[Backed by faith communities, the housing justice movement is
racking up wins against landlords and banks profiting off of what
should be a human right.]
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HOW ACTIVISTS ARE MAKING THE RIGHT TO HOUSING A REALITY  
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Fran Quigley
October 7, 2022
Waging Nonviolence
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*
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*
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_ Backed by faith communities, the housing justice movement is
racking up wins against landlords and banks profiting off of what
should be a human right. _

Community Groups, Housing Activists, and Electeds Call on NYC to Take
Bold Action to Tackle The Housing Crisis by Supporting Community Land
Trusts,

 

Apryl Lewis is in a housing fight — again. This time, she is pushing
to keep dozens of families from being put out of a Charlotte
extended-stay motel that is scheduled to be shut down in a matter of
weeks. Such motels cost as much as $500 each week, expensive compared
to long-term housing. But many of these families are living
paycheck-to-paycheck or on fixed incomes, and have no other option.

“They can’t afford the move-in costs for an apartment,” Lewis
said. “Landlords want up-front rent and utilities and a security
deposit. Now they are even making people pay for rental insurance.”

Others stay at the motel because they are shut out of traditional
housing due to a past eviction
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or criminal record. Some simply can’t find a suitable place to live
in a time when rental vacancies are at historic lows
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The good news for the motel residents is that this is not Lewis’s
first fight. An organizer for Action NC [[link removed]], Lewis
coordinated “Cancel Rent” protests
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at the local courthouse in the early days of the COVID pandemic, led
tenants in chants of “housing is a human right” at various
government meetings, and organizes canvassing and phone banks, pulling
together tenants
[[link removed]] to advocate
for their rights. A current focus is calling out corporate landlords,
like the one in Charlotte who was repeatedly cited
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for refusing to address rampant mold, vermin and dangerous wiring
[[link removed]].

In early September, Lewis and other tenants joined with other
organizations that, like Action NC, are affiliated with Center for
Popular Democracy, to make an uninvited appearance at the Washington,
D.C. meeting of a trade association of corporate landlords. Dozens of
tenants took over a conference room, poured themselves glasses of the
fancy lemon and orange-infused water, and chanted, “Corporate
landlord you can’t hide, we can see your greedy side.”

“We go everywhere,” Lewis said. “We not only go door-to-door, we
do banner drops and disrupt official meetings — just be there and be
loud so they can’t ignore what is happening to these tenants.”

Lewis has fought for her own housing, too. As a single mom, she more
than once had to scramble to keep from being evicted, despite working
two and sometimes three jobs. “The rent kept going up, so I had to
be pretty crafty just so I could keep my daughter housed,” she said.
When Lewis later began working with youth and families as a counselor,
the challenges they shared with her kept coming back to housing, far
and away the top expense
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in most U.S. households.

The tenants Lewis works with are not alone. More than 10 million U.S.
renters
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report being behind on their rent, and thus in imminent risk of
eviction. Sixty-five percent of those behind on their rent are people
of color [[link removed].]. These Americans
desperately need housing assistance, but unlike Medicaid or SNAP (food
stamps), federal housing programs are not an entitlement. Families and
individuals may qualify for housing help, but they only get that
assistance if there is supply available. And it is usually not
available. Only one in four eligible persons
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are able to receive a federal housing subsidy, leaving over 8 million
households eligible but unsupported.

As grim as those numbers are, they may soon be getting worse. Rent
prices on average rose more than 16 percent during 2021
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and went up more than 20 percent in some cities. A recent study by the
U.S. General Accounting Office found that every $100 in average
monthly rent increases is associated with a 9 percent increase in
homelessness [[link removed]]. So it is no
surprise that, by mid-2022, homeless shelters were reporting a surge
in people asking for help
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with waitlists doubling and tripling as a result.

