Not everyone on a rent strike is doing so because of a severe drop in income. Mary O’Leary, 32, is still able to do her administrative assistant job from her apartment in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, but she knows “the other shoe hasn’t dropped yet.”
Her employment could still be affected in the months to come. She has a neighbor who worked in food service and another who was a bartender, both of whom have no money coming in to pay rent.
When about half of the tenants in her building let her know they were going on strike, she decided to join them out of a sense of solidarity, and in case, her own economic situation changed. “One of our strike catchphrases is ‘Strike for your neighbors today and yourself tomorrow,’” she said. Currently, two-thirds of the 36 units are on strike. Others who had already paid April’s rent have said they may join in next month.
Their strike comes with demands: The landlord, Pacific Management, must reduce rents by 50% for all units and wipe it out completely for those who have lost their employment. This would give O’Leary and her fellow tenants more money to save for what’s coming. “In typical New York fashion, I’m living paycheck to paycheck,” she said. The tenants hope by striking, they can bring their landlord to the table to negotiate, but so far, they haven’t heard anything. She knows the company is aware, though. The strikers staged an action in which they all put out banners saying “cancel rent.” The landlord had the superintendent take them all down. (Pacific didn’t respond to a request for comment.)
O’Leary and her neighbors are also hoping their strike puts enough pressure on their landlord that the company, in turn, pressures the state government for more relief. She wants New York lawmakers to pass a pending bill that would waive rent payments throughout the state for the next three months.
Shani Robin had already been withholding rent due to dangerous conditions in her apartment. Photo: Michelle Gustafson
Until such relief comes through, a rent strike for other tenants in New York is about sheer survival. Moreom Perven, 43, lives with her sister and her sister’s two children in Jamaica, Queens; she had already been looking for a job for a month when the city shut down businesses to stem the spread of the coronavirus. Her sister worked in a restaurant but has been unemployed since the shutdown. Paying the $1,042 rent “is totally impossible for me at this moment,” Perven said. It’s not like she had saved up for this scenario. Whatever savings she does have, she said, has to go to basics like food.
Perven is also incredibly scared. People in her building have already been hospitalized with Covid-19; one has died. An Uber driver on her floor is stuck in his apartment sick with the virus. She’s too afraid to leave her apartment to get food, even though they’re running low, so there’s no chance she can go out to find a job. Other people in her building are dealing with similar circumstances: Out of 185 units, about 50 can’t pay the rent because they’re locked down inside and can’t work. Most were hourly workers who aren’t able to work at home and keep getting paid. Perven can’t sleep most nights; she’ll fall asleep for a couple of hours and then wake up, her mind racing, worried about how she’s going to get by and whether she can keep her housing. “They’re saying this is going to go maybe until July. I don’t know how I’m going to survive.”
Shani Robin, a 36-year-old labor organizer in Philadelphia, has also lost her income in the pandemic shut down. All of her corporate contracts have been halted, and her grants are also not getting paid out. “We have no money coming in,” she said.
Robin and her partner were already withholding the $900 monthly rent from their landlord before the crisis to get dangerous conditions fixed in their apartment, where she is raising a toddler. A cabinet fell on her head, she says, and there’s a mouse infestation. “Then the pandemic hits, and we’re like, ‘Damn, now we really can’t pay rent,’” she said with a chuckle. “There’s literally nothing to give to the landlord.” By not paying rent, they at least have some money to buy food and pay some of their other, smaller bills. “The rent strike is the last straw,” she said. “With nothing else in our toolbox, this is the last thing.”
To get the whole building on board, Robin slid flyers under her neighbors’ doors saying she was organizing a rent strike. Everyone in the six-unit building eventually joined in. They sent an email to their landlord which said, in the face of the pandemic, they weren’t able to pay rent and thanking him for being flexible. In response, the landlord sent them a letter. “If you are not currently facing a Covid-19 related hardship, please continue to pay your rent as usual. If you are experiencing Covid-19 related financial challenges that will affect your ability to pay your rent on time, please contact the office,” it reads. “When this crisis becomes stable you must come current with your rent.”
Weeks after the rent was due, Terra Thomas is worried she’ll face repercussions not just for going on strike but also for talking about it so publicly. Even if her landlord can’t evict her during Oakland’s eviction moratorium, she still thinks she could be targeted for harassment or even blacklisted from other apartments in the future. But she also knows there are others in worse situations who can’t afford to do what she’s doing. “The potential cost of this right now, the benefits far outweigh that,” she said.