Stop paying, same as any other boycott? I’ve done this thought experiment before, and while I think tenant unions are possible (and very much needed), they definitely aren’t as simple to implement as labor unions.
To start, people would need to live more minimalistically so that “just moving out” can at least be a (last resort) tool in the union’s toolbox. This makes tenant unions antithetical to consumerism, a quality not shared by labor unions.
To really thrive, tenant unions would also require people to actively know and interact a lot more with their neighbors, again fighting the trend of increasing social isolation and complacency caused largely by corporate (read: for-profit) social media.
Personally, I want to see a sharp increase in co-living (a.k.a communal living). That would greatly lower the buy-in threshold for tenant unions to really take off, not to mention all the other mental, social, financial, and environmental benefits.
100 people can pool their money together and hire a really good lawyer. 1,000 people could destroy a property management company. $20/month per household would add up fast.
Rent strikes exist and have worked. The realities of evicting everyone is slow and costly legal process that can be disrupted in various ways. The point is to make it so costly that ceding to the tenant union’s demands become the better choice. There is a book Abolish Rent that goes into some tenet union victories and lessons can be learned from them.
I suppose you could have a landlord-specific-union. If I own and rent out 3 houses then I’d just evict all 3. If I owned 50 houses, I could just obfuscate true ownership through various LLCs. If you didn’t know all my properties, you couldn’t form any meaningful union against me. Apartment complex would be fucked though.
I work for a company that aggregates public data for…reasons, and I can tell you it takes just 1-2 queries to find every LLC, property, etc. associated to a person.
Besides what other people already answered here: Solidarity will also go a long way. Workers in the old days faced the same dilemma: When they go on strike, will they lose their job? A lot of them did. Solidarity saved them and made the movement work.
In the context of housing, solidarity can take the form of organized people in a town agreeing upfront: “If folks from one house get evicted, they can move in with us.” Of course this requires a lot of trust—just like the person in the article says. And whenever it should come to this, it will be costly and inconvenient, even burdensome, for everyone involved. Just like filling a strike fund from already low wages was. In the end it worked.
Uhmm … yea, you CAN evict everyone. It’s called an eviction.
Don’t pay rent, get evicted. Don’t move out when evicted, get trespassed and thrown out by the Sheriff.
A renters union won’t do shit. Laws need to be changed to scale property tax so the more properties you own the more taxes you pay.
It can cost landlords a lot of money. You can evict everyone but then you need to actually go through the process with them, one by one. The union can also collectively call attention from the municipality, file official complaints, etc.
If you rent strike and the landlord evicts eveyone, then they need to ready all the units all at once with none of the units generating any income. Assuming they have maintenance staff, they don’t have enough to handle that kind of volume. They’ll need to contract it out or deal with no income as units get ready one by one. The only downside (upside for them) is that they might be able to raise the rents on new tenants if demand is high enough.
What does a strike look like? Everyone moves out? It’s not so easy to just stop renting.
Stop paying, same as any other boycott? I’ve done this thought experiment before, and while I think tenant unions are possible (and very much needed), they definitely aren’t as simple to implement as labor unions.
To start, people would need to live more minimalistically so that “just moving out” can at least be a (last resort) tool in the union’s toolbox. This makes tenant unions antithetical to consumerism, a quality not shared by labor unions.
To really thrive, tenant unions would also require people to actively know and interact a lot more with their neighbors, again fighting the trend of increasing social isolation and complacency caused largely by corporate (read: for-profit) social media.
Personally, I want to see a sharp increase in co-living (a.k.a communal living). That would greatly lower the buy-in threshold for tenant unions to really take off, not to mention all the other mental, social, financial, and environmental benefits.
100 people can pool their money together and hire a really good lawyer. 1,000 people could destroy a property management company. $20/month per household would add up fast.
Rent strikes exist and have worked. The realities of evicting everyone is slow and costly legal process that can be disrupted in various ways. The point is to make it so costly that ceding to the tenant union’s demands become the better choice. There is a book Abolish Rent that goes into some tenet union victories and lessons can be learned from them.
If you stop paying, it’s your problem, if everyone stops paying, it’s the landlords problem
I suppose you could have a landlord-specific-union. If I own and rent out 3 houses then I’d just evict all 3. If I owned 50 houses, I could just obfuscate true ownership through various LLCs. If you didn’t know all my properties, you couldn’t form any meaningful union against me. Apartment complex would be fucked though.
I work for a company that aggregates public data for…reasons, and I can tell you it takes just 1-2 queries to find every LLC, property, etc. associated to a person.
It depends. I don’t know how many rentals are mortgaged vs owned. I suspect they can evict you faster than they run out of cash.
Most states have eviction laws limiting their power, and often part of a tenant union is a lawyer to stall
Hi, Texas checking in. What’s… “limited power”?
They call it the lone star state because everyone is the star of their own movie about rugged individualism, or so I’ve heard.
The lone star is the rating
No, people misunderstand.
It’s a rating, not a slogan.
Only because you can’t select zero
Their power in Texas is huge. Dont pay rent, the landlord can seize ANY non essential possessions of the tenant. Evictions take as little as 45 days.
One more reason why Texas is a shithole.
Besides what other people already answered here: Solidarity will also go a long way. Workers in the old days faced the same dilemma: When they go on strike, will they lose their job? A lot of them did. Solidarity saved them and made the movement work.
In the context of housing, solidarity can take the form of organized people in a town agreeing upfront: “If folks from one house get evicted, they can move in with us.” Of course this requires a lot of trust—just like the person in the article says. And whenever it should come to this, it will be costly and inconvenient, even burdensome, for everyone involved. Just like filling a strike fund from already low wages was. In the end it worked.
Without solidarity, we are defenseless.
If enough people stop paying rent, then they have to negotiate with them as a group. They can’t evict everyone.
Uhmm … yea, you CAN evict everyone. It’s called an eviction. Don’t pay rent, get evicted. Don’t move out when evicted, get trespassed and thrown out by the Sheriff. A renters union won’t do shit. Laws need to be changed to scale property tax so the more properties you own the more taxes you pay.
It can cost landlords a lot of money. You can evict everyone but then you need to actually go through the process with them, one by one. The union can also collectively call attention from the municipality, file official complaints, etc.
If you rent strike and the landlord evicts eveyone, then they need to ready all the units all at once with none of the units generating any income. Assuming they have maintenance staff, they don’t have enough to handle that kind of volume. They’ll need to contract it out or deal with no income as units get ready one by one. The only downside (upside for them) is that they might be able to raise the rents on new tenants if demand is high enough.