#tenants union

[chriswhodrawsstuff]

The Myth...

I’ve been reading the new book by housing lawyer and activist Nick Bano, rather obviously titled “Against Landlords”… Can you guess what it’s about? I was listening to Nick speak on ‘Politics Joe’ and learnt a few things, not enough to make me want to update my own book but enough to make me stump up the cash for a copy. I keep thinking how one of the leaders of my local tenant union is close…

[missingpetrock]

Official Description: "There's a Fire in the Building is a satire about Deborah, a dog, who tries to get signatures from her neighbors on a petition to put out the fire actively burning their building." I love this animation alot, and I really believe in the collectivist spirit of it. It's simple in character design, in punk aesthetic kinda honesty, and the VA is also delivered earnestly.

[ruthstruths]

[ganymedeaguspluto]

renters: LANDLORDS HATE THIS ONE TRICK!

if you live in Scotland (and are moving into a new place), you can access the Scottish Government's "Model Tenancy Agreement" document for free. the overwhelming majority of tenancy agreements in Scotland are based off of this document (because it's much easier than writing a new one from scratch), and as a result you can see what your landlord has changed.

read both your agreement and the ScotGov contract next to each other and highlight any differences, ideally before you sign. contact/consult Citizen's Advice if you have any worries or concerns. if you're a student/young person, this is even more important: landlords often try to take advantage of us due to relative inexperience.

this is probably true of most places, but I can only speak to where I live.

also, join a tenants union.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Housing is a labor issue

There's a reason Reagan declared war on unions before he declared war on everything else �� environmental protection, health care, consumer rights, financial regulation. Unions are how working people fight for a better world for all of us. They're how everyday people come together to resist oligarchy, extraction and exploitation.

Take the 2019 LA teachers' strike. As Jane McAlevey writes in A Collective Bargain, the LA teachers didn't just win higher pay for their members! They also demanded (and got) an end to immigration sweeps of parents waiting for their kids at the school gate; a guarantee of green space near every public school in the city; and on-site immigration counselors in LA schools:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Unionization is enjoying an historic renaissance. The Hot Labor Summer transitioned to an Eternal Labor September, and it's still going strong, with UAW president Shawn Fain celebrating his members victory over the Big Three automakers by calling for a 2028 general strike:

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/uaw-general-strike-no-class

The rising labor movement has powerful allies in the Biden Administration. NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo is systematically gutting the "union avoidance" playbook. She's banned the use of temp-work app blacklists that force workers to cross picket lines:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

She's changed the penalty for bosses who violate labor law during union drives. It used to be the boss would pay a fine, which was an easy price to pay in exchange for killing your workers' union. Now, the penalty is automatic recognition of the union:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

And while the law doesn't allow Abruzzo to impose a contract on companies that refuse to bargain their unions, she's set to force those companies to honor other employers' union contracts until they agree to a contract with their own workers:

https://onlabor.org/gc-abruzzo-just-asked-the-nlrb-to-overturn-ex-cell-o-heres-why-that-matters/

She's also nuking TRAPs, the deals that force workers to repay their employers for their "training expenses" if they have the audacity to quit and get a better job somewhere else:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

(As with every aspect of the Biden White House, its labor policy is contradictory and self-defeating, with other Biden appointees working to smash worker power, including when Biden broke the railworkers' strike:)

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/18/co-determination/#now-make-me-do-it

A surging labor movement opens up all kinds of possibilities for a better world. Writing for the Law and Political Economy Project, UNITE Here attorney Zoe Tucker makes the case for unions as a way out of America's brutal housing crisis:

https://lpeproject.org/blog/why-unions-should-join-the-housing-fight/

She describes how low-waged LA hotel workers have been pushed out of neighborhoods close to their jobs, with UNITE Here members commuting three hours in each direction, starting their work-days at 3AM in order to clock in on time:

https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1669088899769987079

UNITE Here members are striking against 50 hotels in LA and Orange County, and their demands include significant cost-of-living raises. But more money won't give them back the time they give up to those bruising daily commutes. For that, unions need to make housing itself a demand.

As Tucker writes, most workers are tenants and vice-versa. What's more, bad landlords are apt to be bad bosses, too. Stepan Kazaryan, the same guy who owns the strip club whose conditions were so bad that it prompted the creation of Equity Strippers NoHo, the first strippers' union in a generation, is also a shitty landlord whose tenants went on a rent-strike:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/20/the-missing-links/#plunderphonics

So it was only natural that Kazaryan's tenants walked the picket line with the Equity Stripper Noho workers:

https://twitter.com/glendaletenants/status/1733290276599570736?s=46

While scumbag bosses/evil landlords like Kazaryan deal out misery retail, one apartment building at a time, the wholesale destruction of workers' lives comes from private equity giants who are the most prolific source of TRAPs, robo-scabbing apps, illegal union busting, and indefinite contract delays – and these are the very same PE firms that are buying up millions of single-family homes and turning them into slums:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

Tucker's point is that when a worker clocks out of their bad job, commutes home for three hours, and gets back to their black-mold-saturated, overpriced apartment to find a notice of a new junk fee (like a surcharge for paying your rent in cash, by check, or by direct payment), they're fighting the very same corporations.

