Welcome to the Remix, as we take our latest spin around the economy. This column ("‘The Rent is Too Damn High!’—The Rise of a National Tenants’ Movement") involves an interview with Tara Raghuveer, the national director of the Homes Guarantee campaign.
Famously, as the saying goes, all housing markets are local. And yet, nationally, housing has gotten more and more expensive in more and more places, resulting in tens of millions of Americans facing excessive housing cost burdens.
In my interview, Raghuveer noted that a few years ago, her team at People’s Action, the community organizing “home” for the national housing campaign, was looking for a specific issue-based campaign that tenants could organize around. But tenant leaders called on the group to think more expansively. The mandate was clear: “There is no Medicare for All for housing. There’s no Green New Deal for housing. There is no big agenda for housing. We need to be the group that starts to articulate that.”
Out of that conversation was birthed the Homes Guarantee campaign and a national network. Over the past few years, there have been some notable victories, such as the national eviction moratorium during the early part of the pandemic in September 2020—and some major defeats, such as the structuring of rent relief so that it went through landlords rather than tenants, making it hard for tenants to get relief and leading to eviction for many. These experiences have taught tenants the value of organizing.
As tenants have organized, the vision that has developed, as Raghuveer details, is clear. It is to move more housing off the private market and to create in its place a system backed by public dollars, that is permanently affordable, and that is democratically controlled.
What does the tenants’ movement have to show for itself to date? At the federal level, there have been no breakthroughs yet, but certainly an expanded tenant organizer presence. At the local level, there have been many wins, such as the right to counsel in eviction hearings and tenants’ bills of rights. Even more significant is the growth of movement infrastructure. Tenants’ unions, once common, had largely disappeared. But they are back in force today.
As you read this article, I encourage you to reflect on the struggle for a right to housing and how that movement can advance. Until the next Remix column, I remain,
Your Remix Man:
Steve Dubb
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