Tenants union
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A tenants union, also known as a renters' union or a tenants association, is a group of tenants that collectively organize to improve the conditions of their housing and mutually educate about their rights as renters.[1][2] Groups may also lobby local officials to change housing policies or address homelessness.
 | The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. (December 2023) |
Definitions
Summarize
Perspective
In 1966, Schwartz and Davis defined a tenant union as "an organization of tenants formed to bargain collectively with their landlord for an agreement defining the parties' mutual obligations.[3][4][5]
In 2024, Baltz defined tenant associations as groups of tenants, generally in the same building or development, who organize to collectively advocate against their landlord and tenant unions as membership-based organizations who collectively organize across properties or geographic regions. Tenant associations are often formed in buildings where tenants are agitated over evictions, rent increases, conditions, or treatment. They may operate independently in a single building or affiliate with wider tenant unions. Tenant unions draw membership from associations and help organize them or provide them support in self-organizing.[6]
Tenants join tenant unions and associations due to grievances with the landlord such as high rents and poor building maintenance to seek reduced costs and better quality housing. Tenant unions are modeled on labor unions, collectively joining tenants against landlords.[4] Tenant unions have also joined coalitions with other tenant unions at the city, state, and country level to campaign for more protections.[6] Tenant organizers refer to those who seek to help create tenant associations, unions, and campaigns or further their aims. They may be tenants in their own building, independent volunteers, or affiliates or employees of tenant unions and campaigns.[6]
Activities and tactics
Tenant unions engage in rent strikes to make demands of landlords and legislators, create eviction defense networks to prevent landlords evicting renters, and reoccupy housing from which renters where evicted.[6]
Tenant unions may be subject to laws such as those regarding legal rent strikes and affirmative lawsuits. Tenant unions and associations are generally free to devise their own membership structures, goals, and processes due to the nonexistence of laws regulating their structure or obligations. Tenant unions and associations may register as nonprofits or remain unincorporated.[6]
When tenants have a legal right to occupy their apartment they can leverage their occupancy and the law. Conversely, tenants with more limited rights tend to advocate towards governmental actors or engage in squatting or eviction blockades.[6]
France
Rent contracts are negotiated between landlord and tenant organizations. Tenants who cannot afford negotiated rents receive housing allowances.[7] Tenants are represented in court by consumer associations.[8] Mediation is a first step in addressing substandard housing before the association brings legal action.[9] Tenant associations debated with other stakeholders in the National Housing Council regarding data sharing on energy and housing benefits paid to the private sector.[10]
United States
Summarize
Perspective
Tenant unions have existed in the United states for over a century.[6] The Uniform Residential Landlord and Tenant Act of 1972 was the earliest legal acknolwedgment of them, stating that landlords may not retaliate against tenants for having "organized or become a member of a tenant’s union or similar organization".[6] Section 8 housing in the US require that tenant organizations represent all tenants, regularly meet, and operate democratically and independently of the landlord under federal law.[6]
In the United States, tenant unions in the state of New York have pushed for the passage of just-cause eviction laws following the end of COVID-19 eviction moratoriums. Just-cause could include non-payment, lease violations, nuisance cases, or if a landlord wants to move into the property.[11]
Tenants unions in the US have also helped halt evictions and push for tenant bills of rights and right to counsel in Kansas City, Missouri; Tempe, Arizona; St. Petersburg, Florida; and other cities.[12][13][14]
United States of America federal law prohibits housing discrimination based on race, gender, religion and other protected identity categories, but it doesn't explicitly protect tenants' right to organize collectively.[15]
Legal protection
In a 2018 survey of state law, two states and D.C. were found to have substantial protections for tenant unions and tenant union organizing (Category 1 states listed below); twenty-nine other states protected tenant union organizing (Category 2 states listed below); and nineteen states had no laws protecting tenant associations or tenant association organizing (Category 3 states below).[16]
| State | Category | Protections[17] |
|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 2 | Uniform and Residential Landlord Tenant Act prohibits retaliation for organizing or being involved with a tenants union. |
| Alaska | 2 | Uniform and Residential Landlord Tenant Act prohibits retaliation for organizing or being involved with a tenants union. |
| Arizona | 2 | Uniform and Residential Landlord Tenant Act prohibits retaliation for organizing or being involved with a tenants union.
Tenants at mobile home and residential vehicle parks have additional rights. |
| Arkansas | 3 | No laws found. |
| California | 1 | Substantial protections for tenant union organizing. In some circumstances, tenant associations have substantive rights, such as an opportunity to purchase some regulated housing developments or the right to raise some health and safety claims. |
| Colorado | 2 | Landlords may not retaliate against tenants for making complaints to the landlord or to governmental entities. |
| Connecticut | 2 | Landlords may not retaliate against tenants for organizing or being involved with a tenants union. Tenant unions often have an opportunity to purchase buildings during a conversion to a condominium. Tenant associations have additional rights in state housing projects and in mobile home parks. |
| Delaware | 2 | Landlords may not retaliate against tenants who organized or are officers in a tenants’ organization.
Tenant associations in manufactured home communities have additional rights. |
| District of Columbia | 1 | Tenants have the right to organize, to meet and confer through representatives of their own choosing with the owner, and to engage in concerted activities for mutual aid and protections. Tenant organizers often have the right to canvass in multifamily housing accommodations. Owners may not interfere with tenants' self-organizational activities.
Under the Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, tenants associations often have an opportunity to purchase rental buildings when the owner wishes to sell them. |
| Florida | 2 | Landlords may not retaliate against tenants for organizing, encouraging or participating in a tenant organization.
