at LEAST the bare minimum as capitalism doesn't afford the bare minimum of housing, food, a job, to people when it has the resources

what the f*** is that site somebody get that s*** shut down

In an ideal world everyone would have a roof over their head and access to food/water and clothing.. but we live in a far from ideal world and its easier said than done tbh

Hate the game not the player

PAY UP

RENT IS DUE

Never gets old lmao

The Tenants Who Evicted Their Landlord

nytimes.com/2020/10/13/magazine/rental-housing-crisis-minneapolis.html

@Synopsis

“We don’t know exactly how long any of us have,” Jackson said. “So, what are you guys going to do to step up to help us?” She looked at the council, waiting. “You guys get to go home tonight, sleep in the comfort of your beds,” she said. “We have to wonder about this every single night.”
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wdy make of this

The foreclosure crisis of the late aughts displaced millions of families, renters included. In California, for example, an estimated 38 percent of all foreclosures in 2010 were rental properties. In the lead-up to the housing crash, predatory lenders targeted Black and Latino communities, pressuring residents to refinance under riskier conditions. By 2006, more than half (53 percent) of all home mortgages purchased by Black borrowers were subprime, compared with 26 percent of mortgages purchased by white borrowers. “It was like a tsunami,” says Andres Del Castillo, who was an organizer for City Life in East Boston when I spoke to him. “The recession was the wealth in our communities being pulled out and put into this tidal wave that crashed down and rearranged the landscape. All that wealth was poured back to investors to buy up our neighborhoods.”

too long for me to care about reading atm

“I see people beginning to enunciate what a different world can be in this crisis,” says Davin Cárdenas, a field organizer for the Right to the City Alliance, a national organization focused on tenant rights. “Many people are rejecting the idea of normalcy. Normal was the problem in the first place.”

Yeah the article is long as s*** but what I'm gathering is that they're aiming for more collective ownership of this property

The tenants were shocked. A lawsuit that began with a humble Emergency Tenant Remedies Action for basic repairs, filed by a pair of fledgling organizers, had ended in a huge payout. More than $13 million would be distributed to more than 4,400 tenants who had lived in the affected buildings since 2012. The rest would cover legal and administrative fees.

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A few months later, the tenants received word that the Land Bank was willing to purchase the Five for $4.85 million and had agreed to sell the buildings back to the tenants at no interest. The city of Minneapolis estimated the market value of the five apartment buildings to be $4.57 million that year.

In August of last year, IX staged a protest at the headquarters of the Minnesota Multi Housing Association, an organization representing rental property owners and developers. Tenants hung a giant banner that read “People Not Profits” and chanted, “Down with the landlords!” Later that month, tenants and landlords packed City Hall during deliberations about a proposed local ordinance that would cap security deposits and restrict tenant-screening criteria. Some landlords who testified were booed. “Imagine you invest your time and energy and your heart into this, and then that’s the response,” says Joe Abraham, one of the landlords who testified. Abraham is the principal of Pergola Management, which owns 750 units in the Twin Cities. “It’s like a punch in the face.”

when you realize youre a massive piece of s*** lol

I def think this may influence how other tenant organizations move forward post-pandemic (although "post-pandemic'... yikes this s*** feels like forever)

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Big structural change begins with small-scale models and grass-roots pressure from below. In past decades, tenant movements didn’t just stave off one eviction or lower rent in one apartment building. They won real concessions from the government, from rent control to investments in public housing, improving the lives of families far removed from the front lines of the action.

Tenants dispersed among the confused, overwhelmingly white churchgoers, passing out paper flowers, photos of tenants and notes that read: “Steve and Jennifer Frenz, who go to church here with you, are trying to evict 40 families of color. Please join us today to pray for a solution that doesn’t break up our community and our families.” Some parishioners welcomed the tenants. Others handed the flowers back and called them names. The Frenz family was at a family reunion and not in attendance that day.

🙄

classic comedy thread

Saw a homeless pregnant woman begging for money on the street with her child today as I left work. F*** you if you defend this system