![]() ![]() The county mayor of Bedford is a former property manager, and BCLP says that at least one major local landlord they've received complaints about is also a lawyer. Like many small cities and towns, Shelbyville is dominated by a select few politicians, lawyers, landlords, and realtors, many of whom leverage power in multiple professional arenas. With statistics and personal stories, the BCLP final report exposes how landlords' rampant abuses of power affect the most marginalized people in the county––refugees and asylum seekers, and families below the poverty line. Over the course of 2019, BCLP's community canvassers, in partnership with a PhD candidate at Middle Tennessee State University, knocked on 230 doors in Bedford County. Bedbugs, broken locks, illegal evictions and unsympathetic judges, heating and cooling problems, unfair charges and verbally abusive landlords––all of these conditions are part of the hostile atmosphere renters face in Bedford County. Another alerted their landlord about a broken refrigerator and water heater only to be instructed to buy a cooler and boil their water. One family interviewed for the report said that they resorted to using buckets and gas station bathrooms when their landlord neglected to fix the toilet. Her grievances are among a litany included in a report titled " Home is Where the Heart is," which the group recently published. ![]() Vasil is a member of the Bedford County Listening Project, also known as the BCLP. "When we showed up, there was literally a piece of pizza stuck to the wall, the fridge had just been unplugged and it was full of rotten food, there was cheese in the shower, there was electrical outlets with just the wires sticking out of them," she says.ĭisbelief etched on her face, even years later, she shakes her head. But what she found when she arrived at her new home threw a wrench in those plans. She secured a rental home in town, had work waiting for her, and was ready to move in. ![]() When JoAnn Vasil relocated to Shelbyville, Tennessee, she thought she had set everything up for herself. ![]()
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