TENANT HORIZON ISSUE #5
- Cece N.
- Jun 11
- 11 min read
Updated: Jul 8
Tenant Horizon is back with our June issue! Summer is here and the Valley Tenants Union is hard at work - May was a busy month for our two outreach groups at Grant Park and the West Valley. Doors are being knocked on and meetings are being held (one of them in four languages!). The Civic Space reading group transitioned to new study material and the A/C summer program is kicking off to educate and organize around heat protection.
In other exciting news, four members returned from the Union de Vecinos organizing school hosted by LATU. We’re super excited to hear their reflections on the experience as they were able to visit several tenant associations, learn about the international tenants movement, and meet comrades from around the country. Be on the look out for more info! 👀
Interested in contributing? Reach out to any Research and Analysis Committee member or email us at ValleyTenants@proton.me.
Updates
A/C Summer Program
HEAT IS MURDER! Our team started outreach at an apartment complex that we've heard has had historic A/C issues. We knocked 30-40 doors and talked to others near its parking lot. While many tenants had recently moved in, the A/C issue was still widely felt (among others like roaches, water issues, electricity issues, heating, ICE raids). One mentioned she had to complain enough to get a window unit, and several were scattered around the block especially on the bottom floor. We got quite a few contacts, a mix of potential activists and those who said they'd support but passively.
We were slightly nervous about trespassing and the many cameras, but the strong response from residents eased our nerves. As one had to leave early, we decided to knock alone instead of the usual pairs, which worked fine as we were all close together. We regretted the overlap with a Nakba Day vigil honoring Palestinian resistance. We hope to get more of us doing outreach, noting that we didn't do well reminding the union. There were some fears about retaliation, particularly as it's low income housing. One person said her case manager claimed that the buildings don't have to be up to city code because it's ""grandfathered in"" due to being built in the 70s. We'll need to do more research on this, though legal action was taken against Buenas on 32nd which was built even earlier.
We're going to follow up with the contacts we made to schedule a time to bring them together to form a tenants association, something that many were receptive to. We plan to share the brochure publicly soon. We also just met with All Chicago Tenants' Alliance to discuss their newest iteration of the People's Cooling Army: more to share soon. Join us on our next meeting on Thursday, 6/19 at 6:30pm.
Eviction Defense Working Group
This month, we reflected on our court watch week and discussed next steps. There was success in 1-2 members attending court for the first time alongside Eviction Defense Committee members and the worksheets with investigative questions were helpful. It was unsurprising that default judgments for absent tenants happened in seconds and the main reason for eviction was nonpayment of rent. Each judge offered false hope that tenants could “still work out a deal with the landlord” but they’ll have to issue the eviction regardless. Out of this, we feel more equipped to do court watching and offer support in the future.
Another topic we discussed this month was meeting tenants in moments of crisis. When tenants reach out to the union, it’s in desperation. Most times without existing relationships with neighbors or organized tenant associations. But that shouldn’t mean we give up on supporting our neighbors in their time of need. A goal of this working group was to prepare VTU to support evictions without needing a lawyer and build autonomy among our fights against landlords. As we know, there are many issues tenants face so that there can never be a one-size-fits-all defense. We are investigating how to collectivize this process of ‘case management’ and build out robust, shared knowledge of responding to eviction. VTU must become our own experts on the housing terrain. Everybody should have experience to collectively support tenants through tenant issues such as an eviction.
Please join our committee if you’re interested in fighting back against evictions; we meet June 18th at 7pm. Locations in-person and zoom available, valleytenants@proton.me
Grant Park Project
Grant park is in full restructure mode! After talking with tenants in the neighborhood, it was clear that there was a need to focus on the gentrification risks and the pending building of a new APS plant in the area. Since then we have gone full force into doing research on the new APS power plant that is slated to be built on Grand Ave between 3rd & 4th Ave. We are looking into all the details of why it’s being built here, who is spearheading the project and what ways APS is trying to frame this project as a “good thing” for the Grant neighborhood and its residents. We plan on creating a call to action and using that to flyer the neighborhood for support from the residents. We are hoping in doing this it will lead to improved relations among neighbors in the area and to receive the answers APS has left lingering.
West Valley Project
At the end of April, the West Phoenix Outreach group met to reflect on our efforts and how we could build connections and power most effectively. A rent increase proposal prompted us to refocus outreach around building a tenants association at a member's subsidized complex. While we were able to gather a few signatures and comments contesting the rent increase, we still haven't heard back from HUD and don't expect them to act in the interests of tenants. What has been heartening, though, is that through outreach we've been able to take steps towards building a tenants' association!
