> 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.