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tenants' rights
Mamdani Announces Plan to Build 200K New Affordable Homes
"We are the largest city in the nation," the mayor said of the bold new proposal. "We have the resources, the talent, and the will to achieve this."
May 26, 2026
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled his long-anticipated plan on Tuesday that he said will confront the city's housing crisis "with the urgency it demands," setting out the goal of building and preserving 400,000 affordable housing units.
Aimed at driving down housing costs in one of the nation's most expensive rental markets, the mayor described his program—titled "Block by Block: The Housing Plan For A New Era"—as one that will set about meeting "two of the most ambitious housing targets in modern New York City," during a press conference in Brooklyn on Tuesday.
Using a $22 billion capital investment over the next five years, the city is set to build 200,000 new affordable and rent-stabilized homes while preserving and stabilizing another 200,000 over the next decade.
According to a press release from the mayor's office, the large investment—which makes up about a sixth of the mayor's five-year capital plan—will be paired "with an ambitious land use agenda to boost housing production across the five boroughs and innovative new financing tools to build and preserve affordable housing more quickly and efficiently."
It will also include modifications to the zoning code to create hundreds of housing co-ops.
Mamdani said on Tuesday that the construction and maintenance of these units would increase the number of homes available to New Yorkers facing homelessness by 45%.
"We are the largest city in the nation. We have the resources, the talent, and the will to achieve this," Mamdani said on Tuesday, surrounded by a coalition of housing advocates, labor union representatives, and city officials.
He said the construction boom will "kickstart" the city's economy. According to the city's Department of Housing Preservation & Development, the program will create an average of 30,000 jobs per year during construction and 12,700 permanent jobs once it's completed.
Mamdani is also directing around $5.6 billion to the New York City Housing Authority to renovate existing units and reduce long wait times. NYCHA has over 170,000 units, and many of them are decades old and badly in need of repairs.
In addition to around $5 million aimed at helping landlords to fix longstanding maintenance issues and cover missed rent, the plan also targets landlords with troubled histories with "roof-to-cellar" inspections of their properties.
"This is about putting city government in the driver's seat. This is about delivering the changes that New Yorkers have been demanding with little avail," Mamdani said. "We will prove that government can deliver on the solutions to the toughest problems, not just debate them."
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Tacoma Activists Offer a Model for Building People Power
With mainstream US politics offering at the moment only Trumpian neofascism and tepid, corporate-friendly Democratic progressivism, a group of left-wing activists in Tacoma, Washington are showing the potential for mobilizing ordinary Americans on behalf of economic justice.
Dec 27, 2025
Tacoma, Washington is a city of about 222,000 persons, 35 miles southwest of Seattle along Interstate 5. It, and the broader Pierce County of which it is the largest city, are typical of many areas of the United States: majority white but with visible communities of color—including many first generation immigrants—and a largely working class population heavily dependent on low-wage, mostly non-union, service sector employment.
As is the case with the vast majority of Americans, most Tacoma residents are only intermittently interested in politics, concentrating on the day to day struggle of living paycheck to paycheck. Politics in the city is dominated by business interests, with elected representatives running the cliched gamut from tepid centrist progressives to right-wing Republicans.
Housing Justice
Recently, the Tacoma chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) and United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 367 have successfully mobilized ordinary people to fight for greater housing security, affordability, and pro-worker politics. Several years ago, for example, both organizations launched Tacoma 4 All (T4A), an organization whose activism succeeded in securing from the city’s voters in November 2023 the passage of what has been informally called the Tenants Bill of Rights—its formal legal title is the Landlord Fairness Code (LFC). The main features of the LFC were a $10 cap on late rental fees, a moratorium on rental evictions within the city during winter months, and a limit on rent increases at 5% annually. If landlords chose to raise the rent by more than 5% per year (and the tenant did not accept the rent increase), they were required to provide the tenant with relocation assistance.
T4A’s grassroots power has been on display in recent months during Tacoma City Council meetings as the organization has mobilized Tacoma residents—in what Tacoma’s business-friendly Democratic Mayor Victoria Woodards called "unprecedented" numbers for the December 9 meeting—to speak out during the meetings in support of the LFC. At the meetings, working class person after working class person has arisen to give testimony as to how the measures' regulations—particularly the winter month eviction moratorium—have given them desperately needed breathing space when temporary financial difficulties have made it impossible for them to pay rent. Such grassroots mobilization helped keep most of the LFC intact when the Tacoma City Council voted during the December 9 meeting on Council Member Sarah Rumbaugh’s proposal to make the LFC more landlord friendly.
The situation of ordinary Tacomans is a microcosm of broader economic injustices facing Washington state (and the United States as a whole).
The popular mobilization helped defeat some of Rumbaugh’s worst proposals, but other landlord-friendly revisions made it into the final revised LFC legislation, which the council approved by a 7-2 margin. The winter eviction moratorium was reduced from five months to four months; the $10 late fee cap was replaced by a charge of 1.5% of monthly rent; residents of nonprofit-owned buildings and Tacoma Housing Authority properties were removed from LFC winter eviction moratorium protections, as were “small landlords,” those defined as owning four or fewer properties in Tacoma and implied as being mom-and-pop landlords but who, in reality, are often large corporations, including private equity firms.
