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mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months

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Housing is a labor issue

There's a reason Reagan declared war on unions before he declared war on everything else – environmental protection, health care, consumer rights, financial regulation. Unions are how working people fight for a better world for all of us. They're how everyday people come together to resist oligarchy, extraction and exploitation.

Take the 2019 LA teachers' strike. As Jane McAlevey writes in A Collective Bargain, the LA teachers didn't just win higher pay for their members! They also demanded (and got) an end to immigration sweeps of parents waiting for their kids at the school gate; a guarantee of green space near every public school in the city; and on-site immigration counselors in LA schools:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Unionization is enjoying an historic renaissance. The Hot Labor Summer transitioned to an Eternal Labor September, and it's still going strong, with UAW president Shawn Fain celebrating his members victory over the Big Three automakers by calling for a 2028 general strike:

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/uaw-general-strike-no-class

The rising labor movement has powerful allies in the Biden Administration. NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo is systematically gutting the "union avoidance" playbook. She's banned the use of temp-work app blacklists that force workers to cross picket lines:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

She's changed the penalty for bosses who violate labor law during union drives. It used to be the boss would pay a fine, which was an easy price to pay in exchange for killing your workers' union. Now, the penalty is automatic recognition of the union:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

And while the law doesn't allow Abruzzo to impose a contract on companies that refuse to bargain their unions, she's set to force those companies to honor other employers' union contracts until they agree to a contract with their own workers:

https://onlabor.org/gc-abruzzo-just-asked-the-nlrb-to-overturn-ex-cell-o-heres-why-that-matters/

She's also nuking TRAPs, the deals that force workers to repay their employers for their "training expenses" if they have the audacity to quit and get a better job somewhere else:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

(As with every aspect of the Biden White House, its labor policy is contradictory and self-defeating, with other Biden appointees working to smash worker power, including when Biden broke the railworkers' strike:)

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/18/co-determination/#now-make-me-do-it

A surging labor movement opens up all kinds of possibilities for a better world. Writing for the Law and Political Economy Project, UNITE Here attorney Zoe Tucker makes the case for unions as a way out of America's brutal housing crisis:

https://lpeproject.org/blog/why-unions-should-join-the-housing-fight/

She describes how low-waged LA hotel workers have been pushed out of neighborhoods close to their jobs, with UNITE Here members commuting three hours in each direction, starting their work-days at 3AM in order to clock in on time:

https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1669088899769987079

UNITE Here members are striking against 50 hotels in LA and Orange County, and their demands include significant cost-of-living raises. But more money won't give them back the time they give up to those bruising daily commutes. For that, unions need to make housing itself a demand.

As Tucker writes, most workers are tenants and vice-versa. What's more, bad landlords are apt to be bad bosses, too. Stepan Kazaryan, the same guy who owns the strip club whose conditions were so bad that it prompted the creation of Equity Strippers NoHo, the first strippers' union in a generation, is also a shitty landlord whose tenants went on a rent-strike:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/20/the-missing-links/#plunderphonics

So it was only natural that Kazaryan's tenants walked the picket line with the Equity Stripper Noho workers:

https://twitter.com/glendaletenants/status/1733290276599570736?s=46

While scumbag bosses/evil landlords like Kazaryan deal out misery retail, one apartment building at a time, the wholesale destruction of workers' lives comes from private equity giants who are the most prolific source of TRAPs, robo-scabbing apps, illegal union busting, and indefinite contract delays – and these are the very same PE firms that are buying up millions of single-family homes and turning them into slums:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

Tucker's point is that when a worker clocks out of their bad job, commutes home for three hours, and gets back to their black-mold-saturated, overpriced apartment to find a notice of a new junk fee (like a surcharge for paying your rent in cash, by check, or by direct payment), they're fighting the very same corporations.

Unions who defend their workers' right to shelter do every tenant a service. A coalition of LA unions succeeded in passing Measure ULA, which uses a surcharge on real estate transactions over $5m to fund "the largest municipal housing program in the country":

https://unitedtohousela.com/app/uploads/2022/05/LA_City_Affordable_Housing_Petition_H.pdf

LA unions are fighting for rules to limit Airbnbs and other platforms that transform the city's rental stock into illegal, unlicensed hotels:

https://upgo.lab.mcgill.ca/publication/strs-in-los-angeles-2022/Wachsmuth_LA_2022.pdf

And the hotel workers organized under UNITE Here are fighting their own employers: the hoteliers who are aggressively buying up residences, evicting their long-term tenants, tearing down the building and putting up a luxury hotel. They got LA council to pass a law requiring hotels to build new housing to replace any residences they displace:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-28/airbnb-operators-would-need-police-permit-in-l-a-under-proposed-law

UNITE Here is bargaining for a per-room hotel surcharge to fund housing specifically for hotel workers, so the people who change the sheets and clean the toilets don't have to waste six hours a day commuting to do so.

Labor unions and tenant unions have a long history of collaboration in the USA. NYC's first housing coop was midwifed by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in 1927. The Penn South coop was created by the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union. The 1949 Federal Housing Act passed after American unions pushed hard for it:

http://www.peterdreier.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Labors-Love-Lost.pdf

It goes both ways. Strong unions can create sound housing – and precarious housing makes unions weaker. Remember during the Hollywood writers' strike, when an anonymous studio ghoul told the press the plans was to "allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses?"

