Rent Strike
To declare December a rent-free month. Encourage tenants to abstain from paying landlords. All rent due during December shall not be paid. We will support all tenants who face problems due to their solidarity with this action.
8369
[TABLED by request of proposer] Rent Strike. [#3 for 12-28 GA]
Categories: GA Proposals
No. Go back to the drawing board this is a bad idea.
Since it will probably be a week or more before the minutes from GA are posted and I was unable to participate in the 12/14 GA, I don’t know if this pointless and thoughtless idea was tabled or passed. Given the low turnout at GA lately I fear the homeless contingent (bless them) within GA might be of adequate proportion to enable this proposal to pass – without risking anything by doing so. As the first post above says so eloquently – get your heads out of your asses. You are no longer suggesting protests with purpose. Here you are proposing to create even more homelessness when tenants are evicted for failure to pay rent, while also impacting an untold number of middle-class people who happen to supplement their incomes, children’s tuition, retirement, etc., by purchasing (via a mortgage that may very well be under water) a home to rent out. This is an irresponsible proposal and adds even more weight to the overall skepticism of Occupy Oakland and criticism that it supports an agenda of lawlessness and freeloading. By “support” do you mean OO will pay the late fees for anyone who adheres to this? Or do you mean you will simply squat on another home to give those evicted a place to sleep – if they can sleep while worried the cops will come arrest them at any moment? If it passed it is unlikely anyone will actually have the conviction to risk eviction, so this proposal is a waste of everyone’s time and energy.
I like how you think: “However we need to pull our collective head out of our collective ass and think about the consequences of proposals.” … “Otherwise this is a tactic without a strategy.”
It’s bold and asks for a fight, but we should be asking for fights we can win and avoiding those we can’t win until we have enough wider support to reevaluate them.
It’s a great idea, in theory, but, as you say, not one to be taken lightly. Also, we should avoid the “two-front war”, at least for now. We have enough attention with the Foreclosure battle and it’s being taken up in multiple cities. We should let that play awhile longer.
Please forgive the many mistakes in my post. I did it on my smart phone and editing is less than ideal on a smart phone. Also this forum won’t let posters who didn’t publish the original post edit their own posts so I can’t fix the mistakes.
First, this was proposed at the beginning of December. You are aware that almost all rents are due on the first of the month, right? More notice would be needed for this to become a reality.
However, I don’t know if this is even a good idea.
OK, I’m wondering who the actual target is and whether or not the committee has considered the implications and complications for the renters to participate.
I am a renter in Oakland. My building is owned by a family who had owned it, two other buildings on the same lot and another building somewhere close by here in Funk Town. My building is getting constant improvements. We have management who lives here even though the family who owns doesn’t. Management is very responsive to us. We even get a grace period until the 5th of the month to pay our rent without a late fee or any other consequence. Rents here are far cheaper than in most of the Bay Area. It is, after all, Funk Town, East Lake, just inside East Oakland.
I’ve met the family member who is in charge of operations. Yes, by most people’s standards, they are “rich.” And they aren’t filthy stinkin’ rich though. They have many expenses to do the great amount of upkeep they choose to do on our buildings. They put our rent back into our buildings through ongoing maintenance, on site management, and a guy who keeps the common areas clean who is here 5 days per week doing just that. When I moved in, they were seismically retrofitting the building I’ve now lived in for over nine years.
By the way, my rent hasn’t been raised one penny in over nine years.
I’m not sure what I and the community would gain by withholding rent from my landlord. They continue to reinvest in their properties in Oakland. They provide we tenants, residents of Oakland, with safe, clean, and well-maintained housing for those lower than average rents that never go up once you move in.
I’m sure they aren’t angels. We’ve had our differences. I’ve been a renter for 18 years in 4 cities in different parts of the country and 5 different apartments. This current landlord of mine is better than average.
I know there are slum lords. Some of my friends live in buildings that are owned by slum lords. These slum lords would be good targets of direct action.
