It started with a message Jason Krueger taped to the laundry room wall: “Tenant mutual aid and support!”
It was late March, and Krueger, who uses they/them pronouns, was looking for ways neighbors in their eight-unit Alameda apartment building could help each other during the pandemic. California’s shelter-in-place order had been in effect for a little over a week, but Krueger was already thinking of the recession that was sure to follow.
Millions would soon be out of work, so Krueger thought the next step would be to organize a rent strike — withholding rent as a form of protest.
“Here, of all the places, it seemed like rent strikes would be a life-preserving measure,” Krueger said. “I just don’t see how else you would get property owners to respond without that large level of collective action and solidarity.”
So, to start, Krueger decided to try to form a tenants’ council, an organization representing residents in a single building, or who share the same landlord, to bargain collectively.
Krueger’s not alone. Tenants’ rights organizers say they are seeing more tenants, like Krueger, turn to collective action. And on Friday, hundreds of protests are planned across the country to decry high rents, mounting debt due to the pandemic and growing income inequality.
Discontent over growing financial inequality had already been simmering since the Great Recession. Now activists say the pandemic could be the spark that ignites a nationwide movement for housing affordability.
Nick Thacker, a tenant organizer with the Bay Area Tenant and Neighborhood Councils, or Bay TANC, said his organization has grown tenfold, from 25 members to around 240, since shelter-in-place orders were issued last month.
“For many people, the housing market was already a crisis in their lives,” Thacker said. “When the pandemic came down, it just brought that crisis much closer to many more people.”
As of April 18, nearly 3.3 million Californians had filed for unemployment insurance. And close to 11% of renters in the state weren’t able to pay rent at all in April, according to a recent Apartment List survey, a figure that property managers in the Bay Area expect to double next month.
The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, or ACCE, is one in a coalition of groups across the state organizing a campaign to withhold rent in May with the goal of getting 10,000 Californians to participate.
Vanessa Bulnes, who lives in East Oakland, is withholding her May rent as part of the strike. The early-childhood educator lost her job when the shelter-in-place order began. She and her husband rely on her income to pay their $2,600 rent.
It’s not enough to simply suspend evictions during the shelter in place, Bulnes said.
“We’re asking for rent forgiveness,” she said, adding that without it, she and her husband could end up homeless. “We want to get back to a normal life.”
Cancel Rent
The rent strike is part of the so-called “cancel rent” movement, a national call to landlords, financial institutions and legislators to forgive rental or mortgage debt, and a continuation of similar strikes that occurred on April 1.
Maria Zamudio, associate director of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, said tenants shouldn’t be forced to take on a mountain of debt due to the shelter-in-place orders that are meant to keep everyone safe.
“When people get laid off, that’s 100% lost income,” Zamudio said. “It’s not deferred income.”
But any effort to cancel rent entirely could run into legal roadblocks. UCLA law professor Scott Cummings said landlords could argue rent cancellation strips them of their property rights.
“It will invite challenges around taking property that landlords believe they have a vested interest in,” Cummings said.
Cummings said it’s not clear if local, state or federal governments have the power to break contracts between renters and property owners, or between financial institutions and mortgage holders, even during times of emergency.
“I think the idea of canceling rent is appealing politically and as a matter of solidarity,” he said. “But you do run into more significant legal problems.”
Cummings and others believe a more realistic — and legally feasible — option would be for the government to set up a renter relief fund, to provide financial support for tenants unable to make payments during shelter-in-place orders.
The California Rental Housing Association, which represents landlords, is calling on the state to do just that. Landlords need rental income to pay property taxes and maintain their buildings, among other expenses, said Sid Lakireddy, the group’s president.
“If we stop paying our bills, there will be huge ripple effects on the economy,” he said.
