Housing Justice and Tenant Organizing Working Group
The Housing Justice Project, CTDSA’s housing working group, organizes to build a socialist understanding of housing and sees tenant struggle as essential in the fight to build socialism. We work to build working-class power through tenant organizing that improves conditions in our housing, decreases rents, and helps us move towards the socialist horizon of guaranteed housing for all and a world without landlords.
Housing liberation means ending the commodification of housing under capitalism, ensuring democratically controlled, decarbonized, decommodified, abolitionist housing for everyone, and decoupling housing from the violent forces of racism, policing, displacement, and extraction.
Housing Justice and Tenant Organzing News
The Communist Horizon of Social Housing
The term “social housing” has gained traction on the US Left today. Prominent political currents in the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) have become more comfortable using the term to gesture vaguely at some more just allocation of housing than what currently exists. For example, DSA’s “Building for Power” (B4P) campaign encourages DSA chapters to “…work with tenants and/or tenant unions as well as building trades unions to retrofit social or other tenant housing,” operating under the assumption that social housing is an existing thing that can be improved upon.
End of Session Statement on Housing Legislation from CT Tenants Union and CT DSA
Connecticut tenants face a housing emergency. Already high rents have skyrocketed since 2020. Buildings in both the cities and suburbs are...
Connecticut DSA’s Housing Agenda at the Statehouse
Our formation is growing, but so is the greed. As Connecticut DSA’s Housing Justice Project continues to build formidable tenant union groups across the state, we have met a statewide problem: the rent is too damn high! Predatory landlords have raised rent far higher than the rate of inflation or wages and tenants have no extra cash to spare. Tenants need a break.
INSIGHT: Tenant Chemistry
INSIGHT: Tenant Chemistry With unorthodox advocacy and organizing tools, the Connecticut Tenants Union is paving the way for a national movement to...
This victory for tenants in Connecticut is not the first, and it will not be the last!
This victory for tenants in Connecticut is not the first, and it will not be the last, but it is a monumental achievement for the Seramonte Tenants...
Connecticut Tenants Unions – the legal path
CONNECTICUT TENANTS UNIONS – THE LEGAL PATH Unlike the long legal history of labor unions in this country, tenant unions are relatively...
The Lower Frequencies
Housing Justice Project reaches new audiences on social and news media
Seramonte Tenants Union Pushes For More Protections
Members of Hamden’s Seramonte Tenants Union gathered outside of Town Hall the night before a highly anticipated Fair Rent Commission that will...
New Haven Fair Rent Commission officially recognizes Tenant Unions
"It a really important step," Elicker said, adding that it's not just about creating more affordable units but "about ensuring that existing units...
Hitting the Bricks: Thoughts From a New Canvasser
One socialist’s impressions on canvassing and the ongoing challenges facing renters in Connecticut.