Worker’s Rights
Tacoma DSA, T4A and, UFCW 367 have also sought to mobilize ordinary Tacomans to expand workers’ rights. By late June 2025, the three organizations had collected 10,000 signatures (twice the required number) for a Worker’s Bill of Rights Initiative to be put before Tacoma voters. The proposed measure would increase Tacoma’s minimum wage with relative rapidity to $20 an hour (it now sits at $16.66 an hour, equivalent to Washington state’s minimum wage); implement fair scheduling regulations (requiring Tacoma employers to give workers adequate advanced notice of shift schedule changes); and improve worker safety conditions.
Since last summer—and although the proposed ballot initiative gained the required number of validated signatures—the Tacoma city government has successfully sued in court to delay the placement of the Worker’s Bill of Rights on voters’ ballots. The majority of the Tacoma City Council has requested these delays on the grounds that more time is needed to study the measure and have expressed the fear that it could derail business investment in the city. In the meantime, the struggle continues with T4A, Tacoma DSA, and Local 367 continuing the fight in the courts and at the grassroots to finally get the Worker’s Bill of Rights before Tacoma voters.
As Tacoma city officials fret over the Workers Bill of Rights as potentially creating a less favorable investment climate in the city by raising worker wages, it is crucial to consider some important context. Tacoma residents are struggling with stagnating wages and increasingly unaffordable rent. The situation of ordinary Tacomans is a microcosm of broader economic injustices facing Washington state (and the United States as a whole). The New York Times reported in April that “between 2001 to 2023, median residential rents in Washington state rose by 43%, adjusted for inflation” while state renter income grew by only 26% during the same time period.
Empowering Ordinary People
What is remarkable about the social justice activism that I’ve outlined above is that it has featured a determination to use the push for relatively modest progressive reform as a mechanism to empower and raise the political consciousness of ordinary people in potentially more radical directions.
For example, since the passage of the Landlord Fairness Code (LFC) in 2023, T4A activists have been frequently visiting Tacoma’s apartment complexes, informing tenants of their rights under the LFC, engaging in dialogue with residents about the ownership by predatory private equity firms of rental properties, and offering pro bono legal assistance for tenants having problems with landlords. T4A structures membership meetings to have organizational policy democratically determined by the group’s paying members. Meanwhile, earlier this month, T4A helped launch Tacoma’s first tenant union at one of the city’s privately owned apartment complexes. T4A, Tacoma DSA, and Local 367 are in the beginning stages of attempting to extend their organizing model from Tacoma into the rest of Pierce County.
It is the model of groups like T4A in patiently dialoguing with ordinary people over a long period of time and seeking to slowly but surely build popular power through organizing and consciousness raising that has the best chance of eventually replacing political rule by MAGA neofacists and neoliberal Democrats with the true economic and political empowerment of ordinary people.
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A Win for Mamdani Is a Win for Renters Everywhere
Mamdani is the antidote to the corporate landlord dominance we see in cities across the US. He doesn’t just speak on behalf of rent-stabilized tenants; he is one.
Nov 12, 2025
Zohran Mamdani, a tenant who lives in a rent-stabilized apartment and made affordable rent the primary issue in his campaign, has been elected mayor of New York City.
To be clear, a win for Mamdani is a huge win for renters—not just in New York, but across the country. Mayor-elect Mamdani has shown that a populist mayoral candidate with a bullhorn can ground a winning campaign in issues that impact constituents just trying to get by and have a decent place to live.
During the campaign, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo repeatedly attacked Mamdani for living in a rent-stabilized apartment and supporting a rent freeze. It was a display of character and courage that Mamdani never backed down. Instead, he doubled down. And the attacks against him continued through the last mayoral debate, where Mamdani stated emphatically, “You’ve heard it from Andrew Cuomo that the number one crisis in this city, the housing crisis, the answer is to evict my wife and I. He thinks you address this crisis by unleashing my landlord’s ability to raise my rent. If you think that the problem in this city is that my rent is too low, vote for him. If you know the problem in this city is that your rent is too high, vote for me.”
Mamdani understands the debate comes down to a very basic question: With rents so high, where are people supposed to live? The Starbucks barista, McDonald's worker, and Lyft driver are experiencing what most candidates are afraid to talk about—that they are one rent increase away from losing their apartment.
With over 2.3 million renters in New York City, it’s about time they elected a mayor who would put affordable rents front and center.
Too often, the dialogue around rent has been dominated by investors and corporate landlords. They seemingly have a bottomless pit of money to get their message out and line the campaign coffers of candidates who offer them carte blanche to raise rents and undermine tenants. As Mamdani stated during the race, “The same landlords who said they didn’t have enough money to freeze the rent, gave Cuomo $2.5 million dollars, the single largest check in this entire race.”
Mamdani is the antidote to the corporate landlord dominance we see in cities across the US. He doesn’t just speak on behalf of rent-stabilized tenants; he is one. And that makes all the difference.
Rent control is not new. It has been around since 1919. As real estate became more corporatized, multi-family buildings became a commodity—a line on a balance sheet. It’s less about the people and more about the building as an asset whose value is based on rents. In the 1990s, Apartment Associations led a nationwide campaign to curtail or ban altogether rent control. Currently, 37 states have banned it and states like California only allow rent control in buildings built in 1996.
