"The Need Is Not Debatable": How Tenant Organizing Processes Informed the Jackson Park Housing Pilot Ordinance.

Legal discourse has increasingly invoked the importance of “community voices” in policymaking, though has rarely confronted the practical challenge of embedding said voices into legislation, or the consequences of failing to do so. In this thesis, I address translatability challenges in the housing justice context by examining the work of Southside Together, a Chicago community organization in tandem with the Jackson Park Housing Pilot Ordinance passed by the City Council in 2025. I compare this ordinance to earlier campaign processes (flyering, canvassing, social media, and press), culminating in a community benefits ordinance proposal, brought to City Council by Southside Together in 2023. This comparative analysis reveals tension between Chicago City Council and community organizers when drafting policy, with organizers often having a stronger grasp of community needs compared to officials blinded by needing to balance multitudes of stakeholders[RL1] . Drawing from legal realist tradition of contextualizing written law, organizing theory, and theories of rent monopolization, I argue, as legal scholars investigate the implications and foundations of law, they have a responsibility to attend to organizers’ role in shaping movements and knowledge production. Such investigations require scholars to consider both results and the processes by which organizers give voice and agency to individual experiences. Greater analytical specificity allows for better evaluation of law’s attentiveness towards organizers’ objectives, and considerations of alternative venues for social change. I find that a legal realist perspective identifies housing justice organizers as uniquely equipped, through lived experience and organizing knowledge, to address current tenants’ rights issues.