Vienna has the most successful housing in any major city in the world. It's the city where people of every income and background live in comfort without being rent-burdened and without worry about eviction, mold, or leaks. That's the legacy of Red Vienna, the Austrian period of Social Democratic Workers' Party rule and built vast tracts of high-quality public housing. The system was so robust that it rebounded after World War II and continues to this day:

https://www.politico.eu/article/vienna-social-housing-architecture-austria-stigma/

Today, the rest of the world is mired in a terrible housing crisis. It's not merely that the rent's too damned high (though it is) – housing precarity is driving dangerous political instability:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

Turning the human necessity of shelter into a market commodity is a failure. The economic orthodoxy that insists that public housing, rent control, and high-density zoning will lead to less housing has failed. rent control works:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mortgages-are-rent-control/#housing-is-a-human-right-not-an-asset

Leaving housing to the market only produces losers. If you have the bad luck to invest everything you have into a home in a city that contracts, you're wiped out. If you have the bad luck into invest everything into a home in a "superstar city" where prices go up, you also lose, because your city becomes uninhabitable and your children can't afford to live there:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/27/lethal-dysfunction/#yimby

A strong labor movement is the best chance we have for breaking the housing deadlock. And housing is just for starters. Labor is the key to opening every frozen-in-place dysfunction. Take care work: the aging, increasingly chronically ill American population is being tortured and murdered by private equity hospices, long-term care facilities and health services that have been rolled up by the same private equity firms that destroyed work and housing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

In her interview with Capital & Main's Jessica Goodheart, National Domestic Workers Alliance president Ai-jen Poo describes how making things better for care workers will make things better for everyone:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-12-13-labor-leader-ai-jen-poo-interview/

Care work is a "triple dignity investment": first, it makes life better for the worker (most often a woman of color), then, it allows family members of people who need care to move into higher paid work; and of course, it makes life better for people who need care: "It delivers human potential and agency. It delivers a future workforce. It delivers quality of life."

The failure to fund care work is a massive driver of inequality. America's sole federal public provision for care is Medicaid, which only kicks in after a family it totally impoverished. Funding care with tax increases polls high with both Democrats and Republicans, making it good politics:

https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2021/4/7/voters-support-investing-in-the-care-economy

Congress stripped many of the care provisions from Build Back Better, missing a chance for an "unprecedented, transformational investment in care." But the administrative agencies picked up where Congress failed, following a detailed executive order that identifies existing, previously unused powers to improve care in America. The EO "expands access to care, supports family caregivers and improves wages and conditions for the workforce":

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/04/18/executive-order-on-increasing-access-to-high-quality-care-and-supporting-caregivers/

States are also filling the void. Washington just created a long-term care benefit:

https://apnews.com/article/washington-long-term-care-tax-disability-cb54b04b025223dbdba7199db1d254e4

New Mexicans passed a ballot initiative that establishes permanent funding for child care:

https://www.cwla.org/new-mexico-votes-for-child-care/

New York care workers won a $3/hour across the board raise:

https://inequality.org/great-divide/new-york-budget-fair-pay-home-care/

The fight is being led by women of color, and they're kicking ass – and they're doing it through their unions. Worker power is the foundation that we build a better world upon, and it's surging.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/13/i-want-a-roof-over-my-head/#and-bread-on-the-table

#pluralistic #labor #hot labor summer #eternal labor september #jane mcalevey #los angeles #weaponized shelter #housing #airbnb #equity strip noho #tenants unions #red vienna #jennifer abruzzo #nlrb #the rent's too damned high

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whetstonefires · 7 months

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Underrated thing about The Crow (1994) is that ultimately it's a film about a guy utterly wrecking his shitty landlord.

Like yeah, Top Dollar is a spooky casually homicidal goth mob boss who ordered the brutal murders of the protagonist and his fiancee, and we get the whole classic revenge spree film slaughtering your way through the criminals to get to the top guy formula.

(With in addition to the whole revenant bit the interesting variant that Eric isn't even actually going for the guy at the top, he just interjects himself into the proceedings lmao.)

But also he's a slumlord, and the reason they died was Shelly formed a tenant's union in response to wrongful eviction proceedings. And Top Dollar would rather have his building sitting empty than put up with that shit.

Which will make it very funny if the remake that got greenlit for next year is deep-sixed by the studios' deranged collective refusal to come to terms with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA.

#hoc est meum #unionize #the crow #movies #evil landlord #with fantastic hair #arguably top dollar is not meant to be understood as the landlord #but T-bird sure as shit didn't own the place #and he referred to what she was organizing against as 'our tenant relocation program'#and he works for Top Dollar so #i'm pretty sure?#hollywood strike

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drumlincountry · 12 days

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FINALLY joined a trade union. Please clap.

