by pattrice jones

Originally published in the February 1999 issue of Ann Arbor’s alternative newspaper, Agenda.

“Landlords have money and power… tenants have each other.”

With those words, a group of University of Michigan students launched an event that reverberates to this day. The Ann Arbor Tenants Union’s “all-city rent strike” of 1969-71 began 30 years ago this month and may be said to have never ended. Every day, some Michigan tenants exercise their right to withhold rent in response to poor housing conditions or other problems with their landlords. Most are unaware of the valiant efforts of the activists who secured that right 30 years ago or of the steadfast struggles of those who have sought to maintain tenants’ rights in the decades since. That’s too bad, because the story is instructive as well as dramatic.

Before beginning the tale, however, I should disclose that I was the coordinator of the AATU from 1993 through 1996 so this will not be an entirely dispassionate history. That said…

Once upon a time, rental housing conditions in Ann Arbor were among the worst in the nation. Students fought with one another for the chance to crowd into over-priced, dilapidated apartment houses near campus. Low-income tenants faced similar conditions on the outskirts of town.

This was in the late 1960’s, a time of great national and local upheaval. Frightened by the rising tide of urban uprisings, lawmakers across the nation turned to studies and commission reports, most of which listed housing problems and powerlessness as sources of potentially violent discontent. In Lansing, lawmakers responded with the Warranty of Habitability (MCLA 554.139), which requires all elements of a rental unit to be fit for the use intended and compels landlords to abide by applicable city and state housing codes.

Meanwhile, in Ann Arbor, the University of Michigan campus had become a hotbed of student activism. Frustrated by their own housing problems and angered by the conditions faced by tenants living in poverty, a group of graduate students decided to test the new law. Since the Warranty of Habitability appeared to imply that tenants had a contractual right to withhold rent when landlords did not fulfill their responsibilities, a rent strike seemed to be the most promising tactic.

The young organizers of Ann Arbor’s tenants union knew that tenants living in poverty had organized successful rent strikes elsewhere — most notably in Harlem in 1963-64 — but they also knew that Michigan’s law was yet untested and that low-income renters would be most vulnerable were they to strike and fail. In contrast, students could fall back upon parents or dorm housing. A student rent strike could win benefits for all tenants without exposing the most vulnerable tenants to the threat of eviction.

The organizers targeted ten local landlords believed to be among the worst offenders. They publicized the impending strike and collected signatures of students who pledged to strike. Along the way, they obtained the endorsement of a number of diverse campus groups, including the Engineering Council, the Black Law Student Association, and the student government.

The proposed strike was big news in Ann Arbor through the fall of 1968 and into the winter of 1969. The Ann Arbor News and the Michigan Daily were filled with news articles, editorials, and letters about tenant rights, landlord abuses, housing prices and conditions, and other related issues. While the newspapers may not have intended to do so, they furthered the cause of the strike by helping to spread the word and by teaching renters about their rights. Thus the new tenants union won its first victory before the first dollar of rent was withheld.

On the evening of February 13, 1969 the tenants union announced that the goal of 2,000 signatures had been reached. The strike began the next day and lasted into 1971. Along the way, what had been a local controversy turned into a spectacle closely attended by the national media.

Landlords retaliated almost immediately. The most civil among them simply sued for eviction, an eventuality for which the tenants union was very well prepared. Of the hundreds of court cases stemming from the strike, more than 90% resulted in victory — in the form of rent abatements, orders of repair, or both — for the tenants. And, most significantly, one case — Rome v. Walker — resulted in a State Supreme Court ruling upholding the right of Michigan tenants to withhold rent.

While educating tenants, coordinating the strike, and helping to strikers to defend themselves in court, the tenants union scrambled to defend itself and striking students from other forms of landlord retaliation. Some landlords locked-out striking tenants, throwing their belongings on the street, while others achieved the same end by cutting off utilities. A few landlords threatened and physically intimidated striking tenants, leading to the creation of a tenants union 24-hour mobile defense team.

Local attorney Jonathan Rose, who joined the tenants union in 1969 and served as its attorney in 1970, recalls the exciting tenor of the times. “The tenants union was a high energy, optimistic undertaking. The tenants union shared the lobby of the Student Activities building with the student government. The Black Action Movement (BAM) was organizing outside the window while the tenants union was working inside…. There was a high spirit of grassroots organizing.” When the BAM strike against the University began, the tenants union organizers encouraged rent strikers to participate in the BAM-led general strike. An AATU flyer printed at the time noted that the high cost of housing in Ann Arbor contributed to low Black enrollment and concluded that “the general strike [is] the only tactic left to force the University to grant the BAM demands.”

