in which HOA boards view owners as risks and use evictions against them. In other words, owners become risk objects themselves.

Author

• Maura Fennelly, Northwestern University