#I put it off for aaaaaaages because it was so unclear which union covered my sector #And then I finally found out this week #And its a VERY ANNOYING UNION like a very mainstream big bureaucratic union #But anyway I joined it. Better than no union!#Also it took less than 10 minutes to sign up. It is simple and easy to join a trade union #And I have my radical and cool tenants union for when I get frustrated about this one!#Me Fein #Eefa sells her labour

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mobydyke · 2 years

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comrade rose tyler..... travelling space and time with her IWW card checking in with workers of all types asking what are your pronouns, how are you being treated, have you ever considered organizing your workplace? i just know she hands out copies of kropotkin and marx everywhere she goes before she realizes they're too earth-centric so she puts together an interplanetary team and they rewrite the bread book to have more universal relevance. she goes down as one of the greatest union organizers and leftist theorists in history but because her direct influence spans tens of thousands of years, she's heavily mythologized as well. she becomes an icon. in heavily policed workplaces, asking someone if they know rose tyler is asking if they're union-friendly. union leaders begin to use flowers as secret codenames to protect their identities and families from retaliatory action. rose tyler physically does not exist in this universe anymore but her legacy is bigger than she'll ever know

#founder of the orbiting space station tenants union rose tyler #doctor who #rose tyler #ace txt #u KNOW she and nine went to protests and marches together #they both thought the other one was just being patient and putting up with it for them‚ but actually they both had the time of their lives #rose has a little book of protest chants in over 200 languages. the tardis translates for her ofc but she believes in community resources #my thoughts my words

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chronicallycouchbound · 8 months

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Rent strikes aren’t always an option.

I live in an area that has some decent tenant’s rights laws, and it even protects things like when your landlord won’t fix major issues in your apartment, you can withhold rent until it is fixed.

But since I use government aid vouchers to pay my rent, I can’t participate in rent strikes/rent withholding.

My apartment has some pretty serious issues: broken windows, overhead lights out, a fairly large crack in the floor next to my toilet, the shower almost always only sprays scalding water, all my appliances break frequently, the electrical system is fucked, my door lock doesn’t function properly, and I could keep going. I can’t do anything but call my maintenance guy and hope they eventually get around to it. These problems have been going on for years.

My housing is nearly unlivable, at best it’s unsafe, and there’s no end in sight. I had to stop living at my apartment for several months because of a combination of factors (I’m also being stalked by two separate people) but nothing changed when I went back. There’s no other wheelchair accessible ADA apartments available, and I’m not a high priority for other apartments anyways because I’m not currently legally homeless.

I’ve been considering signing off of my lease and sleeping outside again because it would put me at the top of the wait lists for new housing opportunities, and I qualify for other services. I’ve spent over half of my life homeless so I know what it entails.

And what’s fucked up is that this is something a rent strike might not even fix. My apartment is in high demand (less than 1% of housing is ADA accessible, wait lists in my state are about 5 years long, I’m allowed to break my lease at any time because they have a long line of people who need apartments) so there’s basically nothing I can do.

We need systemic changes.

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strongintherealgay · 29 days

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my property manager: won't maintain the laundry machines so my clothes never dry, won't even replace the broken garbage can they took out of the laundry room, increases the amount of quarters you need to pay to do laundry, won't do a simple repair for the baseboard by our stairs for months, replaced the back doors to our building with ones that don't fit properly, inspect our apartments thrice within the past two months, and won't replace the windows so all of our electricity bills increase drastically during winters

also my property manager: we're going to increase the rent on your tiny studio by over $50 we prommy we don't like doing this :( it's just expensive to take care of your building :( :( yes the government gives us money because this is building is affordable housing but we need to bleed you dry or else we'll die :( :( :(

#anyway gonna legit print out fliers tomorrow to give to literally all of my neighbors about forming a tenant union bc this is ridiculous #eat the rich #landlords #renting #rent increase

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if-you-fan-a-fire · 2 years

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“The Kingston Community Legal Clinic is warning residents after a Landlord and Tenant Board adjudicator decided a landlord was wrongfully attempting to evict their tenant.

“The landlord seeks possession of the rental unit so his mother can live there,” adjudicator Laura Hartslief wrote in her June 28 decision on the fate of Jason Martin’s home in the basement unit of 151 Fraser St. “I am not satisfied that it is more likely than not that she genuinely intends to live there.”

Jordan Morelli, a physics professor at Queen’s University who owns the rental unit, said he is devastated by Hartslief’s decision.

“It’s a complete outrage that we’ve lost this thing because I’ve been trying to get my parents here for two years,” Morelli said. “I really want my parents to be living in there.”

John Done of the Kingston Community Legal Clinic represented Martin at the Landlord and Tenant Board hearing. He said his clinic has seen a significant increase in evictions for landlords to renovate units or to use for their own use — which is what Morelli applied for. In many of those cases, but not all, landlords evict a tenant who is paying a lower rent, renovate the unit, and rent it out again for sometimes double the cost.

Done said that, at first, Martin was resigned to moving out, but when Done saw Martin’s case, he urged him to push back against Morelli.

“These are situations we see all of the time in a Landlord’s Own Use application, and our view is (that) once we start putting these under the microscope, a lot of them don’t have merit,” Done said. “Once Mr. Martin said he would accept our help, then there were, indeed, some things that sort of leaped off the page. … There were the hallmarks of these (types of) landlords’ applications that I don’t think they could show good faith.”

