talkingstove t1_ivzeizq wrote
Tenant unions are the strangest things. The idea of a union is labor is skilled and in demand, and together your interests are stronger than apart.
There isn't really a in demand skill here (anyone can live in an apartment), and being part of a union would be a signal to a landlord you are probably going to be annoying so they likely would just want to rent to someone else whose money is just as good as yours.
GettingPhysicl t1_iw0m73l wrote
yeah this mostly works because kicking people out of housing isn't something we're super keen to make easy in ny. Also probably a lot of places are too leveraged to feel comfortable with a rent strike. Sure you are within your rights to kick everyone out because they wont agree to a 30% increase in rent - and someone definitely would rent your units for that. But itll take a year to remove the tenants, and none of them are paying, and you will go bankrupt in that year without any rent.
sysyphusishappy t1_iw28cg7 wrote
It's like being a Starbucks customers union.
ctindel t1_iw16ds7 wrote
There are unions for unskilled labor too.
kiklion t1_iw29jje wrote
> Tenant unions are the strangest things.
They make some sense, but not how they are doing it here.
Imagine if every renter in the city join the same tenant union, and the union delegates determined what it’s members were allowed to pay for rent at each apartment.
You’d essentially be changing the metric used to determine who gets each apartment from who is able and willing to pay the most, to something else. Whoever has the best credit score or whomever applies first or whomever is the most attractive.
The hurdle though is that anyone with money probably wants money to continue to be the metric used to determine housing distribution. It even has the benefit that two people with the same moneys can indicate how much they want a specific unit in a specific area (with specific roommates) by changing what % of their income they are willing to spend. If the theoretical union used seniority in the union as the metric, some immigrant who works 80 hours a week isn’t likely to volunteer to continue living out of homeless shelters so that native born, part time cashier Timothy Johnson can get the next apartment for lease.
Regularjoe42 t1_iw2kw2r wrote
The skill tenants provide is "working at a job for money", which the landlord doesn't do. If tenants stop paying, the landlord can't afford their bills.
Like any other union the landlord can try to replace troublemakers. Replacing one is a problem. Replacing them all is bankruptcy.
i_yell_it t1_iw1eju0 wrote
tenants are in demand because they provide the value extracted by the landowner and pay his/her mortgage..
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