What NOW | Learning Resistance From Tenant Activism

Learning Resistance From Tenant Activism | Betsy Eichel

I was as shocked as anyone when Donald Trump was elected. I left my election watch party in the West Village in a daze, determined to avoid my phone was much as possible until the morning. Surely, cooler heads would prevail. As well all know, they didn’t.
I was pleasantly surprised that nearly everyone I knew wanted to get involved in resisting Trump, even friends who described themselves as “not really into politics.” And though I too find myself overwhelmed by the constant stream of news alerts — Russia! Health care! Budget cuts! — I have more optimism than others in my life.
I have good reason to be hopeful. I’ve been seeing people outwit and organize against him — and others like him, real estate titans who were actually good at their jobs — since 2014, when I became a tenant organizer on the west side of Manhattan.
Despite media coverage that often depicts rent-regulated tenants as moochers (or just blessed by unseen real estate gods), rent stabilization is far and away the largest and most cost effective “affordable housing” program in New York City. Yet it is reviled by landlords, who see it as their right to make as much profit off their housing stock as humanly possible. But tenants have rights. Their knowledge of these rights, combined with a toughness honed by living in New York in the 1970’s and 1980’s, makes them formidable components. And women and queer people — particularly of color — have been at the forefront of this movement. Tenant activism is a feminist issue.
The fight for equitable housing, like all social movements, is intersectional. I’m fairly certain readers of this blog are aware that decaying and subpar housing is often concentrated in areas where there has been systematic, government and bank-backed disinvestment. On the other side of the coin, tenants who live in gentrifying or gentrified neighborhoods where their neighbors’ rents are much higher are also forced to live without basic amenities, a tactic that not so subtly pushes these tenants out. In Hell’s Kitchen, where I work, the people who live in rent-regulated housing are disproportionately older, women, LGBTQ, immigrants and people of color. Because of their lack of privilege, they are seen as easy targets.
Landlords assume that these tenants — made invisible by society and culture more generally — will crumble under the weight of baseless lawsuits handled by well-heeled law firms. But often, the opposite is true. These tenants have been forced to be strong and resourceful, because more often than not, agencies tasked with oversight of housing have been absent, or woefully understaffed and underfunded. There is simply no one else do to the work.
Necessity often requires that women keep everything and everyone together, from families to workplaces to a literal roof over their heads. To be clear, simply keeping with the status quo and demanding that marginalized people continue to do all the work of protecting their housing is unfair and wrong. But newcomers to the resistance would do well to take note of the successes of the tenant movement. They have faced down Trump and others like him before, with a fraction of his resources. They can and will do it again.

Betsy Eichel is a social worker and tenant organizer on the west side of Manhattan.
