Housing Insecurity: It’s always darkest before dawn

by Drea R

If you’re anything like me, you’ve likely known someone or have yourself struggled with housing insecurity and the unsafe situations that flow downstream from it. Countless numbers of our trans siblings have been displaced countless times at the whims of landlords, family members, and the occasional abusive partner. This can often lead to homelessness, something that many struggle with for months or even years. Those of us that are “lucky” enough to have some form of housing often live in deplorable conditions under slumlord owners or shady investment/reality groups. The few among us that are able to afford homes are seemingly always one disaster away from an absolute catastrophe.

We’re not alone in this

Believe it or not, it isn’t just us trans folks that face these struggles. Here are some harrowing accounts from other inhabitants of Turtle Island:

How did we get here?

Not long from the moment colonizers stepped foot on this continent, land stolen from its indigenous inhabitants was divided up into plots. To help in enriching the new inhabitants on their stolen land, slaves were soon brought over to this continent. This terrible, violent legacy of land theft and chattel slavery never really ended. Many of the ill-gotten gains from slave plantations were used to buy up properties for the purposes of rent-seeking. This coupled with the alienation of folks from their labor ensured that folks not in the capitalist class stayed on the hamster wheel, never quite able to upset the social and economic order on their own.

Are rent-seeking and profiteering off of folks’ labor really that different than slavery?

Things we can do

I believe that going forward we will begin to see the emergence of more intentional communities that become increasingly divested from our violent colonial system, but this will take time and resources that not everybody has right now. What can we do now? We can build our power: tenant power built through organizing with our neighbors and joining in solidarity and direct action with tenant unions across this so-called nation. As a larger tenant power base gets built, more options come available to us for we can put pressure against shitty landlords and even outright collectively own our units and buildings, paving the way for true socialized housing for all!

Enter the tenant union

I’m pleased to share with y’all some very good news: the momentum for building such a movement is already in motion! In many communities across Turtle Island unions have already been formed. Numerous apartment complexes, senior communities, and trailer parks across this continent have already become majority union! And in recognition of the fact that a lot of the owners have consolidated their power across state lines, so have we too in the founding of the Tenant Union Federation⇲ (or TUF, for short).

Last week TUF convened its first ever convention to draft its new constitution that lays out why the organization exists, how it fights for tenants, how it is governed, how local unions can get involved, and how amendments to the document can be ratified. Delegates from all over Turtle Island met to hash out amendments to this document that will soon be ratified.

At the same convention the trailblazing national campaign was furthered against Capital Reality Group, the largest owner of subsidized housing in the so-called “United States” owning at least 14,000 housing units across 28 so-called states. They prey off of some of the most vulnerable tenants by using government assistance to finance properties that they put virtually no effort in to maintain. The solidarity across buildings⇲ here in the Kansas City has now broken containment and has gone national.

Workshops were held on many topics relevant to tenant union organizing:

• Session 1:
  • Strategy and Power (KC Tenants)
  • Language Justice and Multilingual Organizing (KC Tenants and Connecticut Tenants Union)
  • Tenant hotlines (KC Tenants)
  • Building a research team (TUF Research Team, Kentucky Tenants Union, KC Tenants)
  • legal tactics (Kentucky Tenants Union, KC Tenants)
  • organizing press (Bozeman Tenants United)
• Session 2:
  • Tenant Unions Building Social Housing (Connecticut Tenants Union)
  • Which Side Are You On: Tenant Organizing in Rural Kentucky (Kentucky Tenants Union)
  • Building an At Large Chapter (Kentucky Tenants Union)
  • The Government Is in Bed with Your Landlord (TUF Research Team)
  • art and propaganda (Bozeman Tenants United)
  • Bargaining 101 (KC Tenants)
• Session 3:
  • A case study on rent strikes in Independence Towers and Quality Hill Towers (KC Tenants)
  • Messy Shit: Tenant Union Co-governance (Bozeman Tenants United and KC Tenants)
  • Beyond Identity Politics: Black Tenant Organizing (TUF, Detroit Tenant Union, KC Tenants, and Southside Together)
  • From Gaza to ICE Raids: Tenant Unions in Solidarity (KC Tenants, Al-Hadaf KC, AIRR KC)
  • Housing Our People: Long-term Solidarity Housing for Union Organizers (Bozeman Tenants United)

A solidarity revolution beyond representing tenants

This movement is only just beginning and it is already showing promise in doing much more than liberating us from our landlords. Tenant unions like KC Tenants are partnering with other organizations and movements like the Advocates for Immigrant Rights and Reconciliation⇲ (AIRR) to train residents on how to organize block watches to counter ICE raids. Because of the partnership, many members from the broad base of the tenant union are now plugged into AIRR’s rapid response network.

Political educations in partnership with organizations like Al-Hadaf KC⇲ (meaning “The Purpose” in Arabic) explain how our current circumstances and history in occupied Turtle Island have a lot in common with the circumstances and history of our siblings in occupied Palestine. From this broad base of solidarity KC Tenants built its ceasefire team to join in solidarity with occupied Palestine. For weeks in a row, members of the ceasefire team hounded elected representatives in this colonial occupation’s government to do something about the situation in Gaza. In the last KC Tenants base meeting they unanimously passed a motion to follow BDS⇲’s (short for Boycott, Divest, and Sanction) boycott⇲ as a union.

Conclusion

If anything is clear about the times we are living in, it’s that things cannot continue as they have been going. I believe that is in our best interest as trans folks to join in this mass movement. Together in solidarity with our neighbors we can accomplish great things. It might just save our lives one day.

Remember:
No one is free until we are all free!