🏘️ 3 New Policy Kits on Tenant Empowerment: Social Housing, Housing Coops, and Tenant Bill of Rights
Today, DPN has released three new policy kits, authored by Colleen Herrmann, on empowering tenants through increasing housing supply and enshrining tenant protections in state and local law:
1. Social Housing: On how states can enable and empower the creation of municipally-owned, mixed-income housing developments
2. Limited Equity Housing Cooperatives: On how states can support the cultivation of affordable, tenant-owned housing developments
- Tenant Bill of Rights: On how states can protect tenants, limit evictions, and increase tenant power in landlord-tenant relations
The United States is facing a housing crisis on two fronts: affordable housing supply and tenant disempowerment.
Even for those who find housing, the relationship between tenants and their landlords, in which one is relying on the other for a basic human need, creates an unbalanced power dynamic. In the absence of strong tenant protection laws and tenant organizing efforts, landlords are empowered to unjustly discriminate against, overcharge, violate, ignore, and mistreat tenants. Of particular note is the power to evict: between 2000 and 2018, an average of 2.7 million American households had 3.6 million eviction proceedings initiated against them each year. An eviction case on a tenant’s record — even a case that is dismissed — can permanently impact their ability to find housing in the future.
The most common way out of this power dynamic is ownership, which removes the landlord from the equation and grants a level of stability that is often hard to find as a renter. However, with financial barriers like rising home prices, increasing down payments and closing costs, and lower incomes relative to mortgage payments, potential homeowners are finding it more difficult to make their dreams of ownership a reality.
Meanwhile, the affordability crisis in rental housing is deepening. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the country was facing a deficit of 6.8 million housing units that would be affordable to extremely low-income families. In 2021, that number had risen to 7.3 units — an increase of 8% over just a few years. On any given night in the United States, over 500,000 people are experiencing homelessness. Of extremely low-income households (defined as households making less than 30% of the area median income, or AMI), 70% pay more than half of their monthly income on rent.
Although usually found in different sections of state or local code, the issues of affordable housing supply and tenant protections are inherently linked. Without good tenant protections, even truly affordable housing can be an environment where landlords take advantage of their tenants; without an adequate supply of affordable housing, tenants can feel trapped in a bad situation just because they cannot afford to live anywhere else. Building more affordable housing, empowering tenants to own and organize their living spaces, and clarifying tenant rights in law are all steps states can take to empower tenants within their communities. We hope these three new kits can help in this effort:
1. Social Housing: On how states can enable and empower the creation of municipally-owned, mixed-income housing developments
2. Limited Equity Housing Cooperatives: On how states can support the cultivation of affordable, tenant-owned housing developments
- Tenant Bill of Rights: On how states can protect tenants, limit evictions, and increase tenant power in landlord-tenant relations
If you are a legislator, activist, expert, or journalist looking to help promote these policies in your state, check out (and share) these kits — and please get in touch!
