Organizing

What should we make of the administration’s tenants rights announcement?

Tenant organizing in Baltimore today is building on a rich legacy of tenant resistance in the city where residential redlining made its debut.

Over generations, residents of the Cooper Park Houses in Brooklyn have created a blueprint for successful housing organizing.

Tenants got to talk directly to the Biden administration about the need to rein in soaring rents. Will action follow?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Pandemic evictions heightened the urgency. Then the campaign succeeded by finding local champions, presenting cost and benefit data, and spotlighting tenant narratives.

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?

Responding to tenants’ top concerns, organizers pivoted from affordability issues to landlord accountability and won a package of new tenant protections.

Landlord-tenant relations are governed by a mix of laws at all levels of government and can vary a lot.