Martin, who on Wednesday said he still couldn’t believe he was successful, said Done worked wonders. Martin said, the stress of the case, which was drawn out over two years due to a scheduling overflow caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, has caused Martin to lose five jobs over the two years.

“When I got that decision, I actually had to leave work,” Martin, who has been working steadily at a local fishing tackle manufacturing company since the end of May, said excitedly. “I couldn’t believe it, and I was overwhelmed. I was shaking, I couldn’t talk, my brain went to mush. I’m very happy with the decision.”

Morelli owns a total of 10 units within five properties in Kingston. He said he wanted to use Martin’s apartment as a new home for his mother, Henriette Morelli, who currently lives in a two-bedroom condominium with her husband, Edwin Morelli, in Saskatoon.”

- Steph Crosier, “Tenant wins at board hearing,” Kingston Whig-Standard. Jul 11, 2022. This was a front page story in the print edition.

///

We are happy that this story is now out in the open for all to see. It won't be the last word on the matter, that's for sure. But it clearly demonstrates why Queen's University professor and faculty association president (as well as former president of the Kingston NDP riding association) Jordan Morelli's N12 eviction notice was thrown out at the LTB. In our opinion, what this stories reveals is that Morelli is willing to exploit the housing crisis for his own financial gain.

Prior to this instance, there was two previous times where he claimed family members were moving in to units when they never did. He paid these tenants a meagre $3000, money which they quickly burned through with their rent prices hundreds of dollars a month higher. Meanwhile, he charged higher rents to the people moving in: one unit went from $409 to $1150 a month, while another went from $670 to $1200. He made that money back within months.

Morelli wants to claim he is a victim in all this, and actually goes so far as saying that the landlord tenant laws works well for tenants. But the facts speak for themselves: The LTB rejected his case because they do not believe his story. Additionally, close to 90 percent of tenants at the LTB have no legal representation, and if it weren't for KUT and KCLC supporting Morelli's tenant, Morelli would most likely have someone living in Martin's unit's at double the rent.

Tenants can win when they stand up and fight. Get to know your neighbours and organize with them! In Martin's case, former tenants stood with Martin to explain what had happened to them after moving out. This sort of solidarity led to Martin staying in his apartment at a rent price he can afford. KUT stands with tenants across the city and will do what we can to help.

- official statement of the Kingston / Katarokwi Union of Tenants, July 12, 2022 (Martin is a member)

/// The tenant union had helped several other tenants of Morelli, who had also been told they would have to move out of his own properties for the same reason of family need, and the communication between tenants allowed them to learn he was using the same line on several tenants - allowing the tenants to resist his efforts or negotiate for better accommodation to leave. Martin’s is the first official victory against this particular landlord, but likely won’t be the last. Of course, Morelli is a self-pitying landlord in all of this, being quoted in the article as saying: “Somehow I’m the bad guy in all of this; they’re trying to paint me as a villain.” Morelli is hardly the worst landlord in Kingston, Ontario, and nowhere near as powerful as a rental company like Homestead. His tactics are typical of landlords everywhere. The reason why he acts the way he does, and can act the way he does, is at base a structural issue, in which housing is an investment and a means of accumulation rather than a basic right. But Kingston is a smallish town, with a proportionately smallish, vague, fragmented, and often dysfunctional ‘left’, so Morelli’s role has been controversial and increasingly divisive. Notably, it was discovered by the tenant union that his mother, who he has been claiming he was going to move into one of these vacated units, is a retired university professor who likely doesn’t want to live in a tiny basement apartment!

As the press release from KUT notes, Morelli is a major player in the local political scene, as former riding president for the federal NDP, as secretary of the Kingston and District Labour Council (and had the temerity to send this article to other council members, even after the Council passed a pro-tenant motion!) and at Queen’s University, where he is a professor and head of the faculty association. In those roles, he is a bad faith opponent of tenant rights, student activism, grassroots unionism, and the left-wing of the NDP (as well as the small, overlapping and fractious autonomist, anarchist, communist and decolonial groups in the area). For instance, this was his response to the Ontario government, controlled by Conservatives, capping rent increases!

If there was any justice in the world or social democracy and labour unionism was not so pathetically degenerated, this kind of coverage should get him kicked out of the KDLC or NDP.

#kingston ontario #tenant union #tenant organizing #tenant and landlord board #tenant rights #tenants #landlords #landlordism #rental housing #housing is a human right #rental capitalism #canadian politics #labour council #queen's university

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allthecanadianpolitics · 1 year

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Report from the Montreal Autonomous Tenant Union (MATU) on a recent march against ongoing threats of eviction.

With a strong crowd for an 8am start time, the Montreal Autonomous Tenant Union (MATU) moved through the streets to the Housing Tribunal, the administrative apparatus ordering hundreds of evictions every year. After some chants and an anti-capitalist Christmas carol, a handful of militants entered the tribunal, while others maintained a banner wall outside.

