A historic set of strikes at workplace titans like Target, Amazon, and Instacart coincided on May 1, International Workers’ Day, with a rent strike by thousands of tenants across the United States.
About 50 percent of renters in the United States say they are now unable to pay their rent in full.
With unemployment claims surpassing thirty million—3.8 million people filed just last week—and businesses shuttering across the country, people are scraping together whatever they can to pay the bills. Conservative estimates show about half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, and a widely reported study by the Federal Reserve has found that approximately 40 percent of U.S. adults could not afford an emergency costing more than $400.
For some, funds from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act will offset expenses in the short term. For many—undocumented workers and their families, and the millions who qualified for relief but have not yet received stimulus money—federal aid will not help with rent and mortgage payments this month. And as the median monthly rent in America is slightly more than $1,600, a $1,200 check is simply not enough.
All told, about 50 percent of renters in the United States say they are now unable to pay their rent in full. Though Congress enacted an eviction moratorium on rentals supported by government-backed loans, the protections for other properties vary widely by state. And even in states with eviction freezes in place, these new rules are temporary and do not account for the missed payments that will balloon after the COVID-19 closures have ended.
In response, tenants are calling for a full cancellation of rent and utilities payments and organizing their buildings to levy demands on landlords.
Some renters are also independently withholding rent in solidarity with those who cannot afford it. Spreading the hashtag #RentStrike2020 and the slogan “Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay,” the loosely affiliated tenants and tenant organizations have attempted to politicize the act of not paying rent—to make a strike out of a struggle.
Josh Hawley, a tenant organizer in Ottawa, Canada, who appeared this week in an international panel on rent striking, says the logic of a rent strike lies in the need for “the collective power of tenants fighting against landlords, as opposed to relying on politicians and social service agencies to act in our interests.”
Hawley, who is organizing with Keep the Rent Ottawa, encouraged tenants watching the panel to communicate with other renters in their building to raise demands against their landlords.
By striking together, tenants can increase their leverage in negotiating with their landlords.
In cities like New York, Los Angeles, and Oakland, California, where tenant organizing has deep roots, the organizational infrastructure exists for tenants to network and act collectively toward a strike. By striking together, tenants can increase their leverage in negotiating with their landlords.
Reporting from The Intercept has documented efforts by New York City tenants and tenant organizers to coordinate building-wide strikes. In the Borough of Queens, for example, more than 400 families planned to withhold rent across apartment buildings on May 1.
And as COVID-19 spreads, the call for solidarity with those who cannot pay has resonated strongly; petitions calling for a rent strike had garnered 3 million signatures by the end of last month.
In places where the organizational capacity for tenant mobilization was not in place before the pandemic, renters have nonetheless coalesced around the goal of a rent strike.
In Wisconsin, for example, individual tenants and a loose coalition of socialist organizers have converged on a Facebook page to share information and encourage renters to organize their buildings.
Luke Eckenrod, who has been agitating for a Wisconsin-wide rent strike with Socialist Alternative, says that the moment demands a collective strike.
“There’s a really widespread mood for people to get organized, because in this situation there’s no way of protecting the millions of unemployed people who will not be able to afford rent,” they say, “We’re putting forward the idea that you organize within your buildings and strike rent, which is the most effective way to protect the tenants who are unable to pay rent, who are struggling to buy food already.”
Groups like the one that Eckenrod has worked with have scrambled to provide information about safely withholding rent, while the now-ubiquitous message to “strike rent” on social media has outpaced the call for actually mobilizing between tenants in an apartment building.
Still, says Eckenrod, coordinating efforts to freeze rents under the banner of a nationwide strike can “[connect] this to a broader movement, put pressure on the banks, on landlords, on developers . . . on politicians to pass rent suspension laws or provide relief to working people.”
Already, Representative Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota, has proposed a bill to suspend rent and mortgage payments during the period of the national emergency. With the pandemic spreading and economic recovery nowhere in sight, the call for an end to rent will likely continue to build in the months to come.