‘I’m Not a Tenant They Can Just Run Over’: Low-Income Renters’ Experiences of and Resistance to Racialized Dispossessing

Abstract

Racialized housing markets are a cornerstone of systemic racial inequality in the United States, affecting socioeconomic, wealth, health, and educational outcomes. To enrich critical sociological research on housing, we examine how low-income renters perceive, experience, and navigate racialized dispossessing, or the everyday processes by which people of color are severed from place, home, and stability in rental markets. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 43 low-income American Indian, Black, Latinx, and White renters across two research sites, we find that low-income renters of color routinely experience other-race landlord and property manager non-responsiveness to housing quality and safety issues while White renters experience responsiveness. We also show how renters of color perceive and experience landlords and property managers racializing them as inferior, at times to justify this dispossession. In contrast to most of their counterparts of color, we demonstrate how low-income American Indian renters in our sample with same-Tribe landlords or property managers are protected from the harms their counterparts face. Finally, we show how low-income renters of color use a variety of strategies to resist this racialized dispossessing, often at great emotional or financial cost. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for research and housing policy.