TENANT HORIZON ISSUE #8
- Valley Tenants Union
- Sep 21
- 8 min read
Updated: Oct 1
Welcome back to issue 8 of Tenant Horizon! As we wait for summer to give way to autumn, organizing efforts continue in the Valley - read about Washington Street Shelter, the Upendo Umoja tenants association, Downtown Phoenix local’s reading group - and WHAT!? A VTU Phone!?!?
Additionally, this is the first issue to combine Spanish and English translations into a single document. A core value of Valley Tenants Union is our commitment to language justice - aiming for true parity of experience for all members of the union is something we must continue to strive towards. Taking inspiration from LATUs excellent Naming the Moment 2022 document, side-by-side translation has been incorporated into this month’s issue. Feedback on this change, as well as legibility and quality of translation is encouraged.
Interested in contributing? Reach out to any Research and Analysis Committee member or email us at ValleyTenants@proton.me.
Updates
Shelter Organizing Downtown
This month we’ve been working at organizing shelter residents at a church/nonprofit owned shelter near downtown. We started working on this after talking about this location through a couple of the past downtown local meetings and in our efforts building up to the creation of this new local. After being invited to investigate conditions at the shelter with a member of our union who has been staying there this summer, we started holding a weekly meal outside the shelter every week, right around curfew time. Think about it ! Taco Tuesday 4 tenants :)
We talked to residents, using general first meeting organizing questions like, “How long have you stayed here, what is your experience like, have you lived in Phoenix a while and what's that like….“ We found out through the past couple months that tenants have been agitated about a few happenings: racism and islamophobia, staff and management turnover and abuse of power, air conditioning being turned off or not functioning, frequent surprise K9 checks, constant surveillance, enforcement and reinforcement of rules such as curfew, limits on food, health and safety supplies, lack of autonomy in choosing clothing sizes/styles. The list goes on, it feels to us that shelters lack that small sliver of oversight/privacy some housed tenants might be used to living in phoenix.
The most common problem people are experiencing is low quality of food, such that meats like poultry and pork are not thoroughly cooked and snacks are often expired or moldy. With restrictions on what outside food can be brought in, plus in house meals being unsafe to eat, shelter residents are not being fed well and are fed up!
Challenges: 🚧🧱🛑🪨
🤔💡✍️📜In the logistics, we have a hard time pulling together enough food/meal supplies like forks and plates n all prior to getting down to the shelter and also seem to be using a lot of VTU funds.
Possible solutions: Have more VTU members or friends of the union (🫵🏽) help out in making food (even if they can’t or are unable to organize in person), make solidarity based connections with local stores/carnicerias/local vendors/neighbors in the area to maybe get a discount or something
🥵🌇☀︎ ⋆⁺₊The HEAT: arizona climate is always our frenemy🫶🏽. Organizing outside and in a place where some members can't actually go in through the doors and do a typical doorknocking, tenant outreach scenario is something tough tbh. We're trying to talk to tenants outside when many have already been outside working in the sun all day and would rather be resting in air conditioning.
Building a trustworthy presence now so that in the cooler months we have more tenants who will stick around & organize!
Retaliation⛔️🧯🚨: As we’ve become a more reliable presence at the shelter, some security guards, shelter supervisors, and even fellow tenants have come to talk to us with less than friendly tones. We suppose that some new notices surrounding what and how much food is allowed into the shelter could have something to do with tenants picking up a few tacos and pasta salad and bringing it back in. It could also be a tool at keeping tenants more isolated/focused on their own individual problems and conflicts, rather than the more collective problem-solving energy we seek to bring and cultivate in a less surveilled meal than is offered inside.
Turnover📦: Though we’ve had successes in making connections & building trust with some tenants who stay at the shelter, we still know the uphill battle of transitional housing. Many tenants transition out or in, often suddenly, so even though we're working to build that trust and core organizer foundation, we’ll need to find ways to build a lasting and collective presence that doesn't rely on only the most passionate. This is a challenge in our own union as well.
Strategizing🤔🤝: Sometimes(most times) getting people together and trusting each other is the hardest part. Some core organizers may move on from organizing and we need to be more prepared & open minded when this happens :).
🤜⚡️🤛💢Interpersonal Conflicts: Some of us union members who have been helping to put together and build this project don't actually live at the shelter or in close proximity, so we aren't always in the loop about who gets along and who might be a lil turncoat=y inside the walls of the shelter.
New Terrain🧗🌄: This isn't our first trial at organizing in Transitional housing, but might be our most consistent & passionate one so far. In the past, the legal challenges have proved to be difficult/not well known when dealing with eviction defense and transitional housing so we don't have many super-applicable successes to share in conversation with others about the union.
Solution: we have to build the applicable successes now to inform our organizing to come! Lol also study HUD stuff ig for legal.
West Valley Project
Upendo Umoja tenants association continues building tenant power in the West Valley! Since word got out last month about our organizing, the response has been conciliatory. After much inaction, suddenly some of the issues we've raised have been addressed. Additionally, a nonprofit started working at the complex, providing a food pantry and some other services at the ""community room"". These unexpected turns have required some navigating, but tenants mostly feel a sense of accomplishment.