The union was prevented from entering all at once what are supposedly public audiences to witness the eviction proceedings. A conflict with the security and two police officers was resolved when only three union members were allowed to enter the hearing. The bias in the courtroom was clear on the part of the judge, and weighted towards the landlord. Once we got up to leave, security pushed us out of the lobby and the doors to the courthouse were locked behind us.

However, the landlord, Satish Mantha, and judge clearly got the message from the demonstration. Tenants are watching, and our union is not going to sit by idly and let an eviction take place.

#submission #tenant union #affordable housing crisis #renters rights #all landlords are bastards #Montreal autonomous tenant union

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millionmovieproject · 8 months

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#tenant union #renters union #renter's rights #fuck capitalism #capitalism kills #we live in hell #socialism now #abolish capitalism #landlords are parasites #outlaw landlords

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polyamorouspunk · 9 months

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Resources on Tenant Unions put together by KC Tenants

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#I couldn’t post just the link I had to hyperlink it to something sorry #promise it’s not a sketchy link it’s a google doc #tenant union #unionize #resources

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queen-mabs-revenge · 6 months

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always on my organizing grind gonna get my building unionized

#just ran into a neighbor who was asking about my electricity bill bc hers is obscene #and we started talking about the building upkeep and how she's nervous to ask for anything bc of the housing market #when the building was furnished 20+ years ago they put in wool carpets and at this point they're literally all infested w moths #but the management agency only changes them out when ppl get on to them #and only then after months of asking #and she's not the only neighbor i know of who has these issues #and yeah gonna talk to the tenants union organizer here and see if we can get a meeting together w people in the building #better to get organised now instead of scrambling when smth shitty happens like a mass eviction attempt #build trust and solidarity in the low moments so that when the crisis moments hit we've already got the infrastructure in place

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bisexualamy · 7 months

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favorite thing about organizing is that it works and you win things for your union worst thing about organizing is you have to pretend to be grateful for things that have always been basic things you were owed from the start

#my tenant’s union just won keys to the package room #(an ongoing issue for almost a year)#and that’s great! but now we gotta pretend to be grateful for getting access to our OWN FUCKING MAIL #ren speaks

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disastroboy · 7 months

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more aziracrow hcs

#the pronouns are random bcos these r almost always written while im walking my dog and smoking a spliff so dont read too deep into it #i know theyre beings with no birthday technically and existed before planets #but this is just something i feel in my bones #also idk anything abt the criminal justice system in the uk but i think human!aziraphales would be one of those lawyers who reps like #tennant unions #crowley #good omens #good omens 2 #aziraphale #go hcs #lmao **tenant #worms for brains

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cinnamaya · 1 year

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Debunking Rent Control Naysayers

I was recently sent this Brookings Institute article from 2018 entitled 'What does economic evidence tell us about the effects of rent control?' written by Rebecca Diamond as a counter argument to rent control advocacy. This article is one of many published by increasingly desperate economic think tanks. I've debunked many articles like this before in various places (and probably this one, they're all pretty indistinguishable), but I thought I'd put it together in one place as succinctly as possible. In my writing I treat the quoted piece with exactly the amount of respect and formality it deserves, which is to say, very little. So, let's take a look at what Rebecca Diamond tells us about what economic evidence tells us about rent control!

"Steadily rising housing rents in many of the US’s large, productive cities have reignited the discussion whether to expand or enact rent control provisions. Under pressure to fight rising rents, state lawmakers in Illinois, Oregon, and California are considering repealing laws that limit cities’ abilities to pass or expand rent control. While rules and regulations of rent control vary from place to place, most rent control consists of caps on price increases within the duration of a tenancy, and sometimes beyond the duration of a tenancy, as well as restrictions on eviction."

So far so good.

"New research examining how rent control affects tenants and housing markets offers insight into how rent control affects markets. While rent control appears to help current tenants in the short run, in the long run it decreases affordability, fuels gentrification, and creates negative spillovers on the surrounding neighborhood."

Because this is the Brookings Institute, this will all be very selectively chosen, pro financial capital research. Anyone expecting an actually objective article from an economic think-tank is clearly looking in the wrong place. These people's one job is to legitimize capitalism. Still, it's worth looking at their points because in this case, both their arguments and the underlying studies are both morally and logically shoddy.

"A substantial body of economic research has used theoretical arguments to highlight the potential negative efficiency consequences to keeping rents below market rates, going back to Friedman[!!!] and Stigler (1946). They argued that a cap on rents would lead landlords to sell their rental properties to owner occupants so that landlords could still earn the market price for their real estate. Rent control can also lead to “mis-match” between tenants and rental units. Once a tenant has secured a rent-controlled apartment, he may not choose to move in the future and give up his rent control, even if his housing needs change (Suen 1980, Glaeser and Luttmer 2003, Sims 2011, Bulow and Klemperer 2012). This mis-allocation can lead to empty-nest households living in family-sized apartments and young families crammed into small studios, clearly an inefficient allocation. Similarly, if rental rates are below market rates, renters may choose to consume excessive quantities of housing (Olsen 1972, Gyourko and Linneman 1989). Rent control can also lead to decay of the rental housing stock; landlords may not invest in maintenance because they can’t recoup these investment by raising rents. (Downs 1988, Sims 2007).