CORPORATE LANDLORDS AND HOUSING RACISM

The United States is often referred to as having a free market
economic system, but housing in this country does not remotely
resemble an unfettered market. Federal, state and local governments
have eagerly assumed roles as major players in the housing business.
The problem is that the government’s heavy hand in housing is
usually placed on the scales on the side of the wealthy. Over the past
decade, corporations have taken advantage of significant tax breaks
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to dramatically increase their holdings
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of both multi-unit rental properties and residential homes.
Institutional owners — corporations or limited liability companies
— now own the majority of all U.S. rental units
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and 80 percent-plus of the properties with 25 or more units.

As Lewis and others familiar with U.S. rental homes can attest, this
is a problem. Corporations are demonstrably more eager to evict and
less responsive to maintenance needs
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than smaller landlords. Tenants struggle with out-of-state landlords
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that leave mold unaddressed, broken appliances and windows unrepaired,
trash not picked up, and even fail to pay for water and other
services. “And too often they blame the people living there, saying
they don’t keep their homes clean,” Lewis said. “Corporate
landlords should be regulated like banks.”

Tenants and community groups protest outside the court, calling on
lawmakers in Los Angeles to stop evictions and cancel rent in October
2020. (Twitter/ACCE

U.S. housing dysfunction is grounded in a long legacy of racist
housing practices. During the early and mid-20th century, the federal
government used homeownership subsidies to benefit whites and exclude
Blacks, while restrictive covenants prevented Blacks from moving to
the neighborhoods where mortgages were easier to obtain. With
homeownership the top means for accumulating wealth
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in the U.S., generations of housing and income discrimination has left
Black homeownership rates — and wealth — far below those of their
white counterparts. Housing racism is the core reason why white U.S.
households have on average 10 times the wealth
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of Black households.

The trends continue today. The current scourge of absentee corporate
landlords and speculative purchasing of homes
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is disproportionately visited on Black and brown communities
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It is a trend reminiscent of corporate purchases made in those same
communities
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during the Great Recession of 2007-2009. During that recession, Black
household wealth — much of it dependent on home values — fell
nearly 50 percent
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That all leads to grimly predictable outcomes. Black families are more
than twice as likely
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to be renters as white families. Among renters, Black renters are far
more likely to be evicted
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than white renters, with Black women and children the most likely of
all to be thrown out of their homes. Nearly one in five Black or
Hispanic children have experienced eviction by age 15
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“A lot of things in housing have not changed since the Jim Crow
era,” Lewis said. “To address it we have to address the racism.”

A ROBUST AND GROWING MOVEMENT

Activists like Apryl Lewis have the public’s attention. Polls show
both a great deal of contemporary concern about housing and a
commitment to remedying the problem. A 2021 survey showed that
two-thirds of Americans in growing metropolitan areas are
“extremely/very concerned” about homelessness and the high cost of
housing
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ranking it as their top priority. “Housing is the most critical
component for a successful community,” Lewis said. “A lot of
issues we are struggling with, like crime, are connected to people not
being able to stay housed.”

At a more individual level, housing insecurity is associated with all
manner of health crises
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from asthma and heart disease to violence and suicide. “If you are
not secure in your housing, your mental health is in jeopardy. You are
always stressing, you are always at level 10 because you are fighting
for housing,” Lewis said. “I can tell you myself that me sitting
here in a comfortable position in my housing, my thought patterns are
way better than when I was struggling to stay housed.”

So it should be no surprise that surveys also show that three-quarters
of Americans agree with the tenants chants in Charlotte and around the
nation: safe, secure housing should be considered a human right
[[link removed]].
Those Americans are not content for that right to be an abstraction:
The vast majority of people expressing support of housing as a human
right also support expanded government programs to make that right a
reality.

The Illuminator projects messages on buildings in New York City in
December 2020. (Twitter/The Illuminator)

Federal-level housing efforts include Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Homes for
All Act
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which would devote $1 trillion to building 12 million new, permanently
affordable public and social housing units. It would also repeal the
Faircloth Amendment, which in 1998 responded to the deterioration of
public housing by blocking new public housing construction. The
National Low-Income Housing Coalition is leading a “HoUSed”
campaign [[link removed]] to expand rental assistance to
every eligible household and create a national housing stabilization
fund to provide emergency help.

