As the US homelessness crisis—and response to it—plumbs new dystopian depths driven by the bipartisan economic establishment, some Americans are waking up to the near certain possibility that there will not be an electoral solution. And they’re starting to take matters into their own hands.
Due to the fact that the loss of one’s housing is now the starting point of the “eviction to prison pipeline” these efforts largely revolve around ensuring people are able to remain in their homes, keeping rents low, and improving living conditions.
As of now, these tenant unionization efforts look like one of the few effective actions to keep the number of people living on streets from continuing to explode. That’s because for all the initiatives intended to house the homeless—from the effective (housing first programs) to the ineffective (criminalization and imprisonment)—the biggest barrier in reducing the homeless population is that for every one person that goes off the streets two or more take their place.
So let’s look at some collective efforts from across the country that are trying to turn off the eviction-to-prison pipeline. While these actions are in their infant stages, there are reminders from the past that such actions can be effective:
In 1920, the state of New York enacted the first rent control laws in the nation. Leading up to these laws were three years of tenant agitation and activism during a housing crisis of unprecedented proportions.
And the recent tenant activism is already finding successes.
National Level Organization
In 2024, tenant unions from across the country came together to form the Tenant Union Federation (TUF). Here’s how it describes itself:
A union of unions organizing tenants to wield power at a massive scale, to bargain for tenant protections, to disrupt the flow of capital to those who commodify our homes, to secure alternatives to the current housing market, to guarantee housing as a public good, and to establish tenants as a political and economic class that cannot be ignored.
Tenant organizers wanted the Biden administration to enact federal tenant protections through the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Unsurprisingly, Democrats didn’t deliver, and now the Trump accelerationists are pushing further deregulation, as well as ending federal support for disabled Americans facing homelessness and looking to strip some four million people of federal housing assistance.
And so tenants are taking matters into their own hands.
More than 1,000 individuals living in Capital Realty Group-owned properties across the country are organizing a union campaign to push for collective bargaining rights. The TUF campaign to negotiate across the landlord’s entire portfolio of nearly 22,000 units is a first-of-its-kind national effort to counter the power of mega landlords. .
Capital Realty, based in New York, is one of the country’s largest private equity owners of low-income housing and is considered one of the worst offenders when it comes to mistreatment and predatory tactics.
Tenants have already formed majority unions at properties in Detroit, Kansas City, Louisville, and New Haven. Their demands include standard maintenance schedules, negotiated safety standards (in one In one Kansas City complex, for example, fire extinguishers were allegedly zip-tied shut), repairs, non-retaliation pledges, and recognition of newly formed unions.
Here’s CRE Daily on the wider implications of the unionization drive:
The effort reflects an evolution in tenant organizing as landlords grow larger and consolidate portfolios. Legal scholars note this cross-portfolio strategy is a response to the increased financialization of rental housing. The Tenant Union Federation’s organizing marks a shift from building-by-building efforts to a more systemic approach. By targeting one of the top affordable housing owners, tenants hope to set a national precedent.
So that’s the big national fight at the moment. At the local level, there are ongoing fights across the country with some leading to major victories.
Should TUF succeed in organizing enough tenants, they have a recent blueprint for gaining collectively-bargained leases from corporate landlords. That’s because a recent 248-day rent strike in Kansas City led to major concessions from a slumlord operating with a Fannie Mae-backed loan.
Here we’ll briefly cover a few tenant unions—which came together to form the TUF—noting their successes and current actions. While some of their wins might seem modest, let’s also note that the very fact tenants are recognizing their organizing power is a major victory in and of itself.
KC Tenants
Successes
Here’s the Kansas City Defender on the wins achieved by the recently-concluded eight-month rent strike organized by KC Tenants at two apartment towers there, which could provide a template for the TUF:
According to the final agreement delivered to The Defender, the landlord must:
Freeze rent hikes. All current tenants get a one-year renewal at their present rate and the option for a second year capped at a maximum 5 % increase.
End retaliation. “No retaliation, including evictions or non-renewals, for organizing.”
Slash late-fee rackets. Late fees limited to a flat $50 with a three-week grace period.
Guarantee livable rents. Post-strike lease caps: Studios $730, one-beds $855, two-beds $965.
Fix what they broke. Comprehensive pest extermination and permanent HVAC repairs by November 2025.
Re-open basics. Parking garage and community room restored by year’s end.“We refused to pay for our own misery. We won’t pay one dime in back-rent, and we won’t pay with our lives ever again,” tenant-leader Anna Heetmann told The Defender in the press release announcing the deal.
According to KC Tenants, here’s what else they have recently achieved:
…passed a Tenants Bill of Rights, secured free attorneys for every tenant in eviction court, won a $50 million bond for housing at or below 30% Area Medium Income, banned source of income discrimination, captured and redistributed tens of millions from gentrifying developers, stopped thousands of evictions through direct action, and won building-level improvements and rent protections with tenants. KC Tenants recently defeated a regressive $2 billion sales tax that would have funded a downtown stadium. The sibling organization to KC Tenants, KC Tenants Power, elected four members of City Council in 2023, including one union member.
On October 1, more than 50 tenants at Bowen Tower owned by the California-based Alta/CGHS Real Estate Investments went on rent strike. Together they represent 64% of the occupied units at the building just outside KC, and they’re demanding negotiations on building-wide improvements, regular maintenance and caps on rent increases.