In order for a direct action to work, a list of specific demands for a specific property would have to by drawn up.and delivered to the slum lord. Then every tenant on the property would have to participate. If only a few participate it’s ready for the landlord to evict “a few troublemakers.” Then there would have to be an around the clock demonstration in front of the property to warn perspective tenants not to sign a lease with that particular landlord giving them specific information about why and a copy of the demands being made. The demonstration would have to be on public property and it would have to not disturb other residents in the neighborhood so that the police won’t have a reason to bust the demonstration. Talking to neighbors before setting up the demonstration and addressing any of their concerns would be vital here.
Then it would be even more effective to infiltrate Oakland’s rent board at at the same time the direct action(s) are taking place. In this way when the remarks of the property(ies) and the slum lords would come to petition the rent board to possibly seek a conflict resolution there would be actual tenant advocates on the rent board sympathetic to the tenants.
Anything short of these direct actions would render a rent strike ineffective and doomed to fail.
Rent can be defined as theft, based on the concept that land ownership, especially ownership of land you do not occupy, is a legal fiction. However we need to pull our collective head out of our collective ass and think about the consequences of proposals. I have a huge issue with the high value of property that requires many of us to spend more than half of our income just to afford a place to keep out of the elements, and to protect our “stuff”. But if we are going to propose a rent strike it should have a result we are trying to achieve. A purpose to the rent strike that rent strikers can get behind. You simply can not expect renters to risk their safety and security in the middle of winter because the little capitalists that rent to them are greedy lazy jerks. To be sure there are slumlords, and the Oakland rent board to my knowledge is thoroughly in the pocket of the slumlords. There are also individuals that own 2 or 3 properties and do nothing but maintain those properties and charge rent.
There are multi unit properties owned by banks and private corporations. These would be good targets for informational picketing or perhaps better, some discreet informational dissemination around the topic of a rent strike.
An ideal scenario (IMHO) would be a rent strike in support of a tenant who is fighting eviction from a building owned by er..uh…Wells Fargo or any other bank that has branches in many states and took TARP money.
Otherwise this is a tactic without a strategy.
Speaking as someone who has been homeless for years at a time, and who has also gone through some rent strikes of my own, this is not an issue to take lightly.
i think this is a good tactic, but you need to have a purpose for doing it, and a target who would be affected by the direct action.
if even a good fifty people go on a rent strike as a result of this proposal being passed, it won’t make a difference if people randomly do it. this would only make sense in a specific building with a specific target…like, if every apartment dweller in a complex refused to pay rent because the apartment had no heating. the target (property management) would have to step in and address the issue. no one could be punished, because everyone wouldn’t get evicted.
Define “support”!
Well said Faville, a rent strike like described above is a terrible idea. How would this help anyone. Why would we want to hurt people like Faville’s father. I have had some really good landlords that were fair and decent. If Facilitatio feels the need to help people that rent houses or apartments maybe he can do some fund raising and help pay the rent of some families truly in need. I support the Occupy movement, but not if they start doing crazy stuff like described above. Oh and when Facilitatio says “We will support all tenants who face problems due to their solidarity with this action.” What are we going to do when they have no place to live ?
That’s very irresponsible. It puts people who follow your advice in the position to be evicted. It hurts landlords who have done nothing more than to own property and we couldn’t possibly help all of the people that would be negatively affected by this.
I agree with the comment above!
Why would we want to encourage people to stop paying rent? It doesn’t make sense. Many landlords are in the 99% too. For example, my father owns a small apartment building (which he still owes the bank for). He also founded and runs a nonprofit environmental restoration team and has devoted his life to this (unpaid) work. He lives very frugally and depends on his rental income to scrape by. Think it’s a good idea to have his tenants stiff him for the rent? This idea is not very well thought out and could have some very negative consequences. It would be better to encourage people to stop paying their mortgages. It’s the banks we’re supposed to be against, remember? Not everyone who owns property is rich.