[PEN-L:4740] Tenants Rights Movement History (fwd)

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Subject:      Tenants Rights Movement History (fwd)

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Subject: Tenants Rights Movement History (fwd)

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From: "Ed Agro" <eagro@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: Tenants Rights Movement History
Date: 17 Jun 1996 23:19:03 GMT

The Shattering of the Massachusetts Tenant Rights Movement
by Lester Lee (*)

1994 is a significant year in the history of the long and
difficult struggle for tenant rights in Massachusetts. That year,
tenants suffered a shattering blow from which they have yet to
recover: rent control was abolished in a statewide referendum.

As an urban housing policy, rent control was like a Maginot Line
in the defense of tenant rights. It guaranteed tenants fair rents
in a highly speculative housing market. It provided a mechanism
for reasonable arbitration of disputes with landlords. It
prevented untrammeled condominium conversions. It created a level
playing field for the interplay of tenant-landlord relations.
And, regrettably, it also gave tenants a false sense of security
and confidence.

While rent control was popular among tenants, the real estate
industry was implacably hostile to it. Ever since its inception,
landlords maintained that it interfered with their property
rights and their right to earn a profit in the housing market.
They lobbied unsuccessfully for the repeal of local ordinances.
They financed campaigns and candidates to oppose rent control. On
more than one occasion they resorted to questionable and
extra-legal stratagems to obstruct the administration of rent
control policies in Boston, Brookline, and Cambridge, the three
cities in the state with rent control ordinances, such as renting
apartments with additional fees and padded costs.

Finding these frontal assaults on rent control thwarted, the real
estate industry struck upon a novel stratagem. It would bypass
local politics and attack rent control at the state level though
a challenge to the Home Rule provision of the Massachusetts state
constitution.

Rent control was a local option. Each town and city in the
Commonwealth had the right to adopt it if local circumstances
warranted such a measure to protect its affordable housing stock.
This was known as Home Rule or Local Democracy as practiced in
Massachusetts.

But the real estate industry's legal advisors argued before the
state Supreme Judicial Court that Home Rule was not a
constitutional right but a grant to the towns and cities from the
state. If a community abused the privilege, then the state and
its voters not only had the power but an obligation to revoke it
though a state referendum. According to this line of reasoning,
landlords maintained, the communities of Boston, Brookline, and
Cambridge, where 40% of the state's tenants lived, had taken
unfair advantage of Home Rule. Rent control in these localities
frustrated the landlords' opportunities to profit from a tight
and lucrative housing market.

The court ruled in favor of the real estate industry, setting the
stage for an unprecedented electoral contest. The rule provided
the breach the landlords had been seeking.
With fierce intensity, the real estate industry invested and
spent $1.5 million in its campaign to abolish rent control. It
established a campaign headquarters along Rt. 128 in the
conservative, wealthy suburbs west of Boston. It financed an
out-of-state firm to collect signatures to place Question 9 on
the ballot, paying signature gatherers a dollar for each
signature. It commissioned right-wing academicians to produce
studies to discredit the efficacy of rent control. It brought in
professional political consultants to manage the campaign.
Moreover, it contracted expensive media consultants to recast its
image.

No longer the real estate industry but now a coalition of
"aggrieved" and "oppressed" small property homeowners, the
anti-rent control campaign borrowed a page from former President
Reagan's anti-government rhetoric. Campaign literature featured
the slogan "Get Government Out" slashed across a single-family
house. It also carried woe-begone stories about how hard-working
families had been brought to the brink of financial ruin because
of rent control. And it singled out Cambridge as particularly
malevolent in the administration of rent control.

Conservative suburbs and rural communities had always looked upon
Cambridge as a "strange" place. Media pundits derisively referred
to it as "The People's Republic," a counter-cultural enclave
where everything and anything was allowed to happen as long as it
was perceived as being leftist and hostile to American middle
class values. It was not uncommon for suburbanites to visit
Harvard Square just to observe the "peculiar goings-on" at the
center of town.

Now, in the heat of an electoral campaign, that singularity
became a liability. Through a campaign of innuendo and
distortion, the real estate industry and its apologists depicted
Cambridge as a city out of control, like an "infection that may
spread." For evidence of this threat, the landlords' media
strategists suggested, one only had to look at its mayor. He was
black. He was gay. He was Harvard-educated. He was a lawyer. He
was a liberal. And he lived in a $400-a-month rent-controlled
apartment. Cambridge was not only abusing Home Rule; it was also
morally bankrupt.

These unrelenting attacks left the tenant rights movement stunned
and reeling. In the more than two decades of rent control,
nothing compared to this. From the tenant perspective, the system
was working; it was protecting the vulnerable. Boston, Brookline,
and Cambridge had repeatedly elected pro-rent control officials.
But now, the once-popular measure was the object of odious venom.
A July 1994 poll indicated that rent control would be defeated by
a 40-point margin. Despair spread among the ranks of tenants.