Meanwhile, there is robust and successful activism going on at the
state and local level. Activists using tactics ranging from occupying
vacant buildings
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to canvassing to pushing ballot initiatives have won commitments for
expanded affordable housing support in cities like Minneapolis,
Oakland, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Baltimore and Los Angeles.
Community activists are engaged in current housing campaigns
[[link removed]] in Las Vegas
and New York. Rent control advocacy is ongoing in California
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Florida
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and Michigan
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with a recent rent control victory in Minnesota
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San Francisco is now requiring landlords to recognize and meet with
tenant associations or face a mandated rent reduction. Activists in
cities like Indianapolis
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are persuading their local governments to follow the European example
of directing public real estate and public funding to social housing.

Religious communities are engaged with the movement. The federal
HoUSed campaign is joined by Catholic Charities USA, the Union for
Reform Judaism and the national leadership of the Episcopal and
Methodist churches. As for the Action NC housing effort in Charlotte,
it counts as a key ally St. Martin’s Episcopal church.

Several homeless people live on the downtown Charlotte grounds of St.
Martin’s, and the congregation welcomes and supports them. After a
group visit to the local eviction court and conversations with several
of the Action NC leaders, the congregation decided to focus on housing
justice. “We wanted to see how we could be of help before a family
becomes evicted, before someone becomes homeless,” St. Martin’s
mission board president Kay Miller said.

So St. Martin’s parishioners have staffed a tenant crisis hotline
and recruited pro bono attorneys to help families facing eviction. A
new team has pulled together to do phone canvassing of tenants living
in some of the worst corporate-owned housing in Charlotte. They are
discussing the possibility of following other churches’ leads in
helping low-income homeowners pay off the property tax bills and fines
that often causes a family to lose a home, and even exploring how to
help create more affordable housing units.

“I give credit to the people of St. Martin’s for showing us how
community and faith-based groups can really help the movement,”
Lewis said. “I try to push faith groups into action, not just
praying, and they are definitely taking action.”

SOCIAL, NOT FOR-PROFIT HOUSING

A common theme of housing activism is the need to move away from
expectations that the private, for-profit market will solve our
crisis. The big picture, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor has written in her
book, “Race for Profit: How Banks and the Real Estate Industry
Undermined Black Homeownership
[[link removed]],” is that
entrusting a human right to profit-seeking entities will inevitably
lead to suffering. “Satisfying basic human needs, like the provision
of shelter, medical treatment, water or even education run counter to
business’s objective of maximizing return on investment or simply
making money … One of the most pressing questions has been how to
secure the provision of safe, sound, affordable and decent housing for
everyone. The obstacles to that goal have always been business’s
bottom line.”

A protest to stop evictions in January 2021. (Twitter/Right to the
City Alliance)

Increasingly, activists have been able to convince state and city
governments that Taylor is right: the private housing market will
never meet the needs of everyone in their communities. States like
Rhode Island, Hawaii and Colorado are investing in building
government-run housing
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as are communities like Montgomery County, Maryland. Governments at
all levels hold the power to solve the housing crisis. They can raise
revenue for subsidized housing by taxing high-end housing and housing
speculation. They can tightly regulate for-profit housing activity and
exercise eminent domain [[link removed]], especially
on vacant or distressed corporate properties. Governments can
significantly increase the resources and power of public land banks to
acquire property and transfer or develop it into affordable housing,
and pass Community Opportunities to Purchase Act, or COPA,
legislation, which gives the first rights of land purchase to tenants
and the community. Governments can then subsidize those
organizations’ development and maintenance efforts via public
housing finance agencies
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Housing activists’ demands like these are often framed with the term
“social housing.” Social housing is publicly owned by either the
government or non-profit organizations that respond to democratic
control by residents. It is decommodified — protected from the
profiteering of the private market — and affordable for the life of
the building or unit, with no expiration date. Social housing sees
housing as a human right, not a commodity or wealth-building tool.
Like public education, public safety, our justice system, and
infrastructure like roads and sewers and water, social housing
recognizes that a place to live is a good that is too important to be
left dependent on whether a family has enough money to ensure a profit
to a private landlord or a bank.