Thus far, Alta/CGHS is refusing to negotiate and is slapping tenants with rent late fees.
Connecticut Tenant Union (CTU)
In August a group of seniors at a New Haven complex formed a union, becoming the 19th CTU chapter since its 2023 founding. Since that time, CTU has secured a collectively bargained lease against a mega-landlord with housing improvements and lower rent levels, as well as a municipal ordinance that recognizes tenants and their right to organize.
Together with tenant unions in Detroit—and as part of the run up to planned nationwide efforts— CTU is pressuring Capital Realty Group to negotiate a collective bargaining agreement. The cooperation with Detroit is another example of the tenant unions engaging in collective bargaining across state lines.
Louisville Tenant Union (LTU)
The LTU is now expanding into more Kentucky communities, branching out into rural areas across the state that often have fewer protections for renters, and it recently got a big win in that effort over the summer when a judge sided with the union against an out-of-state landlord. From WDRB:
Jefferson Circuit Court Judge Julie Kaelin issued the [statewide restraining] order against New Jersey company, OSPM, that manages multiple properties in Kentucky.
It’s part of a lawsuit filed by a Regency Park Apartments tenant who said she was retaliated against after she started organizing with the Louisville Tenants Union.
The resident said she received threats of eviction after speaking with her neighbors about organizing.
Kaelin’s order means under Kentucky’s anti-retaliation law, if the landlord decreases services, files evictions or any other retaliatory measures it will be held in contempt for doing so.
Unsurprisingly the landlords in Kentucky and elsewhere are refusing to recognize the unions, but here’s Louisville Public Media with more on the LTU’s growing power in a story about renters burning lease violations:
Legal Aid Society lawyer Andrew Chandler says the judge’s temporary restraining order recognizes the effect of retaliation on a statewide network — landlord attacks on unionizing power in one community has ripple effects on tenants renting from the same property owner in other communities. And when landlords refuse to recognize a union at one of their buildings, Chandler said connecting the dots across their properties can force landlords to listen to tenant demands.
“If they’re collectively organizing against one particular landlord at multiple properties, their leverage is greater,” Chandler said. “If they take collective action, if they go on rent strike, if they go to the media, it has an amplified effect because it’s all against the same landlord at these same properties.”
The Lexington law firm representing the property management company did not respond to requests for comment, but in court filings lawyers wrote that they do not recognize the tenant unions and denied any retaliatory behavior.
The story also notes how the unionization efforts have been spurred by a lack of action from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which ignored tenants complaints.
While the LTU has the wind at its back right now in its organization drive, it’s got a lot more statewide work to do to counter the big money influence in Frankfort (the state capital). The state assembly last year passed a law making it easier for landlords to discriminate against tenants that are using government vouchers to pay for rent. And this year, lawmakers pressured Louisville into weakening its lead hazard rental registry.
In addition to KC Tenants and the Louisville and Connecticut Tenants Unions, the Bozeman Tenants Union and Not Me We on the Southside of Chicago were the founding chapters of TUF. In Bozeman, the union helped get a member elected as mayor and banned short term rentals, and Not Me We has led the process to negotiate a community benefits agreement related to the Galactic empire monstrosity Obama center.
Say what you will about the Obama Center (Templum Obamaeanum), only a few haters would deny that it is a splendid example of the late Harkonnen carceral style. pic.twitter.com/MUwibSDpqZ
— Adrian (@blagojevism) October 12, 2025
A tenant strike in Los Angeles forced the giant real estate investment trust Equity Residential to refund bogus fees, and the tenants are now after more. Cincinnati senior tenants are organizing to fight displacement. Mobile home residents in Idaho are starting a renters union. And the list goes on.
The TUF is planning on expanding soon, which brings the potential for more organizing power and also pitfalls.
So far, the unions’ successes might seem small—especially in the face of the mega deregulated casino security state being built by the Silicon Valley accelerationists— but they can seem major for tenants looking to avoid homelessness or simply stay cool in the summer’s sweltering heat.
Other strategies are also being tried,, such as what happened in Maine recently when residents of Linnhaven Mobile Home Center, a community of nearly 300 occupied homes in Brunswick, banded together to buy their trailer park to prevent it from falling into the hands of private equity.
And in Minneapolis, Inquilinxs Unidxs Por Justicia (United Renters For Justice) are buying back housing properties to form the Sky Without Limits cooperative.
Sky Without Limits seems an appropriate name. Because while these organizing fights might be in their infant stages, they offer a glimmer of hope, with one of their biggest advantages being that they are free from the burdensome rules and baggage of labor unions. As Greg Baltz, an Assistant Professor of Law at Rutgers Law School where he co-directs the Housing Justice and Tenant Solidarity Clinic, writes:
Tenant unions organize in the shadow of the law. I say, “in the shadow of the law,” because unlike for labor unions, there is no extensive federal, state, or local legislative scheme that defines the rights, responsibilities, structure, or acceptable strategies tenant unions can employ. Not even the legal definition of a tenant union is fixed…Even where tenants have access to theoretically strong laws, the laws themselves cannot supplant the work of organizing to build a powerful movement. Good laws are no replacement for leadership development, political education, and deep organizing. It is ultimately up to tenants to enforce their own rights, whether they exist on the books or not.