We held our first tenant meeting there this month, with four tenants coming together to identify widespread issues, obstacles to more neighbors getting involved, and next steps for organizing more of their neighbors. Through discussion, they decided to host a know your rights party to bring people together, work through the fear of retaliation, and bring in the many children and teens who live there as well!
SUCCESSES:
We have been able to connect with tenants who are willing to take action even outside of any emergency or crisis moments, and got introduced to even more tenants through them! We met someone who could be a natural leader, an elder who has been living in the complex for over 15 years and speaks several languages. There are a multitude of different languages spoken at the complex, and English is in the minority, so being able to bring multilingual tenants into organizing is a major success in confronting a long-standing obstacle: communicating across many different languages and cultures. Reorienting our focus on a single complex has allowed us to start building longer-term relationships with several tenants, laying the groundwork for organizing efforts.
AREAS FOR GROWTH/QUESTIONS:
We have yet to discuss what we plan to do moving forward in terms of continuing outreach in the wider area we identified, but we will certainly continue to build with the tenants at this complex! In the past few weeks at this complex, a few things have come up. While safety is a real concern, helping to address the need that tenants have communicated in ways that build collectivity and consciousness rather than surveillance is something that we will have to practice as we continue organizing with the tenants in the complex. Additionally, struggling through the anti-homeless sentiment some tenants brought up in a non-antagonistic way will be something we'll need to learn how to navigate skillfully as we move forward.
As mentioned in last month's newsletter, this point brings up some broader questions: How do we organize alongside people who are unsheltered, and what does real solidarity with them look like when most union members are comfortably housed? What are commonalities and differences with the interests of unsheltered and sheltered tenants, and how do we build power to address these interests in ways that build the larger class struggle against capitalism? Finally, on a different note, how do we shift the central force of organizing at this complex towards the tenants themselves? We can't find answers to these questions if we don't try to address them in practice, even as our immediate focus may lie in watering the seed of a tenants' association.
Once again, if you live between 35th Ave-43rd Ave and Van Buren-Thomas and want to organize with your neighbors to address shared issues, reach out to us via text or phone call: 602-726-9849!
Research & Analysis Committee
In the April Research & Analysis Committee meeting, we discussed our newsletter, a question about rental history, and the end of the Abolish Rent reading group. To check rental history, we found that tenants can use free resources like RentGrow.com as well as request annual reports from Experian, Transunion, or Equifax. In the future, we want to avoid pigeonholing ourselves as "experts" for questions like these, and empower others to find answers too. With the Abolish Rent reading group, we recognized the successes and areas with room for growth. We've connected with tenants in the park, which opened up space for political discussions that genuinely resonated. Still, we saw how VTU's presence was minimal, our open-ended facilitating may have been unfocused, and have concerns about a drift towards activist-centric organizing. With Food Not Bombs planning to continue a reading group, we'd like to get input from others that have been involved on how best to engage from here. We meet online on the 3rd Tuesday each month (next on May 20th at 6:45pm), so reach out if you'd like to join or assist what we're organizing!
Civic Space Reading Group
Readers will remember from our last reflection in Tenant Horizon Issue #3 (valleytenants.org/post/tenant-horizon-issue-3) that those of us involved in facilitating the Abolish Rent reading group at Civic Space Park are thinking expansively and critically about the present and future of the group. Some of our inquiries include: How can relationships and trust deepen beyond the reading group? Can a tenant association form out of this space? How can we meaningfully be in solidarity with unhoused tenants and tenants in subsidized housing if the majority of reading group attendees are comfortably housed?
Obviously earning trust and deepening relationships with tenants we meet in the park with the objective of organizing together will not spontaneously happen after a few one-off conversations once a week. We require commitment, clarity, and consistent presence. We have some success in this regard, but there is much more to be done! Soon, we are meeting with a comrade who helped organize Echo Park Rise Up for their knowledge and experience (for more on Echo Park Rise Up see https://youtu.be/zlWy6STth7E?si=rZJ7nfBIQySJbDNh). We are also working our way through a Homeless Industrial Complex syllabus (bit.ly/carceralhousing) compiled by them now that we’ve finished Abolish Rent.
