TENANT HORIZON ISSUE #10
- Valley Tenants Union
- 2 days ago
- 8 min read
Hello everybody ☺︎✮☺︎ and welcome to November in a city where landlords run rampant like desert rats and our union is taking pest control into our own hands!!
🐁🐁🐁🐁🪤🪤🪤🪤
In october we worked on our same 2025 big goal projects like w our locals/TAs in west & downtown phoenix. Even though we’re working on our Soft Power day in and day out, we could def use more support & organizing energy ALL OVER PHX! Read this newsletter today and then commit to knocking on a few doors tomorrow! Day by day….hour by hour… door by door… its YOUR turn⋆⭒˚.⋆☺︎♡🌞🌅🕰️🚪𓉞
Interested in contributing to next month's issue? Call any member of the Research and Analysis Committee at 480-861-8459 or email us at ValleyTenants@proton.me.
Interested in contributing? Reach out to any Research and Analysis Committee member or email us at ValleyTenants@proton.me.
Updates
What is VTU?
Valley Tenants Union is building poor and working-class power, block-by-block, in the so-called Phoenix Metro area. Landlords organize to profit off unlivable conditions, to get away with their abuses, to raise our rents, to displace us from our homes and even the streets, so we organize as tenants, housed and unhoused. The change we need, a revolutionary transformation of housing into a world without rent, comes from us.
We organize with the people and not for the people. VTU is autonomous and grassroots - we’re not interested in grants, charity from wealthy donors, working with politicians, and the control they impose. Since the laws serve our exploiters and enforcement means carrying out the violence of eviction, we reject collaboration with the police. Solidarity is our strength, so we strive to unite with interconnected struggles against racism, capitalism, and imperialism.
How does that look in practice? Union-wide, we have monthly general assemblies and committees focused on specific domains, like eviction defense. Otherwise, we’re primarily organizing tenants associations in our residences, committees across the block, and locals spanning our neighborhoods. Why? To build deeply rooted power, we need to bring the movement home and connect our homes to the broader movement.
We have public general assemblies every 1st Thursday at 7pm + there are committees and projects that meet throughout each month:
Language Justice Committee
Research and Analysis Committee
Eviction Defense
Grant Park Outreach Project
West Phoenix Outreach Project
Downtown Local
Neighborhood Defense Committees
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"I think my favorite part about this union has hands down been the Sunday intercambio meetings. It has truly brought so much joy in my heart knowing how much effort people are putting into learning Spanish so better help our community. The intersectionality is so real! It has given me the opportunity to improve my Spanish as well and I am so grateful for that. The sense of community and commitment is truly authentic and I have felt it since the first VTU meeting I attended. I felt supported in sharing my story and really appreciated everyone’s feedback. Though for now I am focusing on community building, I feel much better equipped if things take a turn in regards to my living situation. I feel safe and supported which makes me feel more at ease. I look forward to continuing my support of the VTU. Thanks everyone!"
Upendo Umoja
Upendo Umoja Tenants Association pushes onwards! Last month, we marched on the landlord, but the response has been contradictory. On one hand, some tenants who participated received quick, informal concessions. For example, the loud “cop knocks” and disrespect that brought one tenant to tears in a meeting suddenly ended. Another traded apartments from a unit where issues had gone unfixed for about a decade. On the other hand, the ask for a meeting has been ignored, and the furtive nature of the concessions have meant that these real victories aren’t widely felt beyond the core circles of the tenants association.
This has led to some clarity about what we’re struggling with among the leaders and supporters of the effort. Among the base of tenants, there is a widespread sense of hopelessness, fear, and lack of agency. Tenants who have been clearly targeted and discriminated against feel that organizing won’t change anything, because nothing changes. Our problem is convincing them that change in power relations is possible, something we’ve directly witnessed, while the core leaders of the association don’t get lost in frustration at the same time. Actions speak louder than words, so our tactics will have to push tenants who have been supportive to the side into motion at whatever pace is possible. With very different schedules and life issues to attend to, we’ll also need an organizing strategy that can meet and involve people outside of our regular meeting times.
We welcome any thoughts on these matters, but we’re pressing forward with ideas that the tenants association has brainstormed. Additionally, after many demands from the youth, we held a party on Halloween! While many kids trekked to richer neighborhoods for candy, we had fun partying with about a dozen who could not. There was music, dancing, a scavenger hunt, and of course candy. We also took time to dig deeper with parents about the organizing strategies we had discussed in the prior meeting. It was a joyful time that lifted our spirits through the challenges inevitable when you organize for the long haul. As always, please reach out if you’d like to support our organizing or take on landlords in the West Valley by calling us at 480-861-8459.
Downtown Local
At civic space park, the fight for a park bathroom continues. Our demand letter was sent to the parks department, but it remains unanswered. while we’re moving forward with our next steps, we also talked about what happens if our bathroom campaign isn’t successful. if the city won’t reopen a public resource it already has, what can we, as members or supporters of downtown local do to provide for ourselves and others?
We read about the umoja village shantytown in Miami, FL where community members were able to build pallet housing, gardens, showers and toilets on a vacant lot. much like our downtown local that holds its meetings on Sundays, the self-sustaining shantytown, would meet every Sunday to discuss village business. organizers who were supporting umoja learned that they should take a step back and let the tenants problem-solve - echoing our own thoughts about the importance of autonomy for the members of downtown local.