Cash-strapped tenant organizations have done their best to move the needle on rent stabilization efforts, but they often face a deluge of money from the real estate industry, expensive lawsuits, and elected officials willing to reverse their progress.
Mamdani’s win as mayor signals new hope for campaigns that address the need to control skyrocketing rents. It sets in motion a new model nationwide centered on the needs of constituents, rather than corporate-dominated policies that have no tangible benefit to constituents and fail to improve the quality of life for low-income people.
With over 2.3 million renters in New York City, it’s about time they elected a mayor who would put affordable rents front and center.
Leaders across the country are watching what is happening in New York. The rents are so high that even someone working two full-time jobs can still be rent-burdened, paying over 30% of their income in rent. That is not sustainable.
New Yorkers reached a tipping point and found in Mamdani a leader who provided a platform of solutions, not more excuses for why they cannot get the relief they need. And hopefully, other cities will follow suit, attracting candidates that want to solve problems rather than kowtow to rich donors.
Let’s face it: Stabilizing housing costs is a reasonable practice, which is why most homeowners pay the same amount every month in mortgage payments. Mortgages don’t go up 17% every year to line the pockets of lenders. That would be ridiculous, and it is for renters too. Giving renters stability is not just a reasonable ask; it is a necessity.
As a lifelong renter, I believe we are on the precipice of policy change in the US. Renters and low-income communities are rising up to demand that the government acts in their interest.
Mamdani serving as mayor of America’s largest city, while living in a rent-stabilized apartment, is a game changer. More of this in other cities is desperately needed.
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The Grassroots Fight For Affordable Housing
From Tacoma, Washington to Kansas City, Missouri, people power is key to creating communities where working people can live.
Jul 23, 2025
In the United States, the housing situation is abysmal and getting worse.
A few statewide and local statistics are emblematic of a broader national problem. For example, in Washington state, according to the New York Times, rental housing prices rose by 43% from 2001 to 2023 while, during the same time period, the income of state renters grew by only 26%. Meanwhile in New York City, The Wall Street Journal reported last month that the average price of a two-bedroom apartment was $5,560. The Journal headline of the article in which that statistic was cited nicely embodied a rising feeling among ordinary New York City residents: “New York’s Housing Crisis Is So Bad That a Socialist is Poised to Become Mayor,” referring of course to Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist who is the frontrunner to win the city’s mayoral election in November. Rates of homelessness, evictions, and foreclosures remain high around the country.
In the face of this ever growing crisis, mainstream politicians—Democrats and Republicans—have virtually nothing useful to say. They’ve doubled down on existing national, state, and local government subsidies for affordable housing—which do not even remotely begin to produce the supply of housing at levels needed—while insisting that the unregulated free market in housing (increasingly controlled by an ever smaller number of corporations) operate as much as possible.
Grassroots Resistance
Tacoma, Washington is a city of about 222,000, 35 miles southwest of Seattle. It is largely a working class town; the Tacoma News Tribune recently reported that 77% of the jobs within it “don’t pay enough for a single worker to be able to comfortably afford housing on their own.” In the whole of Pierce County (of which Tacoma is the county seat), 37% of renters spend more than 30% of their income on housing.
A group which has attempted to alleviate this situation, with modest but tangible success, is Tacoma For All (T4A), a group founded by United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) Local 367 and the Tacoma Democratic Socialists of America. T4A’s most noticeable achievement has been launching and successfully influencing the passage of Initiative 1 by Tacoma voters in November 2023, securing relatively strong eviction protections for the city’s renters and a cap on rent increases.
In order to assist in meeting the crisis of affordable housing, KC Tenants and T4A have both made a strong push for government-funded social housing within their particular locales.
However, the most impressive achievement of T4A has been its building of an organization, democratically run by its dues-paying members, devoted to educating ordinary people about their legal rights as tenants and to acting in solidarity to protect the rights of other tenants against the depredations of corporate landlords. The organization regularly sends teams of organizers to knock on doors of Tacoma apartment buildings, asking tenants about any issues they might be having with landlords, and offering the organization’s assistance and solidarity in addressing those issues. T4A has established Tacoma Tenant Legal Aid to help tenants pursue their rights. The organization has achieved real successes in helping Tacoma residents stay in their homes
Another successful grassroots organization is KC Tenants in Kansas City, Missouri. It is profiled in Jonathan Tarleton’s 2025 book Homes for Living: The Fight for Social Housing and a New American Commons. While the group is anti-capitalist, KC Tenants foremost approach to tenants is not to preach socialism but to help them navigate bread-and-butter housing issues. The presentation of their critique of racial capitalism or lessons on the virtues of social housing comes later in the process of integrating tenants into their organization. As KC Tenants organizer Tara Raghuveer told Tarleton, the group’s initial approach is to simply ask tenants, “How the fuck are you?...We knock [on] doors asking people how they’re living now, which by itself is a very politicizing line of questioning because the people are not living good.”
