Rent strikes?

Friend of mine, sent me this. (best to see it at the link)
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Jewish Currents:https://jewishcurrents.org/rent-is-due/

People are hanging white sheets on their homes to signal support for a rent strike. Photo via @JackPosobiec on Twitter

Rent Is Due

March 31, 2020 Posted byBrendan O’Connor

ON TUESDAY, confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States passed 160,000 and the death toll approached 3,000. Last week, 3.3 million people applied for unemployment benefits—an unprecedented number. Some economists are predicting more than 40 million people may be out of work by the end of June. And tomorrow, rent is due.

Even before the pandemic hit, many working people were living in a state of housing insecurity. About half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and a similar number are rent-burdened, meaning that they hand over more than 30% of their incomes each month to their landlord. The federal stimulus package passed last week halts some evictions and mortgage payments, and some states have implemented temporary moratoriums on evictions. Unless rent is canceled and back payments are forgiven for the duration of the crisis, however, housing courts will soon be overrun with landlords trying to squeeze broke tenants for several months worth of income after the pandemic passes.

In response to these conditions, housing activists have seen an upsurge of interest from newly politicized tenants across the country. Memes and imagery agitating for a nationwide rent strike are circulating widely on the internet. But despite broad agreement among organizers, politically activated tenants, and leftists more broadly that the situation is an emergency demanding sweeping action, a debate has broken out online—the only place where it is currently safe to gather—over how exactly to proceed.

On one side of the debate are those agitating for an immediate cessation of rent, effective April 1st. They point out that millions of people are currently unable to pay rent, or are choosing between rent and groceries or medicine—and that the situation thus requires an immediate, drastic response. This call has been shared most broadly via the hashtag “Rent Strike 2020,” a campaign launched by Socialist Alternative, a small leftist political organization, and the Rose Caucus,
a group of socialists running for Congress in several states. The campaign’s demand is straightforward: every state should suspend rent, mortgage, and utility payments for the duration of the pandemic. If this demand is not met, it continues, tenants across the country should simply not pay. As one of the campaign’s slogans puts it: “RENT FREEZE OR RENT STRIKE: OUR LEADERS CAN TAKE THEIR PICK.”

In addition to the petition being circulated by Rent Strike 2020, which did not respond to my request for an interview, organizing guides have proliferated online, outlining the basic steps necessary to build support for a strike (step one: talk to your neighbors) as well as listing some already active rent strikes. In some cities, tenants have begun hanging white bedsheets out of their windows to indicate that they will refuse to pay rent come Wednesday. (Corporations like The Cheesecake Factory and Mattress Firm have also made it known that they will not be paying rent in April.)

On the other side of the debate, many veteran housing organizers have voiced concerns that a spontaneous rent strike would be ineffective and put tenants at risk. The eviction protections that state and federal governments have already enacted are both limited and temporary: anyone who doesn’t pay their rent this month or next, whether as a political or practical matter, faces the possibility of lawsuits and eviction once the moratoriums are lifted. “If you have no income to pay rent, then a ‘rent strike’ is an immediately attractive action. But that is not so much a rent strike as it is non-payment of rent,” the Philadelphia Tenants Union notes. “A rent strike is a demonstration of collective power, while mass non-payment of rent is collective desperation. It goes without saying that many landlords do not care if you are desperate, and neither does eviction court. If your goal is a ‘rent strike’ but you have no income to begin with, then you have no financial pressure to leverage.”

For housing organizers wary of calls for an immediate strike, the question of leverage is key. Allison Hrabar—an organizer with the Washington, DC-based group Stomp Out Slumlords (SOS), a campaign led by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America—explained that when a building organized by SOS goes on strike, tenants pay their rent into an escrow account. “We’re not handing it over, we’re withholding it. That gives us leverage over the landlord,” she said. “The difference between that and someone who lost their job and can’t pay on April 1st is that there’s not a ton of leverage. It’s not motivating them to do what you want them to do—they might forgive your rent, but it’s not going to be citywide, or even building-wide. It’s not collective.” From this perspective, it’s not clear that the tactic of mass non-payment fits the demand for rent relief. If what tenants need is for the state they live in to cancel rent payments altogether for the duration of the crisis, then it is representatives of the state who ought to be targeted first….see link…”