Apryl Lewis helped advise the Center for Popular Democracy in its
manifesto in support of social housing
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March of this year. In Minnesota and New York, activist pressure led
to corporate-owned properties being converted to community ownership
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while public dollars for affordable housing are being raised in San
Francisco via taxes on high-end real estate
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COPA legislation
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has passed or is pending in multiple states and communities, including
Washington D.C. and Portland. Baltimore community advocacy
successfully forced the creation of a housing trust fund
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North Dakota, Philadelphia and California now have public banks
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to fund social housing.

One social housing approach enjoying significant current momentum is
community land trusts
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have a legacy that traces back to Black-owned projects like the New
Communities that grew out of the southern U.S. civil rights movement
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In a community land trust, the non-profit trust retains ownership of
the land while the resident purchases the house on it. The purchase
cost is lowered due to the discount for not buying the land, and the
purchase is often supported with subsidies. In exchange for the
reduced price and the subsidy, the resident’s resale price is
limited in order to make sure the home is permanently affordable.
There are now over 225 community land trusts in the U.S
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with local governments supporting them by acquiring land and buildings
from private ownership and transferring title to the trusts to develop
and manage.

The rationale behind all of these campaigns is simple, says
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Dianne Enriquez, housing organizer for the Center for Popular
Democracy. “We just need to prioritize renters the way we have been
doing for landlords. If there is a will, there definitely is a way.”

A HISTORY OF SUCCESSFUL HOUSING ACTIVISM

An impressive history of housing activism supports Enriquez’s
optimism. Nations like Finland, France and Singapore have far more
affordable housing and far less homelessness than the U.S. The
impressive social housing track record in those and other nations came
about because of advocacy, including tenant and labor union campaigns
in Sweden
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grassroots organizing in Germany
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for expropriating corporate landlord property, activists occupying
banks and homes in Spain [[link removed]] and
a broad socialist movement in Austria
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Finland, Germany, South Africa, France, the Netherlands, and multiple
other countries have created legal rights to housing
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and followed up the pronouncements with programs to ensure their
enforcement. In Scotland, for example, which has enshrined a right to
housing in its constitution and legislation, homelessness is “brief,
rare and a non-recurring phenomenon,” writes
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Eric Tars of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty.

The U.S. has its own record of successful housing activism. Rent
strikes and community organizing led to rent control measures in
200-plus U.S. cities
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Activism created the momentum
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for the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act in 1975, the Community
Reinvestment Act in 1977, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and
Consumer Protection Act in 2010. The St. Louis rent strike of 1969,
the first and still-largest U.S. public housing rent strike, helped
shape the Brooke Amendment of 1969
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Brooke Amendment capped public housing tenants’ rent and increased
federal subsidies for housing. Like other U.S. housing activism, the
St. Louis strike had deep connections to faith communities. The strike
was led in part by United Church of Christ minister Buck Jones, and
buttressed by broad support from the local religious congregations.

There is a shared theme among these movements: We can and must reclaim
our housing system from those whose sole mission is to extract as much
money as possible from people who need a roof over their heads to
survive. It is a theme Apryl Lewis keeps in mind as she fights
alongside her fellow tenants. “Our activism is radical, not
violent,” she said. “The violence is what is happening to these
tenants. The bills keep coming and they are increasing but wages are
not.” And then Lewis repeated what tenants across the nation are
saying in public meetings, corporate events and street protests. “At
the end of the day, the rent is just too damn high.”

Fran Quigley is a clinical professor at Indiana University McKinney
School of Law, where he directs the Health and Human Rights Clinic. He
and his students advocate for the human right to housing by
representing tenants in eviction court and promoting policy change.

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* Housing Activism; Social Housing; Tenants Rights;
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