For tenants suffering from serious psychological trauma and anger because of housing issues, the approach of KC Tenants organizers—the message that people are here to offer assistance to them without judgement and structures for solidarity with other people going through similar issues—can be exhilarating, even liberating. Similar feelings have also been felt by KC Tenants professional organizers. One of them is Magda Werkmeister, who at one point left Kansas City for back East to complete a college degree but eventually returned to continue working with KC Tenants. She told Tarleton that she returned to the group because “I was missing out on something that makes life more joyous, and I think that was just the sense of community… and these people that you are able to care about and [who] care about you.”
Social Housing
In order to assist in meeting the crisis of affordable housing, KC Tenants and T4A have both made a strong push for government-funded social housing within their particular locales. Other municipalities have followed suit: For example, Seattle voters approved funding for a city social housing developer in February, and in May the Chicago City Council passed a Green Social Housing Ordinance.
Social housing is a form of public housing: It is meant to assist persons of a wide range of income levels (not merely low income) and utilize government subsidies to ensure the rents it charges are substantially below market rate. The most successful example of social housing in the world is found in Vienna, Austria. The success of Vienna’s social housing seemingly played a role in Economist Intelligence naming it in 2024 as the world’s most livable city.
The Bottom Line: People Power
It seems likely that Zohran Mamdani—who has cited the Vienna model of housing as a major influence—will have immense difficulties in implementing social housing in New York City, as well as his other proposals like free childcare and free bus service. These programs will require tax increases on the city’s businesses and wealthy as well as increases in New York City’s debt limit; both require the approval of New York’s business-friendly Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul and she is unlikely to accommodate Mamdani’s requests to any significant extent. Moreover, there is risk that city business leaders and the wealthy—fearful of the threat to their bottom line should Mamdani win election in November and try to implement his relatively mild democratic socialist program—will engage in capital flight, wrecking the city’s tax base.
Regardless of whether Mamdani is, somehow, able to resist the establishment pressure and implement major parts of his agenda—or whether that pressure forces him to sell out that agenda—it is obviously crucial that ordinary people and grassroots activists stick unflinchingly to core principles and relentlessly pressure politicians to follow them.
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Zohran Won by Running for the Tenant Majority
This election was a fight between tenants versus landlords, and we have won the first battle. We still need to organize to win the general, and beyond that, tenant-focused policies.
Jul 02, 2025
New York City is a tenant town. But for decades, in City Hall and in Albany, the real estate industry has used their vast power—manifested through money, networks, and control over major influential universities and civic institutions—to run New York. Politicians regularly see property owners as more deserving constituents—a condition that is downstream from how they are elected in the first place.
Traditional campaign consultants on both sides of the aisle train their candidates to believe that homeowners vote and that tenants—comparatively more transient—have less of a stake in our communities and neighborhoods. This creates a vicious feedback loop: If tenants are more transient, it is because of public policy that doesn’t believe in our right to housing stability. If we do not vote, it is because no one is giving us anything to vote for. If public policy doesn’t favor tenants, it is because lawmakers are accustomed to delivering for the interest groups that they believe elected them.
For too long, a vocal minority coalition of property owners, landlords, and real estate developers have used their vast wealth to buy our elections and control New York City. This is not only bad for tenants, it is a threat to our democracy. They then use this power to marginalize tenants further—blocking tenant protections and writing in new ways to raise our rents.
We need people in City Hall who know that we—not the real estate industry, not the landlords—put them there.
Historically, national tenant voter turnout is lower than property owner turnout, but in New York, a majority tenant city, that isn’t the case. Because we are breaking the cycle.
Things began to change in 2018, when a group of eight Working Families Party-backed Democrats and one democratic socialist lawmaker were elected to the state legislature. During their campaigns, they refused real estate donations, emboldened by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez’s (D-N.Y.) similar pledge and victory just months before. With the support and organizing of tenants, the New York State lawmakers immediately passed the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019, a landmark shift against pro-landlord policymaking in Albany.
And now tenants are at the heart of another shakeup. Campaigning on affordability and a promise to freeze the rent for four years, Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani (D-36) decisively beat the establishment-picked Andrew Cuomo, winning the Democratic mayoral primary by 12 points.
At every turn, Zohran was Cuomo’s foil. While Cuomo was every landlord’s favorite candidate, Zohran ran aggressively for the tenant majority, putting rental costs front and center in his campaign’s message. Cuomo accepted millions from the real estate industry. In return, he promised to raise the rent, to expand valuable tax exemptions, and to dismantle the very tenant protection laws he signed into law just six years ago.
Zohran, on the other hand, promised to hold slumlords accountable, build truly affordable homes, and freeze the rent. Again and again, in video after video, interview and campaign appearances across the city the message was relentless: Zohran will stand up to your landlord and fight alongside you. He will use the vast tools of the New York City government to deliver higher quality and more affordable housing. If your landlord doesn’t make repairs, we’ll fix it ourselves and fine them. If they don’t pay, we’ll collect the debt.
Initial analysis show that he crushed his opponent in places like Washington Heights and the South Bronx—places that are both super majority tenant neighborhoods—traditionally thought of as moderate and Democratic establishment strongholds.