Tenants of mobile home parks have additional rights. |
| Georgia | 3 | No laws found. |
| Idaho | 3 | No general tenant protection found. Tenants of floating home marinas have the right to form a tenant association. Tenants of mobile and manufactured home parks have additional rights. |
| Illinois | 3 | No general tenant protection found. Tenants in assisted housing developments receiving governmental funding have additional rights. |
| Indiana | 3 | No general tenant protection found. |
| Iowa | 2 | Landlords may not retaliate against tenants for organizing or becoming a member of a tenants union. |
| Kansas | 2 | Landlords may not retaliate against tenants for organizing or becoming a member of a tenants’ union. |
| Louisiana | 3 | No laws found. |
| Maine | 2 | Tenants cannot be evicted if the eviction action was brought in retaliation for tenant union organizing. |
| Maryland | 2 | Landlords cannot include in rental agreements any provisions permitting eviction based on tenant union organizing. In Montgomery County, landlords cannot retaliate against tenants for membership in a tenants organization.
Mobile home park tenants have additional rights. |
| Massachusetts | 2 | In an eviction process, a tenant may raise a defense that the action was brought in retaliation for organizing or joining a tenants union. Any person who retaliates against a tenant for their tenant union activities is liable for damages.
Tenants of manufactured home parks and public housing developments have additional rights. |
| Michigan | 2 | Tenants may not be evicted action if the eviction was based on retaliation against a tenant for tenant union activities.
Tenants of public and affordable housing developments have additional rights. |
| Minnesota | 2 | Housing-related neighborhood organizations may bring legal actions for violations of landlord-tenant law on behalf of tenants. They may also request an inspection of facilities. Landlords may not retaliate against tenants for filing complaints.
Tenants in manufactured home parks have additional rights. |
| Mississippi | 3 | No laws found. |
| Missouri | 3 | No laws found. |
| Montana | 2 | Landlord may not retaliate against tenants for organizing or being a member of tenant unions.
Tenants of mobile home parks have additional rights. |
| Nebraska | 2 | Landlord may not retaliate against tenants for organizing or being a member of tenant unions. |
| Nevada | 2 | Landlord may not retaliate against tenants for organizing or being a member of tenant unions. |
| New Hampshire | 2 | In eviction proceedings, tenants may raise a defense that the eviction is retaliation for tenant union activity.
Tenants of mobile and manufactured home parks have additional rights. |
| New Jersey | 2 | Landlords may not evict tenants for their membership or involvement in any lawful organization. Landlords may not evict tenants for refusing to comply with terms of tenancy which the landlord altered to retaliate for tenant organization activity. |
| New Mexico | 2 | Landlord may not retaliate against tenants for organizing or being a member of tenant unions. |
| New York | 1 | Landlords may not interfere with the right of tenants to form, join or participate in tenant organization, and may not punish, harass, or retaliate against tenants for exercising these rights. Tenant unions have the right to meet on the premises in any common use area without having to pay a fee.
Limited-profit housing companies must adopt regulations recognizing tenant associations. Tenants in those properties have additional rights. Tenant associations providing services have some additional rights. |
| North Carolina | 3 | No laws found. |
| North Dakota | 3 | No laws found. |
| Ohio | 2 | Landlord may not retaliate against tenants for organizing with each other for the purpose of dealing collectively with the landlord.
Low-income housing programs may provide grants to tenant associations. |
| Oregon | 2 | Landlord may not retaliate against tenants for organizing or being a member of tenant unions.
Tenants in manufactured home and floating home parks have additional rights. |
| Pennsylvania | 2 | Landlords may not terminate or decline to renew a lease due to a tenant union organizing or membership. |
| Puerto Rico | 3 | No laws found. |
| Rhode Island | 2 | Landlord may not retaliate against tenants for organizing or being a member of tenant unions.
Tenants in mobile home parks and federally insured or assisted housing have some additional rights. |
| South Carolina | 3 | No laws found. |
| South Dakota | 2 | Landlord may not retaliate against tenants for organizing or being a member of tenant unions. |
| Tennessee | 3 | No laws found. |
| Texas | 2 | Landlord may not retaliate against tenants for organizing or being a member of tenant unions.
Tenant organizations in low-income housing have additional rights. |
| Utah | 3 | No general tenant protections found. Residents of mobile home parks have additional rights. |
| Vermont | 2 | Landlord may not retaliate against tenants for organizing or being a member of tenant unions. |
| Virginia | 2 | Landlord may not retaliate against tenants for organizing or being a member of tenant unions. |
| Washington | 3 | No laws found. |
| West Virginia | 3 | No general tenant protections found. Tenants in house trailers, mobile homes, manufactured homes, and modular homes are protected from eviction for tenant union organizing or membership. |
| Wisconsin | 2 | Landlord may not retaliate against tenants for organizing or being a member of tenant unions. |
| Wyoming | 3 | No laws found. |
| Oklahoma | 3 | No laws found. |
| Kentucky | 2 | Landlords may not retaliate against tenants for organizing or becoming a member of a tenants’ union.
Provides some services to tenants living in low incoming housing, including advisory services for creating tenant organizations to “which will assume a meaningful and responsible role in the planning and carrying out of housing affairs.” |
| Hawaii | 3 | Tenant organizations have the right to sue in the organization’s name to abate nuisance.
Resident advisory boards are established for public housing projects. |
See also
References
Further reading
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