Through Her Eyes: Community Organizing in Detroit
Kea Mathis organizes alongside tenants—mostly Black, women-led households—to create and support affordable, quality housing. "It is very hard . . . as a Black woman here, to be the one to try to ask the question first or stand up first,” says Mathis.
How to Build a YIMBY/Tenant Activist Bridge, a Shelterforce Webinar
Shelterforce’s investigative reporter Shelby R. King wrote two pieces about YIMBY (Yes in My Back Yard) groups in 2022, including one that focused on shared interests between YIMBY supporters and housing justice organizers.
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Biden’s Renters Rights Blueprint: Meaningful or Not?
What should we make of the administration’s tenants rights announcement?
Building Tenant Power: A Growing Movement Rises in Baltimore
Tenant organizing in Baltimore today is building on a rich legacy of tenant resistance in the city where residential redlining made its debut.
How These NYC Public Housing Residents Became Models for Tenant Rights Activism
Over generations, residents of the Cooper Park Houses in Brooklyn have created a blueprint for successful housing organizing.
Tenant Advocates Wait for Action After Meeting with White House Officials
Tenants got to talk directly to the Biden administration about the need to rein in soaring rents. Will action follow?
D.C. Street Vendors Push Back Against Criminalization
Street vendors are banding together to push back against police harassment, keep access to their usual locations, fight for better working conditions, and create sustainable businesses.
When a Problematic Landlord Is a Nonprofit
While in most cases having a nonprofit as a landlord is considered a win, it doesn’t prevent conflict with tenants. But organizers can take some different tactics when interacting with nonprofit landlords.
Boston Organizers Protect Individual Tenants, While Trying to Change the System
City Life/Vida Urbana is known for successful tenant union organizing and anti-eviction actions, but every individual action springs from a larger vision of system and policy change.
Tenant Protections Take a Step Forward in Maryland
Access to counsel in evictions is now funded statewide, and several other tenant protections have passed, but the Maryland effort shows that solidifying tenant protections can be a multiyear process.
All Tenants Get Right to Counsel in Kansas City
Pandemic evictions heightened the urgency. Then the campaign succeeded by finding local champions, presenting cost and benefit data, and spotlighting tenant narratives.
Is a YIMBY/Tenant Activist Bridge Possible?
A culture war between housing justice advocates and YIMBYs began in 2014. While the groups have different priorities, they do have shared interests. Can they be allies or will the habitual quarreling keep them at odds?
How Organizers Won a Tenants Bill of Rights in Miami-Dade County
Responding to tenants’ top concerns, organizers pivoted from affordability issues to landlord accountability and won a package of new tenant protections.
How Portland, Maine, Passed Rent Control
Organizers drew broad support with a multi-pronged campaign and found ways to get signatures in a pandemic to win rent stabilization and a slate of other progressive laws.
Fighting Back Against Corporate Landlords—A Shelterforce Webinar
Shelterforce recently hosted a conversation about how to fight, and win, against corporate landlords and their extractive business models. Watch the video or read the transcript.
The Rise and Fall of the National Tenants Union
The National Tenants Union fought for tenant rights in the 1970s and early 1980s. One of the union’s founders reflects on the organization and what we might learn from those times.
Organized Tenants Are Baaaaack
After a lull in the 1990s, the tenants rights movement reemerged and has only gained strength. What caused the resurgence and what do tenants’ prospects look like?
Tenant Protections 101
Tenant advocates have long been pushing for a “tenants bill of rights” to codify rules that protect renters from landlords. Here’s a rundown of the top protections housing justice activists say need to be included.
Top 6 Tenant Protections Renters Are Fighting For
Tenants are organizing together with increased urgency to get legal protections passed in their towns, cities, and states. What are the top protections tenants are fighting for?
Tenants Rights: It’s Not a Moment, It’s a Movement
In "Tenant Power Returns," Shelterforce examines how the energy and focus in the housing world is returning to tenant organizing.