This is not surprising for those of us who have worked with Zohran for years. As an assemblymember, he was a dogged advocate for Good Cause Eviction protections, defended rent stabilization against real estate industry attacks, and got arrested in civil disobedience actions protesting rent increases and evictions alongside tenant organizers. He has advocated for non-market-controlled housing for years. Zohran announced his mayoral campaign with tenants’ rights organizations like New York Communities for Change and CAAAV Voice.
And as Zohran laid the foundation for the path to Gracie Mansion, the tenant movement launched a new 501c4 political vehicle—the New York State Tenant Bloc (the organization of which I am the director.) The timeline is not a coincidence: We launched with an explicit goal of building a 250,000-strong tenant voting bloc and using our collective voices and votes to elect a tenant majority mayor.
Collectively, tenants’ rights organizations delivered Zohran tens of thousands of votes. While we were a small part of his overall gargantuan volunteer operation, we were proud to mobilize over 715 volunteers to take action in support of his campaign, week after week. Over 20,000 people vowed to vote in favor of Zohran’s core campaign pledge to Freeze the Rent—and by hosting forums, mobilizing in huge numbers to rent board hearings, and elevating our campaign on social media and the press, we reached countless more tenant voters.
While we are proud of Zohran’s record, we didn’t volunteer in droves for him because of his history. We did it because we know that if we want universal rent stabilization and public investments in social housing that is truly affordable for every New Yorker, we need people in City Hall who know that we—not the real estate industry, not the landlords—put them there.
Now, as the organized tenant movement is on the cusp of having a rent stabilized tenant in City Hall, we must organize more forcefully, in greater numbers, than ever before. We need a mayor and a movement.
The machine that tried to elect Andrew Cuomo is bruised, but it is not broken. The real estate industry is now on the offensive, campaigning aggressively in the press and spending big in the general election. They are threatening lawsuits and engaging in a capital strike: refusing to maintain our homes under so-far unsubstantiated claims they cannot afford to. To deliver on a rent freeze, the mayor will have to call their bluff. And doing so will require strong tenant movement organizing at every level—our buildings, our neighborhoods, our city, our state—to make it possible.
This election was a fight between tenants versus landlords, and we have won the first battle. We still need to organize to win the general, and beyond that, tenant-focused policies. We are determined to turn the rent freeze electoral majority into a permanent political powerhouse. Through this voting bloc, tenants will shape budgets and legislation. We will determine the electoral fate of lawmakers, especially those who stand in the way of policies that deliver truly affordable housing, and yes, frozen rents.
What happens in New York matters for the rest of the country: Our tenant majority was once seen as a unique blip in a country that is overall defined by homeownership. But fewer and fewer people can afford to own their own home, and being a tenant is increasingly the norm. Nearly every major city in the country is majority tenant. Many are unable to afford the rents, live in slum conditions, and are forced to move from apartment to apartment as landlords price us out. And just like in New York, politicians who work for property owners but claim to represent tenants are a dangerous threat to democracy.
Unable to afford basic essentials like housing and groceries, voters are turning to the far-right (which is offering a fascistic solution based on deportation and fear), or they are dropping out of politics altogether and simply not voting.
To stop the spread of fascism, leaders running for local and state office must follow Zohran’s path to victory. Run for the tenant majority. Give us something to vote for, and we’ll go to the polls. Our democracy depends on it.
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Michigan Lawmakers Have a Chance to Protect People From Predatory Landlords
In the midst of an affordable housing crisis, the protections in SB486-492 and HB 5157-5163 would interrupt the cycle of corporate greed that leaves hundreds of thousands of Michigan manufactured home residents like me and my wife struggling.
Dec 01, 2024
My wife and I have lived in North Morris Estates, a manufactured housing community in Genesee County, Michigan, for 15 years. I love my home. I love my community. But since 2021, it feels like my community doesn’t love me back.
That year Homes of America, an affiliate of hedge fund Alden Global Capital, bought North Morris Estates. Since then our home has felt more like a battleground than a refuge.
We, like most residents, can’t move our home. The choices are fight back or give up. Anyone who knows us knows we aren’t giving up.
For too long Michiganders living in manufactured housing parks have been subject to the profit-driven whims of predatory, absentee corporate landlords like Homes of America and Alden Global Capital.
When Homes of America took over, they increased our rent by $100 a month over two years. We had proof our rent was always timely and our checks cashed, but they tried to evict us for unpaid rent and 19 late charges going back two years. We quickly learned to send our rent via certified mail and demand receipts.
They left dozens of homes empty and rotting, creating dangerous conditions and blight. When we, like others, requested repairs to make our community safer, we were either told to pay for the work ourselves or faced retaliation. They ignored requests for basic infrastructure repairs, and our community pool and clubhouse have been closed since 2022 due to lack of maintenance.
To get a sense of the retaliation we face, consider our butterfly garden. With permission from the previous owner, we established a nationally registered Monarch Waystation on vacant lots. It was a small victory for residents and a source of pride. After we reported Homes of America’s unpermitted construction, they bulldozed our beloved Monarch Waystation and left a pile of dirt and uprooted flowers. They even took photos, as if it were a trophy. These people prefer blight to beauty!
They often shut off water without notice, leaving us unable to finish a shower, wash dishes, or clean. We’ve resorted to keeping a full bucket in the tub to flush during shutoffs. Even when it’s on, it’s not uncommon for brown, putrid water to come out of our taps.
