What does a home mean to you?

Springfield Tenants are coming together and building power to change the conditions of
what is possible

Springfield Tenants Unite, founded in June 2020, is Springfield MO’s city-wide tenant union. We are led by a multi-generational, multi-racial base of poor and working-class tenants in Springfield. We organize to ensure that everyone in Springfield has access to safe, accessible and truly affordable homes. It is our goal to make sure that tenants have a say in where we live and what happens to our housing. We organize along all the lines that the other side uses to try to divide us.

Portrait of Jai, a member of STUN

Tenant story: JAI

Jai Byrd knows all too well the precarious nature of housing, a reality they’ve faced for much of their life. Growing up in Cincinnati, Ohio, Jai’s first experience with instability came early. Their father purchased a home hoping to create a stable environment, but a contractor’s embezzlement forced the family into bankruptcy. From that point on, homeownership was tinged with distrust for Jai.

“Looking back, it angers me,” Jai reflects. “I cannot see homeownership in my future with how my life had turned out and the way the system is set up for certain people to be able to own a house.”

  • 60% of Springfield Residents are tenants.

  • Springfield has a poverty rate of 21% — 1 in 5 people are living in poverty.

  • The average 2-bedroom apartment in Springfield costs $925 per month.

  • A minimum wage worker working a standard 40-hour week earning $12/hr would have to work 69 hours per week to afford a standard 2-bedroom apartment (housing costs ⅓ or less of income = affordable)

  • A 2021 community study of 381 Greene County households found

    • 56% of tenants reported struggling with rent costs and a lack of affordable housing options

    • 87% reported poor housing conditions and/or slow to no response from property owners and managers

    • 33% had dealt with eviction

  • Since May 2022, 2595 eviction filings have been filed against Greene county households.

  • Springfield does not currently have a mandatory landlord licensing or interior rental inspection program. Tenants frequently reach out to STUN because they are experiencing a retaliatory eviction filing as a consequence of attempting to assert their right to safe and sanitary homes.

  • According to the Point in Time Count in January of 2022, 452 of us were recorded staying in emergency shelters.  As of January 11, 2023, The Connecting Grounds (TCG) counted 499 people in shelters out of a total of 2,582 individuals with no permanent housing in Springfield. This includes 826 on the streets/in camps.

  • Since Jan 1st, 2023, sleeping on state own land has become a punishable offence: a $600 fine and potential jail time.

Tenants & Housing

in Springfield, MO:

A Bird’s Eye View

Community
Agreements

  1. We believe those closest to the problems are closest to the solutions

  2. We don't make assumptions about one another.

  3. We value storytelling and relationship building but those things do NOT take up our whole meetings.

  4. We are serious about getting things done!

  5. We use one mic! One person speaks at a time or the collective speaks together.

  6. We believe tension is good and leaning into tension is how we grow.

  7. We believe that everything worth doing is worth evaluating

  8. WE BELIEVE THAT WE WILL WIN!

A group of S.T.U.N. Members smiling.