Unions who defend their workers' right to shelter do every tenant a service. A coalition of LA unions succeeded in passing Measure ULA, which uses a surcharge on real estate transactions over $5m to fund "the largest municipal housing program in the country":

https://unitedtohousela.com/app/uploads/2022/05/LA_City_Affordable_Housing_Petition_H.pdf

LA unions are fighting for rules to limit Airbnbs and other platforms that transform the city's rental stock into illegal, unlicensed hotels:

https://upgo.lab.mcgill.ca/publication/strs-in-los-angeles-2022/Wachsmuth_LA_2022.pdf

And the hotel workers organized under UNITE Here are fighting their own employers: the hoteliers who are aggressively buying up residences, evicting their long-term tenants, tearing down the building and putting up a luxury hotel. They got LA council to pass a law requiring hotels to build new housing to replace any residences they displace:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-28/airbnb-operators-would-need-police-permit-in-l-a-under-proposed-law

UNITE Here is bargaining for a per-room hotel surcharge to fund housing specifically for hotel workers, so the people who change the sheets and clean the toilets don't have to waste six hours a day commuting to do so.

Labor unions and tenant unions have a long history of collaboration in the USA. NYC's first housing coop was midwifed by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in 1927. The Penn South coop was created by the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union. The 1949 Federal Housing Act passed after American unions pushed hard for it:

http://www.peterdreier.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Labors-Love-Lost.pdf

It goes both ways. Strong unions can create sound housing – and precarious housing makes unions weaker. Remember during the Hollywood writers' strike, when an anonymous studio ghoul told the press the plans was to "allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses?"

Vienna has the most successful housing in any major city in the world. It's the city where people of every income and background live in comfort without being rent-burdened and without worry about eviction, mold, or leaks. That's the legacy of Red Vienna, the Austrian period of Social Democratic Workers' Party rule and built vast tracts of high-quality public housing. The system was so robust that it rebounded after World War II and continues to this day:

https://www.politico.eu/article/vienna-social-housing-architecture-austria-stigma/

Today, the rest of the world is mired in a terrible housing crisis. It's not merely that the rent's too damned high (though it is) – housing precarity is driving dangerous political instability:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

Turning the human necessity of shelter into a market commodity is a failure. The economic orthodoxy that insists that public housing, rent control, and high-density zoning will lead to less housing has failed. rent control works:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mortgages-are-rent-control/#housing-is-a-human-right-not-an-asset

Leaving housing to the market only produces losers. If you have the bad luck to invest everything you have into a home in a city that contracts, you're wiped out. If you have the bad luck into invest everything into a home in a "superstar city" where prices go up, you also lose, because your city becomes uninhabitable and your children can't afford to live there:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/27/lethal-dysfunction/#yimby

A strong labor movement is the best chance we have for breaking the housing deadlock. And housing is just for starters. Labor is the key to opening every frozen-in-place dysfunction. Take care work: the aging, increasingly chronically ill American population is being tortured and murdered by private equity hospices, long-term care facilities and health services that have been rolled up by the same private equity firms that destroyed work and housing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

In her interview with Capital & Main's Jessica Goodheart, National Domestic Workers Alliance president Ai-jen Poo describes how making things better for care workers will make things better for everyone:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-12-13-labor-leader-ai-jen-poo-interview/

Care work is a "triple dignity investment": first, it makes life better for the worker (most often a woman of color), then, it allows family members of people who need care to move into higher paid work; and of course, it makes life better for people who need care: "It delivers human potential and agency. It delivers a future workforce. It delivers quality of life."

The failure to fund care work is a massive driver of inequality. America's sole federal public provision for care is Medicaid, which only kicks in after a family it totally impoverished. Funding care with tax increases polls high with both Democrats and Republicans, making it good politics:

https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2021/4/7/voters-support-investing-in-the-care-economy

Congress stripped many of the care provisions from Build Back Better, missing a chance for an "unprecedented, transformational investment in care." But the administrative agencies picked up where Congress failed, following a detailed executive order that identifies existing, previously unused powers to improve care in America. The EO "expands access to care, supports family caregivers and improves wages and conditions for the workforce":

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/04/18/executive-order-on-increasing-access-to-high-quality-care-and-supporting-caregivers/