In November the state denied the renewal of North Morris Estates’ operating license due to violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act. In January the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) issued a violation notice, and Thetford Township took the unprecedented step of obtaining a court injunction to halt park operations. This led to the first-ever criminal charges in Michigan against the owners of a mobile home park for operating without a license, an alleged violation of the Michigan Mobile Home Commission Act.
I’m glad the law is finally beginning to hold Homes of America accountable. But the current law didn’t prevent any of this—the blighted homes, the dirty water, the junk fees. It took hundreds of hours of research, calls, emails, meetings, documentation, and police investigations to get the wheels of justice just starting to turn for residents.
That’s why it’s critical that the Michigan legislature passes SB 486-492/HB 5157-5163. They would create basic protections for residents. They would prevent park owners from renewing their licenses if they have a history of unjustified rent hikes, require more frequent and stringent inspections, create a searchable public database of park owners, and prevent overcharging on utilities. The bills would also update outdated tax incentives that encourage landlords to keep landlord-owned homes off the market.
For too long Michiganders living in manufactured housing parks have been subject to the profit-driven whims of predatory, absentee corporate landlords like Homes of America and Alden Global Capital. In the midst of an affordable housing crisis, the protections in SB486-492 and HB 5157-5163 would interrupt the cycle of corporate greed that leaves hundreds of thousands of Michigan manufactured home residents like me and my wife struggling.
These bills are essential to protect people like us—because no one should feel like a prisoner in their own home.
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Harris to Target Predatory Wall Street Landlords With Four-Year Housing Plan
The Democratic nominee is expected to endorse a crackdown on algorithmic price-setting by big landlords and an end to tax breaks for corporate investors that buy up single-family homes.
Aug 16, 2024
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris on Friday is set to outline a four-year housing plan that would promote the construction of 3 million new housing units, provide substantial down-payment aid to first-time homebuyers, and strip away tax incentives for corporate investors that
purchase single-family homes and drive up prices to pad their bottom lines.
Harris'
proposals to tackle the nation's worsening housing crisis are part of a broader economic agenda that the vice president will lay out in a speech Friday afternoon in North Carolina.
Harris, who recently pledged to "take on corporate landlords and cap unfair rent increases," is expected to urge Congress to pass a pair of bills that would crack down on algorithmic price-setting by big landlords and bar corporate investors who buy up 50 or more single-family rental homes from taking advantage of tax breaks, building on President Joe Biden's push for corporate landlords to cap rent hikes.
A recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that just 32 institutional investors owned a combined 450,000 single-family homes in the U.S. and the five largest investors owned nearly 300,000 homes. Institutional investors control 25% of the single-family rental housing market in Atlanta, Georgia, according to the GAO.
Another major component of Harris' housing plan calls for providing up to $25,000 in down-payment assistance to "working families who have paid their rent on time for two years and are buying their first home."
Harris' campaign said the plan would "expand the reach of down-payment assistance, allowing over 4 million first-time buyers over four years to get significant down-payment assistance."
"Trump likes to talk about being a builder, but when he was president, he simply never got it done. Now, his Project 2025 agenda will make it more expensive to rent or buy a home," the Harris campaign said Thursday. "Year after year during his presidency, Trump tried to gut rental assistance programs. New home construction slowed while Trump was in office—tightening the housing crunch and enabling his wealthy friends to profit."
Housing justice advocates applauded the emerging details of Harris' plan, arguing that persistent tenant organizing has helped elevate the hardships of renters to the top of the Democratic Party's priority list for 2024 and beyond.
"How did these get on the agenda? Organized renters making good trouble," the Alliance for Housing Justice wrote on social media.
In recent months, progressives and tenant organizers have worked to make housing central to the 2024 campaign as renters across the U.S. struggle to make their monthly payments and as sky-high prices, elevated interest rates, and supply shortages box out first-time homebuyers. Housing costs accounted for roughly 90% of the overall increase in the Consumer Price Index last month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
A recent research brief by Russell Weaver of Cornell University stressed that tenants impacted by the nation's housing affordability crisis are a "large, untapped political base—especially for Democrats and progressives."
"Candidates who campaign on housing affordability and tenant protections have the potential to significantly boost renter turnout, which could be decisive in tightly contested races," Weaver said.
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The US Has a Housing Crisis, Not a Squatting Crisis
The real estate lobby is using its power to advance a flurry of anti-squatter bills to push back against tenant protections enacted in the early years of the Covid-19 pandemic. Lawmakers should not take the bait.
Aug 11, 2024
Alabama, Tennessee, and Florida’s new anti-squatter laws all went into effect in the last two months, the latest exhibit of the real estate industry’s influence in American politics. In this year alone, at least 10 states have considered legislation that revokes tenancy rights, making squatting—when someone moves into a vacant building or onto uninhabited land—a criminal matter instead of civil one.
While the fear-mongering around squatting started as a right-wing talking point, now anti-squatter bills have passed in several states with bipartisan support. Earlier this year, in New York, where Democrats dominate politics, Gov. Kathy Hochul and several state legislators took a victory lap after passing a budget bill that declared that squatters don’t have the same rights as tenants, and to support property owners statewide.
