Organized Tenants Fight Back and Win

Tenants form unions and bargain collectively for the same reason that workers do. Ordinary people need to be organized when dealing with powerful interests.

City Life’s Tenant Organizing Program (TOP) organizes residents to protect their homes and fight for the development of permanently affordable housing. TOP organizes tenant associa tions in Boston neighborhoods to protect individual families from displacement and to increase participation of at-risk tenants as leaders in affordable housing policy discussions.

"Our new landlord is increasing the rent $300 per month."

"My apartment has no heat and a broken floorboard, but I’m afraid if I complain, the landlord will raise my rent."

"The owner wants to evict everyone in order to sell. What can we do?"

These are the questions City Life/Vida Urbana hears from tenants every day as people are forced from their homes to make way for ever-increasing demands for real estate profit. Our response:

“Don’t move, don’t panic, ORGANIZE!”

In 2001, the new owner of a building on Elm Hill Avenue in Grove Hall wanted to raise rents by $500 per month on each of 27 units. Residents, working with City Life/Vida Urbana, organized and began bargaining with the owner. The tenant association negotiated an agreement that obtained Section 8 certificates for some tenants and limited rent increases for the others to $30/year for 5 years.

Similarly, tenants all over the city who have organized with City Life/Vida Urbana and resisted displacement have won victory after victory:

• 99 years of affordability for 151 apartments at Nazing Court and 284 apartments at Benchmark, both in Grove Hall, Roxbury.

• An 8-year contract renewal at Forestvale in Jamaica Plain, after a two year struggle which included a sit-in at the property owner’s office.

• 3-5 year collective bargaining agreements in Roxbury, Egleston Square, Mattapan, and Mission Hill, which limit rent increases to a modest amount.

• Purchase of organized buildings by tenants or non-profits.

Collective Bargaining

Since 2000, City Life/Vida Urbana has made widespread use of collective bargaining to secure protections for tenants in building after building. This method borrows a page from the labor movement. Tenants who are faced with severe rent increases, mass evictions, conversion to condos and luxury housing, or bad conditions start by organizing a Tenant Association. The Association then seeks to negotiate with the owner for a multi-year contract that responds to their grievances.

City Life/Vida Urbana has helped negotiate contracts covering over 500 units in the last few years and been part of bargaining that affected another 400. These contracts generally last from three to five years, but in one case covered 99 years! They limit rent increases and allow eviction only for cause. Many of them also protect Section 8 tenants by limiting their share of rent to 30% of income, a very important provision in these times of government cutbacks. Some landlords settle quickly and amicably, understanding that their self interest is served by a negotiated settlement. In some cases, long protracted campaigns, and even civil disobedience, have been necessary to achieve contracts.

Such organizing has been supported by the city of Boston through designation of personnel at the Rental Housing Resource Center who mediate disputes between our tenant associations and landlords. The City Council has passed frequent resolutions supporting individual tenant associations right to bargain. We are now asking the City Council to pass a home rule petition which would guarantee tenant associations the right to organize and bargain.

TOP helped to organize tenant associations in more than 40 buildings in the past three years alone!

Tenant Organizing Committee (TOC)

The leaders of this growing citywide tenant movement gather monthly at City Life/Vida Urbana offices as members of the Tenant Organizing Committee (TOC) to support each other, increase their knowledge, plan for actions, and work for changes in housing policies. The TOC has held demonstrations and rallies every month to protect people’s homes. And it contributed huge support to the Boston Tenant Coalition’s effort to restore rent stabilization (see "Victories in 2004").

Says Roberta Jones, a tenant leader from Elm Hill, "It's important for me to connect and see the broad range of people that are in the same struggle as myself at the TOC meetings. We have a tendency to think it's all just one group of people, but it's not. There is strength in numbers. When you see that diversity, you know it is important. It motivates me not to give up, because I know I'm not out there alone."

Section 8

City Life/Vida Urbana has long defended the right of working class tenants to receive needed subsidies, whether public housing, Section 8 or state voucher MRVP. After all, far more subsidy money goes to the rich through tax breaks, loopholes, corporate welfare, etc., than goes to our constituents. In fact, more housing subsidy goes to those making over $100,000 per year than all housing subsidies for low and moderate income people combined.

In April 2004, HUD announced that 2000 households would lose their vouchers in Massachusetts in order to save $3 million. At the same time, the Bush administration announced that it intended to cut 250,000 families off the program in FY05. Local and national organizing momentarily defeated these cuts. City Life/Vida Urbana decided it was vital to start a Section 8 organizing campaign to bring together isolated voucher recipients to defend their homes.

Since that time, we have mailed critical information to 8,600 Section 8 and MRVP voucher holders. We've held 5 neighborhood meetings in Jamaica Plain, Roxbury, Hyde Park, Mattapan, and Dorchester. About 300 people attended or called in. We formed a Section 8 Tenants Committee, which meets monthly. We helped sponsor a rally at the Statehouse in April 2005, protesting Governor Romney's cuts in MRVP that drew almost 200 participants.

Where possible, we organize Section 8 tenants with their brothers and sisters who do not possess subsidies into common tenant associations. We also are making links between Section 8 voucher holders and public housing tenants for the coming budget fights.

If you want help to get organized, call City Life (617) 524-3541.

Tenant Organizing Staff:
Cheryl Lawrence, Tenant Organizer x315
Rosa Machado, Tenant Organizer at Urban Edge x315
Steve Meacham, Tenant Organizing Coordinator, x310
Claudy Rateau, Tenant Organizer
Mauro Reyes, Tenant Organizer X313
Mary Wright, Tenant Organizer