First of all, any article that quotes Milton Friedman is immediately suspect. He is irrelevant to economics and his ideas have had disastrous consequences for our economic system. But let's take a look at the arguments and their basic logical flaws:

Rent control leads landlords to sell their properties - This is a good thing. Landlords are an unnecessary middleman in the housing market and a drain on the economy.

Rent controls lead to "Inefficient Allocation" - A completely irrelevant argument considering a lack of rent control does nothing to increase this efficiency. Rather than people who already lived in "inefficiently allocated" apartments, however, they just go to the highest bidder.

"if rental rates are below market rates, renters may choose to consume excessive quantities of housing" - please.

Landlords wont invest in maintenance - In what world do landlords maintain their apartments anyway? Landlords will always do the bare minimum. The free market forces them to. That's market efficiency at work.

"Of course, rent control also offered potential benefits for tenants. For example, rent control provides insurance against rent increases, potentially limiting displacement. Affordable housing advocates argue that these insurance benefits are valuable to tenants. For instance, if long-term tenants have developed neighborhood-specific capital, such as a network of friends and family, proximity to a job, or children enrolled in local schools, then tenants face large risks from rent appreciation. In contrast, individuals who have little connection to any specific area can easily insure themselves against local rental price appreciation by moving to a cheaper location. Those invested in the local community are not able to use this type of “self-insurance” as easily, since they must give up some or all of their neighborhood specific capital. Rent control can provide these tenants with this type of insurance."

Yep. This is all fine.

"Until recently, there was little data or natural experiments with which to assess the importance of these competing arguments, and to assess how rent controls affects tenants, landlords, or the broader housing market. But newly-available housing-market data spanning periods of dramatic change in rent control laws in Cambridge, MA and in San Francisco, CA have allowed economists to examine these questions empirically. While these studies do find support for the idea that existing tenants benefit from the insurance provided by rent control, they also find the overall cost of providing that insurance is very large."

This is blatantly false. Rent controls have been around far longer than the USA. There is plenty of data and literally years of economic analysis on this stuff.

"From December 1970 through 1994, all rental units in Cambridge built prior to 1969 were regulated by a rent control ordinance that placed strict caps on rent increases and tightly restricted the removal of units from the rental stock. The legislative intent of the rent control ordinance was to provide affordable rental housing, and at the eve of rent control’s elimination in 1994, controlled units typically rented at 40-plus percent below the price of nearby non-controlled properties. In November 1994, the Massachusetts electorate passed a referendum to eliminate rent control by a narrow 51–49 percent margin, with nearly 60 percent of Cambridge residents voting to retain the rent control ordinance. This law change directly impacted properties previously subject to rent control, enabling landlords to begin to charge market rents."

Tragic. Let's see what the effects were.

"Autor, Palmer, and Pathak (2014) (APP), studies the impact of this unexpected change and find that newly decontrolled properties’ market values increased by 45 percent."

It inflated housing prices. Good for people to whom housing is an asset. Bad for people to whom housing is a… house.

"In addition to these direct effects of rent decontrol, APP find removing rent control has substantial indirect effects on neighboring properties, boosting their values too. Post-decontrol price appreciation was significantly greater at properties that had a larger fraction of formerly controlled neighbors: residential properties at the 75th percentile of rent control exposure gained approximately 13 percent more in property value following decontrol than did properties at the 25th percentile of exposure."

It made it more expensive to buy, not only in those houses, but the surrounding areas? Doesn't sound like it was making housing more accessible so far.

"This differential appreciation of properties in rent control–intensive locations was equally pronounced among decontrolled and never-controlled units, suggesting that the effect of rent control had been to reduce the whole neighborhood’s desirability."

Didn't they say earlier that rent controlled units were so desirable that people wouldn't move? Perhaps they mean desirability to outside landlords.

"The economic magnitude of the effect of rent control removal on the value of Cambridge’s housing stock is large, boosting property values by $2.0 billion between 1994 and 2004. Of this total effect, only $300 million is accounted for by the direct effect of decontrol on formerly controlled units, while $1.7 billion is due to the indirect effect. These estimates imply that more than half of the capitalized cost of rent control was borne by owners of never-controlled properties. Rent controlled properties create substantial negative externalities on the nearby housing market, lowering the amenity value of these neighborhoods and making them less desirable places to live. In short, the policy imposed $2.0 billion in costs to local property owners, but only $300 million of that cost was transferred to renters in rent-controlled apartments."

"Capitalized cost" being the keyword here. Their investments weren't as profitable. This does NOT translate to actual cost like the article suggests, much less for the tenants. None of the renters were maintaining the asset prices of their rentals on balance sheets because they are tenants not owners. "But the owners have to pay the costs!" you might say. True, but if it weren't profitable, then the landlords wouldn't be renting the buildings.

