About Us

• We are building an autonomous, mass network of organized tenants whose horizon is the abolition of evictions, rent and private property. To operate autonomously, we separate ourselves from the nonprofit industrial complex and government influence. We are not interested in grants and/or charity from wealthy donors and politicians nor are we interested in the professionalization and reform those funds bring. In order to sustain ourselves, develop new leadership and utilize anti-capitalist tactics, we seek to be solely funded by our members and comrades. We understand that the environments we organize in are constantly changing, thus we may enter into coalition with these groups on the condition that our tactics for maintaining tenant-centered autonomy are aligned. By holding our right to critique and have independent funding, we can work towards liberation and win victories along the way without getting subsumed by reformist non-profits or isolating the tenant movement. 

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• We aim to build class consciousness and militant tenant power through transformative, intentional relationships and choosing, at all possibilities, mass organization and base-building over mass mobilization. Mass mobilization prioritizes the greatest number of people (i.e. mass mobilization for demonstrations and protests), at the expense of aligned values, individual needs and perspectives, and intentional relationship building. Mass mobilization seeks unity at all costs. Conversely, the focal point of mass organization is relationship building, principled struggle, interdependence, and collective liberation.

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• We recognize that the struggles to abolish the police and prisons are connected to the abolition of private property, rent and evictions. An example of where they coincide is at the scene of eviction, where landlords work with the courts to bring cops and remove tenants from their homes. Were there no police, no courts, were communities equipped and empowered to take care of their own safety, then there would be no risk to not paying rent. Without police, no one would pay rent and thus all landlords’ claims on lands would be meaningless. Police and rent abolition are further aligned beyond the scene of eviction in the criminalization of tenants on a race and class basis, often used as a pretext for eviction, initiated by both landlords and by cops. Rent and the police are two core arms for white supremacist ruling class exploitation, subjection and domination of Black and Indigenous people, People of Color and the proletariat as a whole. As such, we will not work with law enforcement under any circumstances.

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• We define a tenant as anyone who is not in control of their or anyone else’s housing - including unhoused neighbors, neighbors on leases and subleases, incarcerated people and our neighbors who pay rent to banks in the form of a mortgage. We aim to unite these varied experiences while centering the most oppressed: poor and unhoused tenants.

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• We acknowledge that language deeply impacts us on a multitude of levels. Language is what’s used in our innermost thoughts and dreams, what we display in every public context, it’s how we share stories, how we describe our families, friends, ourselves and our upbringing. Every time we speak or sign in our own accents, dialects and rhythms, we identify ourselves and bring social history and personal experiences with us. When we come together to dialogue, it’s essential we have the opportunity to express ourselves fully in languages that convey the depth and nuance of our hopes, ideas, frustrations, and questions. We believe everyone has the right to understand and be understood in the language in which they are most comfortable. It is all of our responsibility to help build a better world with multilingual communities and work towards language justice. Likewise, we strive to make our organizing spaces accessible to those whose needs are often neglected, dismissed, or considered too costly elsewhere, like disabled people and parents.

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• We, as tenants living in the core of a settler-colonial, imperialist, racist and fascist empire, recognize our responsibility to make necessary connections, learn from and work in solidarity with land defenders, tenants movements, and others fighting against dispossession from land and labor across the world. This involves critical engagement, principled struggle, and continued evaluation of our work. We seek to build solidarity with tenants globally, without erasing the lived experiences of our comrades.

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• We seek to build structures that promote dialogue and debate in an effort towards building consensus and we will act in such a way that is conducive towards those efforts. Because we envision housing to be socially controlled through democratic decision-making rather than privately controlled for the purpose of profit, so too shall our organization be run in a manner that respects democracy and democratic decision-making. We will not be beholden to traditional parliamentary procedures and will seek democratic consensus wherever possible.