Why every tenant should be in a tenant union
Know Your Neighbors (Organize)
The housing market isn’t broken, it’s rigged. Landlords, developers, and real estate investors profit off of our basic need for shelter, while tenants are squeezed with rising rents, unsafe conditions, and the constant threat of eviction. Our homes are treated like assets, not places to live, and entire neighborhoods are gentrified in pursuit of profit while working people are priced out and displaced. This housing system is the result of decades of policy designed to serve wealth, not people.
None of this will change unless we organize. Tenant unions, rent strikes, and collective action have always been how ordinary people have fought back against exploitation. When we stand together, we protect each other. If we want safe, dignified, and truly affordable housing, we have to demand it. Housing is a human right, and it’s time we acted like it.
Binghamton Tenants’ Union
Housing in Binghamton is hell. The pressures of the student housing market, rapidly increasing rents, and proliferation of abusive negligent landlords has compelled us to organize and fight back like our lives depend on it, because they do. Nothing will improve if we idly sit by, so we don’t.
The Binghamton Tenants’ Union is a group of community members fighting for the rights of tenants and unhoused people in the Greater Binghamton area.
We believe that housing is a human right, that no person should be deprived of shelter, that evictions and homelessness are state violence, and that the most effective way to fight for housing justice is to help tenants organize themselves against the power of landlords, real estate developers, and the politicians who enable them. Power to the People against those who profit from our suffering.
What is a tenant union?
- A group of tenants who come together and challenge the power of their landlords. A single tenant can be ignored, intimidated, and evicted. A hundred organized tenants can fight back.
- A tenants union is a unit of power at the scale of the city. A tenants association is a unit of power at the scale of a building.
You have the right to Organize
- You have the legal right to organize and participate in tenant organization for the purposes of protecting your rights and improving conditions
- Tenants’ groups, committees or other tenants’ organizations shall have the right to meet without a fee on the premises including a community or social room (NYS Real Property Law § 230)
- See also the NYS Attorney General’s Memo on Enforcing the the Tenant Right to Organize
What do we do?
- Inform tenants of their rights
- Push for housing legislation
- Call out the City’s worst landlords
- Support unhoused people
- Observe Housing Court
Accomplishments:
- Prevented countless evictions & displacement
- Successfully pressured the City to take action on a notorious slumlord.
- Prevented luxury housing development on Water Street
- Elected Council Members Hotchkiss and Rathmell
- Passed Local Law making unhoused status a protected class
- Passed Good Cause.
- Transformed the local conversation and City priorities on housing
How can you get involved?
- We routinely have open meetings and events that you can attend. Additionally, you can reach out directly to email/phone.