"Diamond, McQuade, and Qian (2018) (DMQ) examine the consequences of an expansion of rent control on renters, landlords, and the housing market that resulted from a unique 1994 local San Francisco ballot initiative. In 1979, San Francisco imposed rent control on all standing buildings with five or more apartments. Rent control in San Francisco consists of regulated rent increases, linked to the CPI, within a tenancy, but no price regulation between tenants. New construction was exempt from rent control, since legislators did not want to discourage new development. Smaller multi-family buildings were exempt from this 1979 law change since they were viewed as more “mom and pop” ventures, and did not have market power over rents. This exemption was lifted by a 1994 San Francisco ballot initiative. Proponents of the initiative argued that small multi-family housing was now primarily owned by large businesses and should face the same rent control of large multi-family housing. Since the initial 1979 rent control law only impacted properties built from 1979 and earlier, the removal of the small multi-family exemption also only affected properties built 1979 and earlier. This led to a differential expansion in rent control in 1994 based on whether the small multi-family housing was built prior to or post 1980—a policy experiment where otherwise similar housing was treated differently by the law."

Well, the last example wasn't too convincing. Let's see if this one is any better.

"To examine rent control’s effects on tenant migration and neighborhood choices, DMQ examine panel data that provides address-level migration decisions and housing characteristics for the majority of adults living in San Francisco in the early 1990s. This allows them to define a treatment group of renters who lived in small multi-family apartment buildings built prior to 1980 and a control group of renters living in small multi-family housing built between 1980 and 1990. Their data allows them to follow each of these groups over time up until the present, regardless of where they migrate."

So, before getting into it, what would be the ideal outcome here? If the rent control laws were effective, we would see tenants in the rent controlled buildings experiencing:

more economic freedom due to decreased housing costs

less displacement of rent controlled tenants.

The first point is pretty unambiguously clear, and supported by mountains of evidence. The real question pertains to the second point: Can the tenants benefiting from these cost reductions stay in their apartments and continue to see these benefits?

Let's see what happened.

"Between five and ten years after the law change, the beneficiaries of rent control are 19 percent less likely to have moved to a new address, relative to the control group’s migration rate. Further, impact on the likelihood of remaining in San Francisco as whole was the same, indicating a large share of the renters that rent control caused to remain at their 1994 address would have left San Francisco had they not been covered by rent control."

Holy moly.

"These effects are significantly stronger among older households and among households that have already spent a number of years at their address prior to treatment. This is consistent with the fact that both of these populations are likely to be less mobile."

So older people more integrated with their neighborhood didn't have to move? This rent control thing sounds great!

"Renters who don’t need to move very often are more likely to find it worthwhile to remain in their rent controlled apartment for a long time, enabling them to accrue larger rent savings. Finally, DMQ find these effects are especially large for racial minorities, likely indicating that minorities faced greater displacement pressures in San Francisco than whites."

Less displacement ✓

"While expansion of rent control did prevent some displacement among tenants living in San Francisco in 1994, the landlords of these properties responded to mitigate their rental losses in a number of ways."

"Rent control made me do it," - landlords.

"In practice, landlords have a few possible ways of removing tenants. First, landlords could move into the property themselves, known as move-in eviction. Second, the Ellis Act allows landlords to evict tenants if they intend to remove the property from the rental market, for instance, in order to convert the units to condos. Finally, landlords are legally allowed to offer their tenants monetary compensation for leaving. In practice, these transfer payments from landlords are common and can be quite large."

All valid points.

"DMQ find that rent-controlled buildings were 8 percentage points more likely to convert to a condo than buildings in the control group. Consistent with these findings, they find that rent control led to a 15 percentage point decline in the number of renters living in treated buildings and a 25 percentage point reduction in the number of renters living in rent-controlled units, relative to 1994 levels. This large reduction in rental housing supply was driven by converting existing structures to owner-occupied condominium housing and by replacing existing structures with new construction."

An unfortunate side effect, but there are a few things to note:

Landlords moving into their own units works exactly once.

While some renters being pushed out is bad, at least the housing is owned by individual people rather than one landlord. If anything this increases the stability of housing in the area.

"This 15 percentage point reduction in the rental supply of small multi-family housing likely led to rent increases in the long-run, consistent with standard economic theory. In this sense, rent control operated as a transfer between the future renters of San Francisco (who would pay these higher rents due to lower supply) to the renters living in San Francisco in 1994 (who benefited directly from lower rents). "

If only there were a way to control those rent increases.

"Furthermore, since many of the existing rental properties were converted to higher-end, owner-occupied condominium housing and new construction rentals, the passage of rent control ultimately led to a housing stock that caters to higher income individuals."

Except we already know people in rent controlled units experience greater overall stability even considering the housing converted into condos, so this less important movement is more than offset by the benefits.

"DMQ find that this high-end housing, developed in response to rent control, attracted residents with at least 18 percent higher income."

This is an INCREDIBLY dubious causal claim. This housing was developed after rent control, but we can look at any other city to see this isn't some unique trend. In fact, the original study cited here finds that, if anything, the displacement in rent controlled units is contingent on gentrification and not vice versa. They argue, "This evidence is consistent with the idea that landlords undertake efforts to remove their tenants or convince them to leave in improving, gentrifying areas. In addition, the rent control tenants are more likely to remain at their address within the less gentrifying areas[…]These combined effects lead tenants treated by rent control to live in lower quality areas." (Diamond, McQuade & Qian, 2019) An argument against rent controls that seems reasonable on the surface level, but is absurd upon closer inspection. These tenants remain in neighborhoods which are less desirable by choice. The argument here depends on the idea that displacement is ever acceptable, justifying it with the data suggesting some tenants on average might have been displaced into slightly higher income neighborhoods. It's a justification which I'm sure will bring great comfort to those being pushed out of their homes due to increasing rents.