The student organizers of the tenants union also had to grapple with the University. Then, as now, the University played a significant role in the Ann Arbor’s housing woes. Then, as now, the University provided a captive market of unsophisticated consumers for landlords, was slow to respond to student demands for additional on-campus housing, and drove up property tax rates by removing land from the city tax rolls. But, rather than supporting its students’ attempts to obtain more habitable housing, the University chose to respond to the rent strike by threatening striking students with academic sanctions.

While the University never followed through on its threat to sanction striking students, its preparations to do so set the stage for one of the most dramatic incidents of the strike. A local bank agreed to provide the University with the names of students who were holding rent in escrow. In response, the tenants union called for all students to withdraw all of their funds from that bank on a single day. The students responded, withdrawing more than $100,000 and closing 400 accounts. Students stood on the street corner burning their bank books. The bank closed early that day, and went out of business soon thereafter.

Other local tenants were encouraged by the success of the student rent strike. Public housing tenants launched a 1971 rent strike complaining, among other problems, of ankle-deep mud in ground-floor apartments.

Positive outcomes of the rent strike of 1969-1971 were not limited to court victories and local tenant empowerment. Because of the national attention directed at the strike, which included articles in such venues as Business Week and the New York Times, student tenant associations modeled on the Ann Arbor Tenants Union sprang up across the country. Some, like the AATU, have survived and thrived into the present. Ann Arbor’s successful rent strike also helped to spark the national consumer rights movement, which would become so important later in the 1970s.

While AATU has turned out to be one of the most stable organizations coming out of the late 1960s, its founders did not intend to found a permanent organization. Their original goal was simply to organize an effective strike, bringing the tactics of democratic unionism to landlord-tenant relations. However, as the strike progressed, tenants’ desires for a permanent and more extensive tenant association prevailed. The new AATU opened itself to non-striking tenants and began to take action on a number of issues. One of the most pressing concerns of local renters was the University’s failure to adequately house its students. In an interesting precursor to the tactic used by homelessness activists in the 1990s, the AATU constructed a ‘tent city’ on the U-M diag in the fall of 1970. For three weeks, student protesters lived on the diag in tents in order to protest dorm over-crowding and publicize the University’s role in the local housing crisis. That protest ended only when a hepatitis scare caused health officials to order the tent city destroyed.

Another dramatic series of early AATU actions involved State Crime Commissioner Louis Rome. The AATU staged a number of demonstrations intended to show that while Rome was enforcing the law in Lansing, he was breaking the law as a landlord in Ann Arbor. A 1970 demonstration in Lansing paved the way for Rome’s resignation as State Crime Commissioner — which he tendered only hours before pleading guilty to criminal charges stemming from excessive Ann Arbor Housing Code violations in his buildings.

Following the close of the all-city rent strike, the AATU found itself with little money and a lot of responsibilities. While financial support for the strike itself had come from a number of sources, including a large donation from the UAW and a benefit concert by Joan Baez, the AATU had a harder time finding support for more mundane tasks like following up on court cases in the appeals phase, providing day-to-day tenant counseling services, and working to expand the legal rights of tenants in Michigan. Tenants who could not afford to pay AATU dues wanted and needed AATU services, but the costs of providing those services had to be covered somehow.

The AATU sought and gained funding from the U-M student government and agreed in exchange to provide the benefits of AATU membership to all students without charge. That agreement has persisted, in various permutations, to this day. Then, as now, services to low-income non-student renters were funded by donations and grants while non-student renters who could afford to do so were asked to pay AATU dues in exchange for AATU services.

In addition to providing educational services to individual tenants and helping groups of tenants to organize rent strikes, the AATU in the 1970s worked to enhance the rights of all Michigan tenants. In Lansing, the AATU helped to pass the’lock-out law’ (which prohibits landlords from using extra-legal tactics like changing locks or shutting off utilities to evict tenants), the law prohibiting retaliatory eviction (which protects tenants who join tenant associations or otherwise exercise their legal rights), the Truth in Renting Act (which regulates leases), and the Security Deposit Act (which controls the collection and return of deposits). Each of these laws is strongly pro-tenant, and every Michigan renter now enjoys their protection. The AATU also worked in coalition with other organizations to support passage of the state’s consumer protection and anti-discrimination laws.