Some would assume that these legislative actions were taken in response to a threat of a mass takeover of homes in cities across the country. But in reality, as many experts have rightly pointed out, squatting is extremely rare. A threat does exist, which is why we’re seeing a rise in this legislation. It’s just not to property owners. It’s to the power of the real estate lobby.
The manufactured crisis around squatters is meant to distract from the fact that over half of Americans struggle to pay their rent or mortgage every month.
As outlined in a new report by the Private Equity Stakeholder Project and others, the real estate lobby is a sprawling, interconnected group of representatives from the top corporate apartment owners and managers in the country, who—by having members sit on each other’s boards—can tap into an enormous shared pool of resources that they’re using to destabilize communities across the country.
The lobby is using this power to advance a flurry of anti-squatter bills to push back against tenant protections enacted in the early years of the Covid-19 pandemic. This was a time when millions of people in the United States were kept in their homes thanks to policies like rental assistance expansion and foreclosure and eviction moratoria. For many of us, it was the first time we witnessed our country recognize the public health and economic value of keeping people in their homes. These protections made clear that regardless of race, class, or housing tenure, housing stability is the foundation for thriving communities.
Now, real estate industry groups, the second biggest lobbying spender in the U.S., are using anti-squatter legislation in a desperate attempt to undercut that progress. Capitalizing on America’s heightened anxiety about the housing crisis, they are scaring people into believing that tenant protections come at the expense of homeowners. Lawmakers should not take the bait.
At best, these bills are reactionary responses to a problem that doesn’t exist. At worst, they represent the worst of election season fear-mongering: anti-immigrant sentiment, dog-whistle racism, and calls for law and order. Look no further than the Florida attorney general’s celebration of legislation declaring that immigrants were taking over homes across the state, based on a viral TikTok. In reality, most states already have laws that address squatters adequately—it’s tenant protections that remain significantly weaker relative to property rights.
Advancing anti-squatter legislation is a slippery slope to eroding eviction protections passed during the last few years, and that’s exactly what the real estate lobby wants: They themselves refer to squatter legislation as “eviction policy.” Clearly, they are hoping to put legislators on a path to repealing hard-fought regulations to protect tenants by inferring a false equating of squatters (who live in vacant properties without legal agreements) and tenants (who legally inhabit homes with leases).The bills put any resident with tenant or ownership interest at risk of immediate displacement, often by a law enforcement agency, without the normal requirement of notice, proof, and judicial review before someone is removed from their home.
But their efforts to undo these gains won’t be easy, because the tide has turned in support of tenant protections as a way to address our housing crisis. In poll after poll, people in the United States say they want to see governments take action to alleviate the cost of housing. This has quickly become a front-burner issue for Americans and a top priority for them in the presidential election, only second to inflation. A recent survey of voters in battleground states found that 82% of renters believe that, if addressed, the cost of rent and housing would make their personal situation better.
The manufactured crisis around squatters is meant to distract from the fact that over half of Americans struggle to pay their rent or mortgage every month. And that a tenant-led movement to change this reality is building political power, winning local elections, and influencing federal policy.
Considering this, one can see why the real estate lobby, which amassed over $2.5 billion in revenue during the height of the pandemic, is grasping at straws to stay relevant to legislators. While it’s trying to ramp up efforts to unravel tenant protections, the lobby itself—the National Association of Realtors (NAR)—is unraveling. From Department of Justice investigations and anti-trust lawsuits to sexual harassment allegations, and a musical chairs of presidents and CEOs in the last two years, members are not happy. In October 2023, Redfin announced it would require many of its brokers to cancel their NAR memberships and stop paying dues. Reports of NAR running out of liability insurance coverage and rumors of real estate moguls starting alternative associations show cracks in a foundation that will be difficult to repair. No amount of fresh paint, even if it is in the form of throwing tenants under the bus, can fix such dysfunction. But they’ll try as long as they can.
As America increasingly becomes a nation of renters, lawmakers can’t lose sight of the bigger picture: We have a housing crisis, not a squatter crisis. Millions of people calling on leaders to alleviate their suffering cannot afford to be sold out with this distraction. Lawmakers should pass policies that we know advance housing stability, instead of doing the bidding of those attacking it.
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Analysis Shows Embracing Bold Renter Protections Can Help Democrats Win in 2024
"Tenant protections aren't just good policies—they're good politics," said one housing justice campaigner.
Jun 18, 2024
An analysis released Tuesday bolsters an argument that progressive lawmakers and organizers have been making with growing urgency in the lead-up to the critical November elections: Housing should be at the top of the Democratic Party's—and President Joe Biden's—agenda.
The research brief, authored by Russell Weaver of the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations (ILR) Buffalo Co-Lab, shows that tenants are a "large, untapped political base" that can be mobilized by candidates who offer bold solutions to the housing crisis and support the rights of renters against the predatory landlords squeezing them for profit.
While homeowners typically turn out to vote at a far higher rate than tenants, Weaver noted, the "owner-renter turnout gap is nearly cut in half when candidates run on renter-friendly platforms." Renters in New York state (NYS)—the focus of the new analysis—are more likely than homeowners to be registered as Democrats or members of the Working Families Party.