To overcome this very discouraging situation, tenant activists
from the rent-controlled communities decided to wage a grassroots
campaign. They held rallies and demonstrations. An alert went out
to all tenant groups in the state. These were important and
critical steps in mobilizing the tenant base. It was also
determined that, regardless of what happened statewide, Boston,
Brookline, and Cambridge had to turn out a substantial pro-rent
control vote. This would re-affirm those communities' commitment
to maintaining affordable housing stock, to protecting tenant
rights, and to preserving Home Rule.

Second, tenant activists began fanning out across the state with
two goals. One was to forge alliances with other progressive
groups. Out of this effort came an historic alliance between the
labor and tenant rights movement. The other goal was to enlist
the support of those communities which also faced possible
threats to their Home Rule rights and regulatory policies. Out of
this effort came the sympathetic support from small, rural
western communities concerned about corporate intrusion.

The third strategy was to appeal to the conscience of the
Massachusetts voter. Pointing out that Questions 9 was an
irresponsible power grab by greedy landlords, tenant activists
stressed the irreparable harm that would result from abolition.
They pointed out that the elderly, living on fixed incomes,
occupying the majority of rent-controlled apartments, would be
hard hit.

By the end of October the tenant strategies seemed to be working.
Polling data indicated that the election was too close to call.
What was a near rout a few months ago was now rebounding. A
cautious optimism replaced the despair. Tenants were openly
talking about the possibility that a familiar Biblical story
might repeat itself in their lifetime: David might once again
defeat Goliath.

But for all their heroic efforts, the tenant rights movement was
not able to close one significant gap. The real estate industry
was outspending it ten to one. Tenants were only able to raise
slightly more than $100,000 to save rent control. The grassroots
campaign could not overcome the landlords' media advantage. Rent
control received solid support from Boston, Brookline, and
Cambridge. Nonetheless, the real estate industry eked out a
razor-thin victory of 54,000 votes out of two million ballots
cast. Goliath mugged David.

Landlords could hardly contain their excitement. They drove
caravans through tenant communities boasting of their success and
promising to turn the tables on the tenants. Their spin doctors
proclaimed a questionable mandate not only to end rent control
but to re-examine all of the laws affecting tenant-landlord
relations. Working with their friends in the Governor's office
and in the state legislature, real estate lobbyists pushed
through legislation to consolidate the landlords' new hegemony.

Tenants were angry and apprehensive. Angry because, collectively,
corporate America had singled them out for economic exploitation.
Rents were certainly going to rise. Apprehensive because,
individually, their homes and neighborhoods were at stake.
Lifelong community ties surely were going to come unraveled.

Few observers could recall a time when landlord-tenant relations
were so tense. Public meetings turned into shouting matches. The
grounds of the Cambridge City Hall were the scene of a fist fight
between tenants and landlords. Unsubstantiated rumors of
arson-related fires spread through the city. For a moment, it
seemed as though open class warfare was going to break out.

Like the aftershocks of an earthquake, the tenant rights movement
suffered another tremor when the political leadership of
Cambridge capitulated to the real estate interests. Landlords
demanded and got unconditional surrender. The 6-3 pro-rent
control majority on the city council dissolved and that body's
will to fight and to defend its citizens collapsed.

For tenants, the painful dawn of a new reality became all too
apparent at a tense meeting. A city councilor, who had been
elected the previous year with strong tenant support, urged
tenants to accept their defeat. He exclaimed, "You lost!" But,
from the back of the room, the barely audible voice of a woman in
her 80s serenely retorted, "We have been through this before."

1994 ended with the tenant rights movement shattered into several
factions, each pursuing new efforts to improve the lives of
tenants. Two perspectives have come to dominate the current
thinking among activists.

In arguments eerily reminiscent of the Washington-DuBois
controversy over the future of African-Americans' rights a
century ago, the tenant rights movement has an accommodationist
wing and a protest wing. The accommodationist, or Washington,
wing emphasizes tenant self-help through support of efforts and
programs to assist tenants to become homeowners. This perspective
enjoys the backing of the real estate industry and philanthropic
agencies. As noble as this goal is, critics note, it fails to
address the harsh reality that most urban tenants will remain
urban tenants and that home ownership opportunities exist for
only a privileged few.

In contrast, the protest, or DuBois, wing asserts that any effort
to improve tenants' lives is doomed to failure as long as their
basic rights in democracy are compromised in a speculative
housing market. Since the abolition of rent control, they point
out, rents have risen anywhere between 50-200%. Arbitrary
evictions have increased; building and housing inspections have
declined; condominiums have replaced tenements. Tenants are
treated as though they are second class citizens with property
having more rights in a democracy than they do.

It remains to be seen which perspective will succeed in reviving
the tenant rights movement.

-------------------
* Lester Lee, chair of the Tenant Rights Study Group
(617/492-1894) teaches history at Wheelock College.

This article from New England *Peacework* #264, June 96. (AFSC,
2161 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge MA; Pat Farren & Patricia
Watson, editors, 617/661-6130 or fax:1-617-354-2832