Hidden deeper in this argument, however, is another flaw. The entire point is tautological. Gentrification IS the displacement of lower income tenants, so to argue that rent control pushed people out of gentrified neighborhoods and kept people in non-gentrified neighborhoods is like saying gentrified neighborhoods gentrified and non gentrified neighborhoods didn't gentrify. This isn't to suggest that this point is lost on Diamond, McQuade & Qian. I'm quite sure they understand what gentrification is and would never unintentionally make such an error.

"Taking all of these points together, it appears rent control has actually contributed to the gentrification of San Francisco, the exact opposite of the policy’s intended goal. Indeed, by simultaneously bringing in higher income residents and preventing displacement of minorities, rent control has contributed to widening income inequality of the city."

As said above, this supposed contribution to gentrification seems to actually be the reverse. Neighborhoods which were able to push out rent controlled tenants were more gentrified. It's not a particularly salient point, but to claim any more would be to make unsubstantiated causal claims. I would also like to note that this is not the policy's intended goal. Rent control is meant to keep rents cheaper in rent controlled units. Of course if you expect rent control to be a silver bullet to every problem of gentrification and urbanization, then it will be a failure in your eyes. This is doubly true in cases where the rent control is not universal.

Additionally, the fact that "preventing displacement of minorities" is a point against rent control here shows exactly who the author's sympathies are really for.

"It may seem surprising that the expansion of rent control in San Francisco led to an upgraded housing stock, catering to high-income tastes, while the removal of rent control in Cambridge also lead to upgrading and value appreciation. To reconcile these effects, it is useful to think about which types of landlords would respond to a rent control expansion versus a rent control removal. In the case of rent control expansion, some landlords will choose to recoup some of their losses by converting to condo or redeveloping their building to exempt it from rent control. However, other landlords may choose to accept the rent control regulation, and no longer perform maintenance on the building and allow it to decay."

Finally a great point! Landlords ARE bad, Rebecca, keep going…

"In the rent control expansion case, one would see an increase in condo conversions and upgrades, driven by the landlords that chose to respond in this way. However, when rent control is removed, the landlords who own the rent controlled buildings are the ones who didn’t choose to convert to condo or redevelop in response to the initial passage of rent control. Indeed, one would expect this subset of landlords to choose to upgrade and invest in their properties once the rent control regulation is removed."

This whole section is meant as some sort of justification for the fact that getting rid of rent controls leads to the same exact results that counted against rent controls in the main argument. The only point it really makes is that we shouldn't get rid of rent controls. Anyone who can't see the absurdity at this point has ulterior motives. Ultimately, one should only expect landlords to do the bare minimum, rent control or no rent control. That is why we need legal protections, and most importantly tenant organizing to make sure landlords actually keep these places livable.

"Rent control appears to help affordability in the short run for current tenants, but in the long-run decreases affordability, fuels gentrification, and creates negative externalities on the surrounding neighborhood."

Decreases affordability?? You have to wonder how the author came to that conclusion so contrary to the very first point in the article (housing prices decreased). This alone shows how deceitful this Diamond is being.

We've already seen why the gentrification point is moot. As for those "negative externalities," I fail to see how increased rents in non-rent controlled apartments is a satisfactory argument for anything but an expansion of rent control.

"These results highlight that forcing landlords to provide insurance to tenants against rent increases can ultimately be counterproductive. If society desires to provide social insurance against rent increases, it may be less distortionary to offer this subsidy in the form of a government subsidy or tax credit. This would remove landlords’ incentives to decrease the housing supply and could provide households with the insurance they desire. A point of future research would be to design an optimal social insurance program to insure renters against large rent increases."

What in this hypothetical is stopping the landlords from just increasing the rent in the long run to counteract the subsidies and tax credits?

Additionally, we see a hint of another popular anti rent control fallacy here. "Decrease housing supply" is misleading because housing supply is not decreasing. In fact, housing for sale temporarily increases. There are however two factors which lead to a decrease in the rental supply. The first is the conversion into condos, which does push rents up. This is irrelevant to the problem, however, considering that rent controls directly counteract that and any other supply based fluctuations. The other decrease of supply in the rental market, ironically, is exactly what rent controls are intended to do. This decrease is due to people renting apartments and not being forced to move. This decrease in supply also roughly coincides with a corresponding decrease in demand because people can be confident and secure staying in the rentals they choose to rent.

"The authors did not receive any financial support from any firm or person for this article or from any firm or person with a financial or political interest in this article. They are currently not an officer, director, or board member of any organization with an interest in this article."

This you?

#housing #rent control #marxism #politics #economics #neoliberalism #rentierism #tenant advocacy #tenant unions #Brookings Institute #socialism #yimbys suck #urbanism #urban planning

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