Everyone Deserves a Door to Lock Behind Them.

Rosa spent eleven years as a home health aide before she started showing up to Hearth meetings in 2021. She'd watched three of her clients lose their apartments in a single year — elderly women moved into family members' living rooms because their buildings had been sold to developers who doubled the rent.

Today she runs a block-by-block organizing network that has reversed 23 eviction notices in the past eighteen months, negotiated two rent stabilization agreements with landlords, and trained 140 tenants in how to read their leases.

"I didn't know what a housing court was before Hearth," she says. "Now I know what a housing court is, and I know how to make the judge uncomfortable."

Marcus drives a school bus. Diane works the overnight shift at a memory care facility. Together they earn $74,000 a year — above the poverty line, below what it takes to afford a two-bedroom in the neighborhood where their kids go to school.

When their building was purchased in October 2024, the new owner sent a rent increase notice that would have pushed their monthly payment from $1,150 to $1,890 — a 64% jump in thirty days.

Rosa arrived with a copy of the Chicago Residential Landlord and Tenant Ordinance, a template letter citing three procedural violations, and a list of fourteen other families in the building who'd received identical notices. The landlord withdrew the increase six days later.