Blog & Updates

TENANT HORIZON ISSUE #12

Updates • ★WHAT IS VTU? • Upendo Umoja • Evict ICE! Not Us! • If not us, then who? • Naming the moment • Grant Park • YMCA • Downtown Local • Transitional HousingRead the PDF Printable VersionUpdatesWhat is VTU?Valley Tenants Union is building poor and working-class power, block-by-block, in the so-called Phoenix Metro area. Landlords organize to profit off unlivable conditions, to get away with their abuses, to raise our rents, to displace us from our homes and even the streets, so we organize

TENANT HORIZON ISSUE #11

Updates • ★WHAT IS VTU? • Upendo Umoja • Comites Working Group • Grant Park • Eviction Defense • Downtown Local • Transitional Housing • Ordinance G-7467Read the PDF Printable VersionUpdatesWhat is VTU?Valley Tenants Union is building poor and working-class power, block-by-block, in the so-called Phoenix Metro area. Landlords organize to profit off unlivable conditions, to get away with their abuses, to raise our rents, to displace us from our homes and even the streets, so we organize as tenan

Interview with Steve

I conducted this interview with Steve Boese in June, a short time after I first met him in May at Civic Space Park. Steve has a wealth of tech knowledge and a history of lending these skills to the long work of community organizing. One of the websites he was an architect of in 2006, www.beyondexgay.com, provided a safe online space for survivors of religious abuse and conversion therapy to share experiences and resources. In Phoenix, neighbors look to Steve for accurate and comprehensive inform

TENANT HORIZON ISSUE #10

Hello everybody ☺︎✮☺︎ and welcome to November in a city where landlords run rampant like desert rats and our union is taking pest control into our own hands!!🐁🐁🐁🐁🪤🪤🪤🪤In october we worked on our same 2025 big goal projects like w our locals/TAs in west & downtown phoenix. Even though we’re working on our Soft Power day in and day out, we could def use more support & organizing energy ALL OVER PHX! Read this newsletter today and then commit to knocking on a few doors tomorrow! Day by day….

TENANT HORIZON ISSUE #9

Hello all tenants! Things are finally cooling down outside, but inside our union organizing is heating up and lighting a fire under the seats of landlords and their lackeys!Read on to check in on the temperature of internal organizing at VTU, trust-building and politics in transitional housing, the West Phoenix Upendo Umoja tenants association, the Downtown local and reading group, plus our work on the Eviction Defense and Language Justice committees.In addition, this is the second issue to comb

TENANT HORIZON ISSUE #8

Welcome back to issue 8 of Tenant Horizon! As we wait for summer to give way to autumn, organizing efforts continue in the Valley - read about Washington Street Shelter, the Upendo Umoja tenants association, Downtown Phoenix local’s reading group - and WHAT!? A VTU Phone!?!?Additionally, this is the first issue to combine Spanish and English translations into a single document. A core value of Valley Tenants Union is our commitment to language justice - aiming for true parity of experience for a

TENANT HORIZON ISSUE #7

Tenant Horizon returns with our August issue! Work continues across the valley as tenants organize to secure a dignified living amidst increasingly stratified conditions. This work is taking a variety of forms, among them neighborhood meetings in several languages, reading groups downtown, and door to door organizing from the ground up. This month, the A/C committee reflected on the effectiveness of their program during another summer of heat deaths. Eviction defense continues their work in deve

TENANT HORIZON ISSUE #6

Tenant Horizon is back with our July Issue! In June, we witnessed cities across the nation rise up against the military siege. Fascism is in the streets in full force, and yet the working people are fighting back and defending neighborhoods, blocking deportations, lighting Waymos on fire and facing down la migra in all its new covered and uncovered faces. We are heartened and inspired by the tenants, workers, students and everyday people doing anything and everything they can to protect immigran

TENANT HORIZON ISSUE #5

Tenant Horizon is back with our June issue! Summer is here and the Valley Tenants Union is hard at work - May was a busy month for our two outreach groups at Grant Park and the West Valley. Doors are being knocked on and meetings are being held (one of them in four languages!). The Civic Space reading group transitioned to new study material and the A/C summer program is kicking off to educate and organize around heat protection.In other exciting news, four members returned from the Union de Vec

TENANT HORIZON #4

	We’re back at it again with another issue of Tenant Horizon! We kept busy in April with our A/C Summer Program, Eviction Defense Working Group, and our outreach in different parts of the valley. As the weather heats up, so does the urgency to organize against the dangerous conditions that landlords and the state leave us with.	Since our May general meeting falls on May Day or International Workers’ Day, we included a short description of its significance as well as Langston Hughes’ Chant for Ma

TENANT HORIZON ISSUE #3

	We’re back at it again with another issue of Tenant Horizon! It might be surprising that it’s coming so soon after the last gap in issues took many months. Why? We’re changing our goals with the (now monthly) newsletter. Previously, we mainly featured longform research, interviews, and other articles. Clearly, that takes a long time!	Now, shorter updates will be front and center. With plenty going on across the union, we want to make it easy to tap in. We’ve had issues with information being si

ISSUE #2: TENANT HORIZON

From reading groups to restructuring conversations to countless evening meetings committing to our new year goals, this winter the union has been making reflection a practice!For our winter issue, tenants contributed essays, poems, and collages. We talk real estate narratives, confronting a landlord exploiting grief, luxury apartments now leasing, letting pomegranate trees rot, home surveillance technologies, the violence of an eviction, and reprinted basic rights when faced with ICE or police.I

Crush ICE: Know Your Rights

From the National Day Laborer Organizing Network (NDLON)

Eyes Everywhere, But What Do They See?

From cell phones to doorbells to the checkout line at the grocery store – the future means being watched by digital eyes everywhere we go.

fruit bearer

i pass by this house with two ripe pomegranate trees every day since august.
it’s november now
and i’ve been watching them fall

The Cost of Eviction

“You know what the landlord said? She said, 'Don't forget the key to the apartment because your lease expires on Friday.'"

labor poem

god & payday
loans & luxury
apartments now leasing
the severity of it all
the hunger
again & again
we negotiate the terms
of our despair

Grieving Before an Eviction

If you thought landlords were above evicting people after they’ve died, think again.

The “Housing Supply Crisis”

Of course landlords will serve themselves with claims that deregulation is the best solution to the so-called housing supply crisis.

VTU Newspaper - Issue 1 - Spring - Summer 2024

Something is cooking in the valley of the sun this summer, and it’s not just the pavement. Valley Tenants Union have been hard at work holding know your rights sessions, meeting monthly for popular education, and supporting our neighbors wherever possible. This year an idea was floated for a union newsletter - a platform for us to share updates on our fight to build a world without rent.

Mesa Royale Against Transit Oriented Displacement

In our December Popular Education meeting, we watched a video about El Comité de Defensa del Barrio de Mesa Royale, answering questions about who benefits from eviction, what the opposition strengths and weaknesses are and discussed constraints and possibilities of collective action.With these meetings, it’s important that we come together to collectively learn about the history of the tenant movement, different land struggles and understand the root of our conditions today. “Nobody educates any

Police Protect Property, not Tenants

To view/print the web version, click here 🖨️!To view/print the booklet version, click here 📖!

People's State of the City // Estadado Popular de Ciudad

This was the brochure passed out at April 12, 2023 'People’s State of the City' 
bit.ly/peoples-state