Our goal has been and continues to be building the framework of equity and power for the tenants in and around civic space, so they have tools to work toward what liberation looks like for themselves.
☆Transitional Housing☆
Part of dwntwn local has been busy building connections and laying the groundwork to gain perspective on the mistreatment of tenants inside a shelter. The past few weeks organizing members having been meeting once a week on Tuesdays to provide a warm meal and an open space to have dialogue about the types of issues they have while inside the shelter.
For the month of October, we have heard things from poor management and inadequate spaces to rotten food and even strict policies against basic necessities like food storage and electrical outlets. Coming in November, we will be hosting the first tenants meeting with the hopes of drafting a demand letter that is put together by the tenants for the tenants.
A poem from a member of downtown local
Language Exchange
On October 5th, we practiced our reading and listening comprehension while learning about the ongoing general strike, or Paro Nacional, in Ecuador. First, we read from an infographic sharing basic background information: peasants, students, and workers led by the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities in Ecuador (CONAIE) are fighting back against the high taxes and disinvestment that are exploiting the people. President Noboa, the heir to his billionaire father’s fortune, has been pushing these harmful policies while cracking down on democratic rights and angling towards more military collaboration with the U.S. We dug deeper with a Telesur article that noted the government’s violent repression that sparked further action. Finally, we watched a couple of videos; one highlighted mutual aid practices called “mingas” that help sustain the struggles with food, dispelling “outside agitator” smears. The other was a rousing speech from the president of CONAIE which we capped off by chanting “viva la CONAIE”. Key words: respaldar (to back), derogar (to repeal), encarecer (to make more expensive), consigna (slogan), sede (headquarters).
On October 19th, we started by sharing chisme to practice our conversational skills. We went on to watch a video by De Raíz about María Corina Machado. For those unfamiliar, she’s a Venezuelan politician from a wealthy capitalist family who recently received a Nobel Peace Prize. She has a long history of courting U.S. intervention (and building ties with Israel) while attempting regime change like in the failed 2002 coup, in line with Juan Guiado, the phony “president” that the U.S. paraded around. While this country drops bombs on fishermen and angles towards further military action in Venezuela, we need to stay sharp against imperialists and their compradors. US out of Venezuela! On October 26th, we watched The Revolution will not be televised!
Eviction Defense
So…. What's new with the eviction defense group? We are chugging along, trying to get a better understanding of our union as a whole and where everyone’s at in their capacity to support other neighbors in times of crisis. There is a workshop and social event that we’re putting on in October to get the union refreshed on their solidarity casework abilities.
We discussed the current and past tenant crisis that we have supported in the past month; from the Hernandez family and their fight against the church to eviction support for those in the most precarious positions, at a shelter where they could get evicted for any minor rule break and kicked back out to the streets, to a last minute effort for neighbor solidarity for a nonpayment of rent eviction. In the nonpayment of rent effort, we gathered signatures from two neighboring apartment complexes within 24 hours and helped them deliver the letter to the landlord on the day of the eviction court case. Not an ideal situation by any means, but they were able to get their demands met for an extended time to move their belongings instead of the measly 5-days waiting around for the constable to come.
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October was the second month of having an active union burner phone for tenants in crisis to contact. The union is currently supporting a tenant who reached out to us with concerns of a constructive eviction and retaliation. This tenant has faced harassment and neglect ever since a major leak in May caused extensive mold. From the pictures shared with the union, many of us remarked it was the most severe mold we had ever seen. These conditions constitute an ongoing health emergency for the tenant and her children. Instead of providing immediate accommodations and making comprehensive repairs, the landlord, Invitation Homes, made shoddy repairs and further spread moldy materials around the home. The tenant has documented these abuses and lodged formal complaints; Invitation Homes and their lackeys have responded with intimidation and refusal. She has exhausted all possible bureaucratic avenues for remediation, and has been met with disregard and apathy. Just last week, after calling an EMT to check on her asthma due to mold exposure, the county sheriff showed up and grilled her on her current lease status. This is clearly intimidation. The tenant feels the fire to organize with neighbors to prevent any attempts at eviction and wage a larger campaign against the inhumane treatment of Invitation Homes. If anyone lives in the east valley and wants to join the solidarity casework team supporting this tenant, reach out to Eviction Defense!
Questions we are considering as a union:
How do tactics of eviction defense shift for constructive evictions wherein landlord neglect makes a home unlivable?
Where should a larger exposure/pressure campaign against a national property management company like Invitation Homes begin?
☆Reflection on the Eviction Defense Social☆
We hosted a halloween themed educational social with the union! It was a good time for grilling some hot dogs, having some grub and getting to know tenants from across the union. We went through the eviction defense packet and practiced some organizing scenarios based off of previous evictions that we’ve experienced as a union. It was a lot of fun being actors and part of a theater! We recommend that the union practice organizing scenarios to keep our skills sharp and our union muscles flowing.
From the archives
October/Octubre 1994
Questions for vtu babies:
☆What is your impression of the style of organizing and eviction defense we read about here?
☆Does this text from 1994 San Francisco Tenants Union hold up today and does our union bring the same militancy or attempts at militancy to our eviction defense strategies?