Analyzing the results of New York's statewide general election in 2022, Weaver found that NYS tenants "might have been relatively motivated to turn out for candidates who were vocal supporters or co-sponsors of the 2022 state-level Good Cause Eviction bill, which protects renters against rent hikes and evictions."
"In NYS Senate races that did not feature such a candidate, the average turnout rate among likely renters was roughly 29% (after adjusting for race-ethnicity and political party)," Weaver wrote. "In races that included Good Cause proponents, however, average renter turnout was more than five percentage points higher, at 34.1%—a statistically significant difference."
Weaver said in a statement that his analysis underscores that "candidates who campaign on housing affordability and tenant protections have the potential to significantly boost renter turnout, which could be decisive in tightly contested races."
"An organized tenant voting bloc could be the key to jump-starting a statewide housing policy agenda that works for all New Yorkers," said Weaver.
The findings could also have implications for national races as rent remains high across the country, leaving roughly half of U.S. tenants unable to afford their monthly payments as corporate landlords and billionaire investors gobble up rental properties and drive up costs. The Federal Reserve is also making the crisis worse by keeping interest rates elevated.
"This brief tells us what we already know: Renters are a powerful voting bloc that will determine the 2024 election," Katie Goldstein, a housing justice organizer at the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD), said of Weaver's analysis. "We can't leave these votes on the table."
"Tenant champions who run on these issues will be rewarded at the ballot box—and politicians who fail to do so will be voted out of office."
CPD, Right to the City Action, and HIT Strategies released survey data earlier this month showing that 87% of U.S. voters believe the "cost of rent and housing is a major or big problem in their state" and that 70% said they are "more likely to vote for someone who supports rent stabilization policies."
The new research brief and polling data strengthen the case for making housing a top priority for an incumbent president and Democratic lawmakers hoping to defeat their Republican opponents in November.
"Tenant protections aren't just good policies—they're good politics," said Esteban Girón, member of the Tenants PAC Board. "Candidates have the opportunity to win big by committing to keep rents affordable and protect tenants from displacement."
At a gathering in Los Angeles in early April, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) joined Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and other lawmakers at the national, state, and local levels in imploring Democrats to elevate bold housing policies and tenant protections such as federal rent control to the top of the party's agenda.
"This is the richest country on Earth. We're not a poor country," Sanders said at the event. "Can we build affordable housing that we need? Can we protect? And the answer is of course we can. But it will require a massive grassroots effort to transform our political system to do that."
Politico reported earlier this year that Biden has privately expressed "increasing concern" that housing costs are putting his reelection hopes in jeopardy.
"The White House is now pushing a range of bulked-up tax credits to incentivize existing homeowners to sell their starter homes, as well as expand rental assistance and extend help for lower-income buyers with their down payments," the outlet noted. "Yet all those ideas require legislation. And while the White House has publicly argued the crisis affects red states just as much as blue states, aides privately acknowledge any movement is a long shot in an election year. Indeed, Republicans have been quick to pan Biden's housing push."
Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, meanwhile, has not released a housing agenda as he vies for another four years in the White House. During his first term as president, Trump repeatedly pursued steep cuts to federal housing programs and assailed affordable housing initiatives.
Brahvan Ranga, political director of For the Many, said Tuesday that it is "critical we elect legislators who will enact policies that expand tenants' rights, create and maintain affordable green social housing, and affirm housing as a guaranteed right."
"The housing crisis is front of mind for tenants as they head to the polls—both in Democratic primaries and general elections. As housing costs continue to rise and working families struggle to stay in their homes, corporate real estate and greedy landlords are raking in record profits," said Ranga. "Tenant champions who run on these issues will be rewarded at the ballot box—and politicians who fail to do so will be voted out of office."
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New Service Sends Summaries of Your Social Media to Landlords, Employers to 'Assess' You
Jun 25, 2016
Here's a shout-out to all of you who said, "If I've got nothing to hide, I've got nothing to fear" after the Snowden revelations. And this little gem deals only with publicly available information about you. Imagine what it's like when it gets into the good stuff you think is private.
An Orwellian startup called Tenant Assured will analyze your social media, including chats and check-ins, and count the number of times you've posted words like "pregnant, wasted, busted, no money, broke, moving back in with the parents, weed, or loan," and deliver a "personality score" to potential landlords and employers.
While many people already Google folks they might rent to or hire, this new service aggregates a mountain of information and then evaluates it. At the end, someone gets some numbers that describe you (see sample reports, below,) with little idea how those numbers came to be determined.
How many times did you check in at a bar? Are you a drunk who'll screw up at work? How often does your relationship status change? Same-sex relationships? Evidence of drug use? Political affiliation?
The report will also assess your "financial stress level" as a breakdown of five personality traits: extraversion, neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
The company says it is aware that some of the information it gathers cannot legally be used to decline a loan, lease or job, but nicely covers itself. "All we do is give them the information," a spokesperson said. "It's up to landlords to do the right thing."
The company states its goal as "you won't hire a dog sitter or book an Airbnb without first viewing a social media dossier," as compiled by the company.
Welcome to your future. We'll soon be looking back on the Snowden revelations as quaint.
A sample report:
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