By Ashley Benkarski
As 2023 draws to a close and with the holiday season upon us, let’s take some time to reflect on the gains Americans have made with efforts of unionization over the last year. Workers have made significant progress in their demands, from the auto industry to the entertainment industry, through the power of collective action coming in the form of historic wage and contract increases, better working conditions, and solidified rights.
And while much of the news has focused on these industries, it shouldn’t go unnoticed that renters are now joining together in a historic movement to make gains of their own.
For so many of us, their stories are our stories, or the stories of someone we know. After all, housing is necessary for survival. With interest rates and home prices locking out a significant portion of Americans from the dream of homeownership, the number of households that rent is increasing. Worse, across the nation people are feeling the squeeze of housing costs. Part of the problem lies in lagging wages that can’t make up for rising costs. But it’s also due to the predatory practices of landlords and the systems in place in society that protect them.
But who is protecting renters? When a full-time worker earning minimum wage can’t afford a one-bedroom rental, yet corporate landlords are raking in record profits, it is clear the system is rigged against the renter. And though the landscape ahead looks bleak, I want to tell you there is some hope still. But you must be willing to organize.
Writing this, I’d like to say I am not an impartial party regarding this issue. I’ve experienced my share of bad practices by landlords that, for a time, left my world in shambles, but my experiences pale in comparison to some of the stories I heard as I marched with 100 other tenants in Washington, D.C. as part of the Tennessee 4 Safe Homes delegation for People’s Action and Homes Guarantee. And I suspect many of you share similar experiences, or know and love someone who has. These issues are not new; rather, the crisis is the inevitable result of decades upon decades of irresponsible, predatory, and discriminatory practices that have gone ignored by the agencies that oversee and regulate the industry, sometimes willfully so. The government is in business with our landlords.
We see this play out every day, in every county, in every state. We see it in the refusal by those in power to truly hold the industry accountable. It’s abhorrently unjust that so many hard-working Americans are constantly under threat of eviction while their landlords are collecting larger portions of their tenants’ paychecks. In fact, many landlords enjoy the benefit of purchasing their properties with federally backed loans, often with no strings attached.
Myself and four other members of the Bedford County Listening Project joined other tenants in Washington, D.C. from Nov. 14 – Nov. 17. The list of protections renters need has been organized into a tenant’s bill of rights. The hope is that all of this collective action will lead to those rights being law.
But meaningful change is slow. For now, to more effectively garner the changes Americans need, delegates from all over the country listened as a handful of their peers spoke with Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Lauryn Enrico, who reports to Director Sandra Thompson, to tell her their stories and ask for rent control and habitability standards in properties bought with federally-backed loans from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Then we brought our voices to the office of Starwood Capital Holdings, one of the largest and most powerful corporate landlords in the nation (in case you’re wondering, yes, Starwood owns properties in Middle Tennessee).
Now, more than ever, it’s important to organize and get others involved.
This year, we’ve seen the shift in the power dynamics as a result of collective action.
There’s no reason to believe renters all across America couldn’t do the same.