On Sunday May 25th, we began the syllabus by reading “The National Union of the Homeless - A Brief History” with tenants at Civic Space Park. This related to conversations we had in the past about NUH during the Abolish Rent reading group. The reading was well received. We implemented specific discussion questions that kept us on topic, though we didn’t get through them all. The Johnnie Tillmon model of organizing from the reading was resonant with attendees. Some shared how important the autonomy and lead of unhoused people is in any given movement, and that movements without this approach leave people alienated and demoralized. For the record, here are the principles of the Johnnie Tillmon model:
1) Poverty victims must be at the forefront of the movement to end poverty
2) You only get what you are organized to take
The National Union of the Homeless: A Brief History, p. 7 https://universityofthepoor.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/HUHP-A-Brief-History-FINAL.pdf
The reading group has room for improvement. Some suggestions for facilitators in the future:
Ask everyone for their names and first impression of the reading after the read-aloud portion is complete. We frequently forget this part since we are always pressed for time! Which brings us to the next point:
Start on time! We should be getting to the park at 5pm to ensure we have enough time to go around the park, speak with everyone, and let them know about the reading group.
Need to print more copies, we had 20 and ran out!
HEAT KILLS
We all can feel it: the Valley keeps getting hotter. It hit 100 degrees in early April, tying a record high temperature for the date. The Valley is also a “leader” in heat deaths- on track to exceed last year’s hundreds of victims. We think that there’s nothing natural about these preventable deaths: these are social murders with victims and culprits.
In 2024, almost two-thirds (62%) of heat-related deaths indoors in Arizona took place in homes. Of the cases where an air conditioning unit was present, it wasn’t working in 70% of them. Tenants in mobile homes particularly lack sufficient cooling, so they had to organize in 2024 for the right to install their own A/C units.
The majority of victims are our elders- over 50 years old. They are housed in colonial, redlined sprawl which is hotter and has less water than other areas.
What can we make from this? We should learn and apply our legal rights, but they aren’t enough. Landlords shrug when hundreds go without basic necessities, year after year, and the government slaps them on the wrist at best. If you take these mortal stakes as seriously as we do, join the revolutionary struggle for decent housing!
MY A/C IS OUT… NOW WHAT?
Notify your landlord. Keep copies of ALL communication with your landlord. A landlord has ten (10) days to repair problems but that time is shortened to five (5) days if the situation involves a health or safety issue. If your landlord fails to provide A/C AFTER you have submitted a written notice, you have a few options under Arizona law:
Terminate the Lease (A.R.S. § 33-1361(A)):
If repairs aren’t made in time, you may terminate the lease with an additional written notice including your move-out date. *Please note that you’re still responsible for rent during this period.
Sue for Repairs or Damages (A.R.S. § 33-1361(B)):
You may sue for an injunction (to force repairs) and for monetary damages.
Hire a Licensed Contractor (A.R.S. § 33-1363(A)):
You may hire a licensed contractor if repair costs are under $300 OR half your monthly rent (whichever is greater).
Pay for Temporary Housing (A.R.S. § 33-1364(A)(3)):
You may pay for substitute housing and deduct up to 125% of your rent. Keep ALL receipts and document the dates.
Important: Make sure your situation legally justifies rent deductions. Check Arizona law or contact your Valley Tenants Union for help.
LAWS AROUND AC FOR TENANTS IN AZ BY CITY
PHOENIX & GLENDALE: Every rental housing unit shall be no greater than 86 if cooled by evaporative cooling and 82 by air conditioner.
MESA: The city of Mesa does not define the temperatures, so refer to state law for your A/C rights: it must be in good and safe working order.
TEMPE: Cooling methods must cool to 88 if evaporative cooling, and 82 degrees if air conditioning, in all rooms.
PEORIA: Cooling systems must maintain a temperature between 70 and 90 degrees, and portable heaters or coolers may not be used to satisfy temperature requirements.
Want more info on your A/C rights?
Go to bit.ly/ACbroke
THE LAW WON’T SAVE US: ORGANIZE FOR POWER
Tired of landlords having all the money and power? Knowing your rights MIGHT help you get your A/C fixed, but it won’t be enough to change all the issues you and your neighbors face as tenants.
Organizing a Tenants Association (TA) in your complex is the best way have power against your landlord. A TA is a group of tenants in one complex who collectively organize their neighbors to take action to change their living conditions.
Ready to organize?
Reach out to Valley Tenants Union at valleytenants@proton.me saying you want support organizing a TA.
Start talking to your neighbors - are they having the same issues?
Keep a record of neighbors who will help you talk to others about organizing a tenants association.
Work toward writing a demand letter with your neighbors to your landlord and gather support from all your neighbors before presenting it to your landlord.
