Strength in Solidarity: How to Organize a Rent Strike

A national rent strike is helping Americans take the power back into their own hands. At a critical juncture in American history, a time when nobody trusts politicians to represent them, could this be the grassroots movement that powers the next American revolution?

8 min readMay 24, 2020

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I have lived in my 40-unit apartment building in Brooklyn for almost eight years. Before April, I had only officially met neighbors from two other units. That changed on March 31st when I found a #CancelRent flyer under my door.

A few days later, I joined our building’s first tenants’ association meeting. Wearing PPE, we met on the roof, stood six feet apart, and slowly got to know each other. That day, five apartments declared they wouldn’t pay rent in the following months. In retrospect, it seems like we introduced ourselves in one breath and decided to fight the power with the next. After eight years in New York City, I started to feel like I belonged to a community.

How-To Organize a Rent Strike in New York

Use common sense before you stop paying rent. If your landlord is in as vulnerable of a position as you are, pay them. This website shows you what other rental properties your landlord owns.

Organizing a rent strike is a fluid process with essentially two steps: Reach Out and Reconvene.

Tenant Outreach: Flyering and Door-Knocking

Outreach is focused on human connection and building trust.

First, form a tenants’ association for your building (if it doesn’t already have one). For our building, creating a TA was as simple as making an email address (123StreetTenantAssociation@gmail.com) and sliding a note under the neighbors’ doors.

Throughout your apartment building, hang flyers about the rent strike with your TA’s contact info. Next, knock on the doors of every apartment in the building, and, following the proper social distancing protocol, try to speak to every unit about their rights. The strike is also about building mutual aid networks, so ask your neighbors how they’re doing, whether they need help getting their groceries, and get to know each other.

Once renters have decided to strike, take public actions that will put more pressure on the landlord to cancel rent. For example, #CancelRent banners are popping up across the city.

Then, your TA should join other TAs in the neighborhood to form a tenants’ union. Repeat the flyering and door-knocking processes at the landlord’s other buildings and throughout your neighborhood, city, and state. Hang flyers at businesses (that allow it), bus stops, streets corners, and the doors of big apartment buildings. Post about the strike and your tenants’ union on social media. Call, email, and write postcards to your representatives.

Basically, talk to as many people as possible about the strike and be sure to follow up with them.

2. Meet regularly

After you’ve completed tenant outreach, reconvene as a group. Meet regularly as a TA and TU to stay up-to-date on housing laws and concessions that the landlord has made with individual tenants. The TA will exist beyond the strike, so gather a list of everyone’s grievances such as rodents, mold, stolen packages, and harassment. Formally or informally, appoint representatives to attend town halls and report back. Communication should be open, and all tenants should leave meetings feeling comfortable working together and with whatever they are working on.

All communication between the landlord and tenants should go through the TA. Nobody should talk to the landlord on their own. Landlords will try to isolate, divide, and intimidate individual tenants and make concessions on a one-off basis. We are more likely to get what we want if we are strong in our solidarity.

If your landlord wants to sue tenants for nonpayment, have the list of building grievances ready. Landlords are legally bound to provide you with liveable housing, and if they don’t live up to certain standards, you could be entitled to a rent abatement. If your building is rent-stabilized, request your rent history. You can call Legal Hand Crown Heights if you need help reading the document. If your landlord increased rent beyond the regulated percentage, they could owe you money.

3. Communicate with your landlord.

Before the 1st of the month, tell your landlord who will not be paying rent. Here’s the sample letter we sent to our landlord. If your building has employees, like a super, make sure the landlord knows that they are not involved. Include your list of grievances. Highlight when the rent strike will start and that it will not end until certain demands have been met.

If necessary, a mediator can facilitate a conversation between the TA and your landlord free-of-charge. Mediators do not offer legal advice. They humanize the negotiation process and help both parties come to a resolution.

Strength in Solidarity

According to this article, a successful rent strike depends on “building deep organizing roots among all tenants and collectively withholding rent even when people have the means to in order to meet a demand.” This means that people who can afford to pay rent should withhold it as bargaining power. They can pay it back once certain demands have been met. We are withholding our rent for financial reasons but also in solidarity with those who are currently facing eviction and those who cannot risk striking.

The coronavirus hit the healthcare system first, and the economic system is next.

Wages have been stagnant for decades, but rent has continued to skyrocket. Many of the jobs that were created after the 2008 recession have been eliminated. Almost every single industry has been hit by the coronavirus. Why should the rental business be the exception?

Right now, renters have two choices. We can stand by idly and watch 1) the little money we have saved disappear and 2) landlords throw our neighbors onto the streets during an international health pandemic. Or, we can fight back and come out of this with more protections and rights. We cannot trust politicians to make the right decisions for us on their own. We have to demand what we need and pressure them to act on it. We are not striking for personal gain or for our singular building. We are striking for our homes, our neighborhoods, our cities, our states, and our nation.

Know Your Rights

The more we learn about our rights and the more we share this information with one another, the higher the chance we will have to succeed at impacting policy.

All renters have the right to join a tenants’ association, and it is illegal for a landlord to punish tenants for participating in one. After our Tenants’ Association was created, we joined other TAs in the neighborhood to form a tenants’ union, like this one in Crown Heights. Other members of the union were privy to city-wide and state-wide rent strike town halls, which were hosted by experts on New York housing law. The more I’ve learned from these groups, the more confident I’ve become in the rent strike. I truly think it has the potential to accomplish something much larger than itself.

Rent strikes are legally protected in New York, and the Right to Counsel offers free legal counsel to all tenants going to the New York housing court. Landlords cannot evict you without an order from a judge. Right now, they can’t get an order because the courts are closed.

My landlord does not know how much I know about New York housing law because I had to go out and learn about it myself. It is not in his financial interest to keep me abreast of my rights as his tenant. Like, did you know that late fees are canceled right now? Or that your security deposit can be used for one month’s rent if you pay it back over the next year? Or that banks have restructured mortgages for many landlords? So that while landlords will get to repay their loans on favorable terms, we won’t.

Beyond the Rent Strike

Landlords have an outsized role in government, and politicians listen to them. So, we need to get our landlords’ attention. Housing is a component of the long-term strategy of the rent strike. Some Brooklyn tenants are also demanding free healthcare, no work, and the suspension of debt payments. Personally, I think we should add #ReplaceBiden to that list, but I digress.

It is harder for landlords and the government to isolate, intimidate, and divide us when we organize a collective resistance. When we strike, we are showing our landlords, and our government, that we are united and that we will hold them accountable to our demands. This is the largest rent strike in 100 years! There hasn’t been a riper moment to join the movement than now. Our success in canceling rent could signal the beginning of a shift in power back into our hands.

The next American Revolution?

For me, the thought of joining a rent strike and organizing with strangers was overwhelming. In actuality, though, it’s been fun, and I wish I would’ve introduced myself to my neighbors sooner. They’re all pretty badass. I’m not saying there’s a silver lining to the coronavirus, but I’m not not saying that either.

We’ve found creative ways to utilize our differences for a common cause, and watching us come together has been empowering. In one month, the number of tenants striking in our building has doubled. Our TA and TU are working with residents across New York City to help their buildings organize, and our network is growing quickly. I believe that if we continue to organize en masse at this pace, the people can reclaim their power.