A nationwide rent strike has touched down in Springfield, and organizers say they're not after landlords, but rather state and federal government to step up to the plate.
We Strike Together began when COVID-19 did, said Tara Raghuveer, director of KC Tenants and housing campaign director for People's Action.
"After we started to understand the magnitude of the crisis in our community, we started to imagine how we could transform this crisis pain into public and collective anger and power," Raghuveer said in a phone interview with the News-Leader. "It’s translating this very individual experience of ability to pay rent into a collective experience of a new rent strike where folks are solidifying their ability to pay rent and the target of the strike is not so much individual landlords, but the state."
Per its website, 190,288 households have already joined the movement, with at least seven in the Springfield area. Raghuveer said she believes the number is much higher between people from all walks of life, age groups and tax brackets.
"The hurt is amplified and spread like never before," she said. "It’s unthinkable."
"That’s the number we’ve been able to track down," she said. "There’s still many others who can’t pay their rent who we haven’t been able to reach yet. It’s offering them a way to think about their nonpayment. For so many people, it’s not an option that they would go on strike. It’s simply the reality of the situation that they can’t pay their rent. It’s powerful framing for that nonpayment."
The end result is not just about the rent strike.
"The rent strike is the tactic," Raghuveer said. "The demand is rent and mortgage cancellation."
We Strike Together has several resources under its umbrella, including the work of the National Housing Law Project. Eric Dunn is the director of litigation and has been a lawyer for nearly two decades.
This rent strike is unique, Dunn said in a phone interview. Rent strikes in the past would normally be tenants from one or two buildings targeting a landlord due to hazardous conditions or other issues.
"This is a little different because the real target of the rent strike would have to be the federal government, and instead of bailing out cruise line companies," Dunn said, "you need to be putting your focus and priority making sure Americans have the ability to stay in their homes. You need to put resources towards housing."
If a tenant can’t pay, it’s in the landlord’s own interest to support them, especially in this effort, according to Dunn.
"In practice, what that can mean is instead of expecting tens of millions of people who are out of work to try to make the rent money magically appear out of thin air every month that we have some kind of coordinated federal program that people can get the rental assistance they need to stay housed through the crisis and the landlords get the money they need to pay their mortgage and staff during the crisis," Dunn said.
The idea that people are left to their own devices during a time where more than 33 million people have applied for benefits in seven weeks is absurd, Raghuveer said.
"And now so many people are being threatened and exploited in a moment of deep insecurity and vulnerability," she said. "It’s impossible to wrap our heads around how big of a problem this is going to be in a matter of weeks and months."
"If they’re not displaced, they’ll face debts they simply cannot sustain," Raghuveer continued. "This moment is going to be economically devastating for untold numbers of people and that comes at a social cost too. We always pay more later if we are reacting to crisis instead of taking it head on."
One way to join the movement is for tenants to organize with neighbors, Raghuveer.
"Whether at a building level, across properties or citywide, the only way we're going to be able to protect ourselves in the long run is if we are organized collectively," she said. "Individually, we have very little power. The whole problem with the way housing is set up now is that the landlord or the owner has almost all of the power, especially in Missouri where the tenants don't really have rights at all."
One hope of the movement is to build lasting policies within Missouri that will better protect tenants down the road, Raghuveer said.
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Nationwide rent strike sees area households join effort to cancel rent, mortgages - News-Leader
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