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Tenant organizing

Tenants On The March: An Interview With Cea Weaver

March 28, 2025 Andrew Elrod, Dissent Magazine. , , , ,
In many parts of the country, rising rents have hit a political limit, as politicians, unions, and community organizations increasingly recognize the centrality of housing to the cost-of-living crisis. New York State’s 2019 Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act, San Francisco’s 2022 collective bargaining ordinance for tenants, and Los Angeles’s 2022 “mansion tax” represent new forces in local politics—and alternative bases for the struggle over power within our society. These initiatives use the state to reshape the business models and ownership patterns pushing workers and their families further away from their jobs, into smaller, more expensive living situations.

Nebula: A Community Centered Approach To Domestic Violence

October 14, 2024 Malikia Johnson, Grassroots Economic Organizing. , , ,
Nebula describes itself as a group that supports “survivors of battering, SA, IPV and DV with community & physical resources in crisis and in their empowerment”. They also “ assist neighbors and mutual aid groups learning how to build liberatory practices in their groups.” Two of the core members came together in the context of tenant organizing. They realized a connection between tenant organizing and domestic violence support. They noticed that often organizers involved in tenants’ rights ended up being involved in domestic violence support because homes are often the center of the violence.

Malden Residents Can’t Get Through To Housing Management, Form Coalition

March 26, 2022 Sophia Paffenroth, The Scope Boston. , , ,
Rhina Sorto, who has been filing complaints to Carabetta Management for months about mold, flooding and rodent infestation, was joined in a protest yesterday by other Malden Towers residents, as well as tenant advocates showing solidarity. Gathered in the parking lot of Malden Towers apartment complex at 99 Florence St., those present witnessed three Malden tenant associations come together. The event, which started at noon, was organized by the City Life/Vida Urbana (CLVU) housing nonprofit. The nonprofit brought together the Malden Towers Tenant Association, the United Properties Tenant Association and the Maplewood Square Tenant Association into a coalition with one mission: dignified housing.

Eviction Moratorium Is A Useful Lesson In How Reform Happens

January 12, 2021 Ray Valentine, Organizing Work. , , ,
It didn’t make a lot of headlines, but in the recent stimulus and government funding deal, Congress extended what is probably the most significant federal housing policy in a generation: the nationwide eviction moratorium. We should study how it came to be, because it illustrates how working class people successfully influence public policy through collective action outside the political process. Originally implemented by the CDC in September, the moratorium is obviously imperfect in a number of ways: it is clearly designed to be narrowly targeted at “deserving” tenants and to compel people to pay what they can, its reach is limited because in practice it has to be implemented by local judges and sheriffs...

Tenant Unions For The Future

August 19, 2020 By Hannah Black, Dissent Magazine. , , ,
Calls to rent strike have yet to cohere into a national political movement. But as the economic crisis deepens, tenants’ fates will ultimately be decided by their level of collective organization. With the arrival of the pandemic, staying home became emergency work for a failing state. Amid disastrous negligence at every level of government, one of the most ordinary facts of life in capitalism—rent—suddenly appeared clearly as an affront. “One section of society here demands a tribute from the other for the very right to live on the earth,” Marx wrote of landlords. In the early spring, with state-level and nationwide eviction moratoriums and tenant protections in place, it seemed like there had never been a better time to refuse these bad terms. Calls to rent strike brought grassroots tenant unions to the foreground. Through the spring, thousands of people turned to tenant organizing, many for the first time.