Tenant Power Returns

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?

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

Some leases plainly contradict state law or include questionable, punitive, or egregiously anti-tenant clauses.

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

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?

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

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.

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.