In the meantime, we've discussed an escalation plan for adding pressure if needs aren't met. We've helped tenants organize their own yard sale nearby to raise funds. We were asked to help with one of the youth's birthday parties. We're being asked to do educational activities with the kids and to get help with starting to grow something from the currently empty, locked away ""community garden"". Tenants are also confronting intracommunal threats directed at children. Tenants have notified management and police, yet unsurprisingly they aren't taking the concerns seriously. We're going to tackle these problems head on as a tenants association instead.
We've also learned more about the working conditions faced by the largely immigrant and refugee base of tenants. Many work with harmful chemicals without proper protections, which is part of why community gardening is of interest. Some workers have been disabled by their workplaces, hurting their ability to make enough to subsist. This is inseparable from capitalism and imperialism, which we've discussed and aim to explore further.
If you have advice for setting up shade screens, have landlord issues in the West Valley, or want to help us organize, reach out to the West Valley Outreach Project!
Downtown Local Reading Group
The downtown local has been busy this past month with three Sunday reading group nights and one downtown local meeting. Each Sunday in Civic Space Park, we talk with new and familiar tenants struggling with the heat, the lack of public restrooms, and the carceral conditions of shelters, heat relief centers, libraries, and parks. We hear how unhoused Black tenants feel stripped of dignity by constant police harassment for acts as innocuous as feeding pigeons at the lightrail stop or working their canvassing job in a white, rich neighborhood. Both our readings and our conversations reflect that everyone is being ground down while the propertied capitalist class continues to profit off our suffering. This is apparent especially in our conversations about homeless service provider nonprofits. Tenants have aptly asserted these nonprofits hold no real interest in housing people, rather, seek to perpetuate a cycle of “helping” people with temporary and insufficient resources, over and over again, ensuring they will be constantly funded. So, what is to be done? Organize! Read about our efforts at Civic Space Park below.
Reading group updates:
On August 3rd we read Veronica’s Story from (Dis)Placement: The Fight for Housing and Community After Echo Park Lake and Dear Mitch Don’t Evict Us, a demand letter from Echo Park Lake tenants Veronica's Story and Dear Mitch Don't Evict Us from the Homeless Industrial Complex Reader. We talked about downtown local, tenant organizing, and the social divide in the park as a place for fun opposed to the park as a home to tenants and tenant organizing. That evening there was a pop-up concert in the park which brought in an influx of young people. The irony of reading about the class divide between gentrifier park goers in Echo Park Lake and the unhoused park residents, while seeing the same dynamic unfolding before our eyes, was not lost.
On August 17th we read Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failures from the Reader paired with a recent article San Francisco and other cities, following a Supreme Court ruling, are arresting more homeless people for living on the streets at a union member’s suggestion - Without Housing and Recent News Article. We had lively debate about the merits of organizing within the us empire. A new reading group attendee argued that all descendants of African slaves should move to Africa. Others argued that would be settler colonialism, and that nowhere is free from the grip of american imperialism, which is why it is essential to organize in the belly of the beast to destroy america, to throw sand in the gears of empire whenever possible.
On August 31st we read How a Generation’s Struggle Led to a Record Surge in Homelessness at a group member’s suggestion, paired with the first pages of Dirty Divide: Out of Service, a case study of public health inequity in Skid Row, Los Angeles - NYT Article and Out of Service Report. We talked about landlords and developers buying out blocks of buildings, evicting poor residents and profiting from higher rents charged to wealthier tenants. We discussed landlord discrimination against tenants on Section 8, and how easy it is for landlords to evict tenants on vouchers. We also discussed the bathroom inaccess in Civic Space Park and strategized how to win open public bathrooms. This week saw increased attendance, including a tenant who previously declined the invitation to join, overheard the group conversation on the 17th, became interested in everything we talked about and wanted to be a part of the group. Yay to small wins!
Downtown Local Updates
The downtown local met once this month on August 10th. We spoke about doorknocking, changing property management, supporting neighbors when faced with immediate fines, medical discrimination to the homeless, logistics for Washington Street organizing, and anti-black racism and policing in Arizona. Washington Street Shelter organizing is discussed further in a separate newsletter reflection!
We are working towards forming stronger social bonds and trust between tenants in the downtown local. Self crit - we had no formal local meeting on the 24th; it fell through since a few of us couldn’t make it. We don’t want this to happen again. If downtown local is to be successful, we will have to have consistent and reliable meetings, to get in the routine of talking as a group outside of the reading group Sundays.
All in all, the downtown local is carving a distinct space at the Sunday meals, amidst the nonsense.
VTU PHONE!
We need a place where tenants in need can reach us, by phone, with a consistent number, but as a role that can be shared among anyone in the union.
So….
Now we have a PHONE! Beep Beep! This month we’re going to be setting up this as a new system for getting in contact with tenants who aren’t yet in the union.
When tenants call us in crisis or in need of immediate support, it would help to be organized enough to attempt support in a timely manner! SO IF WE”RE GOING TO CHECK IT FOR MESSAGES AT LEAST ONCE EVERY DAY!! And the coordinate w Eviction Defense to straighten out a plan for organizing around whatever situation is known so far :).
Hopefully now, we’ll be quicker and more receptive when tenants reach out by calling, texting, voicemail, Social Media direct messages, or email :).