States are also filling the void. Washington just created a long-term care benefit:

https://apnews.com/article/washington-long-term-care-tax-disability-cb54b04b025223dbdba7199db1d254e4

New Mexicans passed a ballot initiative that establishes permanent funding for child care:

https://www.cwla.org/new-mexico-votes-for-child-care/

New York care workers won a $3/hour across the board raise:

https://inequality.org/great-divide/new-york-budget-fair-pay-home-care/

The fight is being led by women of color, and they're kicking ass – and they're doing it through their unions. Worker power is the foundation that we build a better world upon, and it's surging.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/13/i-want-a-roof-over-my-head/#and-bread-on-the-table

[deanmarywinchester]

everyone hold my hand. it doesn’t have to be four years that suck shit it can only be two years that suck shit if we all join a labor or tenant’s union and then banish the republican congress to the fucking shadow realm in the midterms.

[irenetherogue]

Reframing common employer phrases into plainspeak

Laziness = poor ppl resting/playing, ever

Working vacation = rich ppl getting paid to rest/play

Rage applying = looking for a better job

Rage quitting = leaving toxic job/boss

Quiet quitting = refusing to do free labor

Blackmail = employees leveraging anything

Insubordination = talking about pay at work

Company culture = guilt trips & pizza as pay

Morality clause = make us look bad, get fired

"We're like family" = "we ask for favors, then never pay you back"

"We expect everyone to pitch in" = "we expect you to do free labor"

"HR is here to help you" = "HR is here to stop you from suing us"

Thx for coming to my TedTalk

[thoughtportal]

The Tenant Union Federation is a union of unions.

comrade Library

[lesbiansandgayssupporttheminers]

Fair play to these tenants who have very obviously deliberately messed up their flat as the estate agent came around to take pictures!

It's like a work of modern art.

[strongintherealgay]

my property manager: won't maintain the laundry machines so my clothes never dry, won't even replace the broken garbage can they took out of the laundry room, increases the amount of quarters you need to pay to do laundry, won't do a simple repair for the baseboard by our stairs for months, replaced the back doors to our building with ones that don't fit properly, inspect our apartments thrice within the past two months, and won't replace the windows so all of our electricity bills increase drastically during winters

also my property manager: we're going to increase the rent on your tiny studio by over $50 we prommy we don't like doing this :( it's just expensive to take care of your building :( :( yes the government gives us money because this is building is affordable housing but we need to bleed you dry or else we'll die :( :( :(

[chronicallycouchbound]

Rent strikes aren’t always an option.

I live in an area that has some decent tenant’s rights laws, and it even protects things like when your landlord won’t fix major issues in your apartment, you can withhold rent until it is fixed.

But since I use government aid vouchers to pay my rent, I can’t participate in rent strikes/rent withholding.

My apartment has some pretty serious issues: broken windows, overhead lights out, a fairly large crack in the floor next to my toilet, the shower almost always only sprays scalding water, all my appliances break frequently, the electrical system is fucked, my door lock doesn’t function properly, and I could keep going. I can’t do anything but call my maintenance guy and hope they eventually get around to it. These problems have been going on for years.

My housing is nearly unlivable, at best it’s unsafe, and there’s no end in sight. I had to stop living at my apartment for several months because of a combination of factors (I’m also being stalked by two separate people) but nothing changed when I went back. There’s no other wheelchair accessible ADA apartments available, and I’m not a high priority for other apartments anyways because I’m not currently legally homeless.

I’ve been considering signing off of my lease and sleeping outside again because it would put me at the top of the wait lists for new housing opportunities, and I qualify for other services. I’ve spent over half of my life homeless so I know what it entails.

And what’s fucked up is that this is something a rent strike might not even fix. My apartment is in high demand (less than 1% of housing is ADA accessible, wait lists in my state are about 5 years long, I’m allowed to break my lease at any time because they have a long line of people who need apartments) so there’s basically nothing I can do.

We need systemic changes.

[purplespacecats]

my friend put together a group of people interested in forming a housing co-op and we had our first meeting today!! and wow, we definitely have the connections and know-how and expertise in this group to make it happen :D

what this means concretely is that we are going to wrestle with the federal and provincial and municipal governments for the next decade to get funding and permits and such. but like, there's a very solid chance we will get a building to live in by the end :)

[theragingmoon]

join your local tenants' union and join a trade union/organise your coworkers.

trying anything is better than whatever the fuck these conditions are

[followerofmercy]

Hey: this is directed at my fellow Americans but it applies to everyone on the planet.

GET INVOLVED IN YOUR LOCAL GOVERNMENT. YOU CANNOT CHANGE THINGS AT HIGHER LEVELS BY YOURSELF. That's what all the 'community' talk buzzing around is about.

AND ALSO TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF AND DON'T BURN OUT

[millionmovieproject]