This list of legislative victories might seem to suggest that the AATU had become a tamer and less controversial organization. Nothing could be further from the truth. During this period, the AATU continued to organize hotly contested rent strikes and to use the tactics of dramatic demonstration in order to publicize pressing problems. Such efforts concerning the plight of low-income mobile home residents led to the extension of tenants rights to those who rent space in mobile home parks.

AATU rent strikes in the 1970s were not always so successful at achieving wider ends. While most strikes concerning poor conditions or landlord abuses continued to result in court victories or out-of-court settlements favoring tenants, strikes for lower housing prices or collective bargaining agreements were less effective. One exception to that general rule was the Trony strike of 1976, which resulted in a unique collective bargaining agreement between the landlord and the AATU. As always, AATU rent strikes were emotional affairs. Recalling her participation in the 1976 strike against Edith Epstein’s Reliable Realty, bookstore owner Lynden Kelly says that she and other tenants felt “very scared… but also empowered.” In lawsuits arising from that strike, tenants represented themselves with the assistance of the AATU and won significant victories. Kelly reports that the process was “easy, once you got over your nervousness” and that negotiating “as a bloc” rather than as individuals was a useful strategy.

In the 1980s, the AATU turned its attention to local housing legislation, helping to revise the Ann Arbor Housing Code and working with environmentalists to pass the Weatherization as Responsible Management (WARM) ordinance. As the 80s progressed, the AATU, like other housing organizations across the country, focused increasing attention on the critical lack of affordable housing.

Since the chief complaint of Ann Arbor renters has always been high prices, the AATU had always worked for fair rents. As homelessness increased, the problem became more urgent. Local efforts to institute rent control had been repeatedly thwarted and were now moot due to a provision in state law forbidding localities from imposing rent control. This left local housing activists with only a few options for dealing with the problem. AATU efforts to encourage public funding of new affordable housing,preserve the existing stock of low-income housing by forcing landlords to make necessary repairs, and pressure the University to build more student housing have played an important role in the ongoing local struggle against homelessness. Since eviction is the most common immediate cause of homelessness, AATU anti-eviction efforts on behalf of low-income tenants prevent homelessness on a case-by-case basis.

The AATU’s emphasis on service to individual tenants combined with activism on behalf of all tenants has continued into the 1990s. In this decade, the AATU has worked in coalition with a diverse set of organizations in order to achieve common goals. For example, the AATU has worked with feminist organizations in order to pass a privacy ordinance, with gay and lesbian organizations to open University housing to same-sex couples, with disability rights organizations to enforce fair housing laws, and with anti-racist organizations to contest police harassment at public housing sites. This coalition work has proceeded on top of the day-to-day work of the AATU and despite a significant backlash against tenant rights in general and the AATU in particular.

The effects of that backlash cannot be overstated. During the years that I coordinated the AATU, we spent a lot of our time simply blocking landlord efforts to overturn or dilute existing tenants rights. Every year, the state House of Representatives considered outlawing — yes, outlawing — the mandatory housing inspections required many Michigan localities. The integrity of our local Housing Code is constantly threatened by landlord demands for exceptions and revisions. Perhaps the most serious local threat to tenant rights in this decade was posed by the Ann Arbor ‘Y’ which claimed — with the strong support of Mayor Sheldon and several City Council members — that its tenants were not entitled to the rights provided by state and federal law.

The AATU became heavily enmeshed in the local controversy concerning the ‘Y’ when a ‘Y’ tenant who was also a University of Michigan student came to us with documentation of an egregious violation of her rights. She had experienced what she felt to be sexual harassment by a ‘Y’ staff member so she wrote a letter of complaint to the ‘Y’ Board of Directors. In response, she received a letter ordering her to vacate her room within 72 hours and notifying her that the ‘Y’ would give a bad reference to any landlord who inquired about her. Looking into our records, we found a number of tenant complaints of similar evictions without due process. The AATU ended up suing the ‘Y’ on behalf of its tenants and did win a ruling requiring the ‘Y’ to abide by landlord-tenant law. Attempts to force the ‘Y’ to live up to the agreements it made when obtaining public funding for its building have been unsuccessful so far.

The ‘Y’ case provided me with one of the most chilling moments in my association with the AATU. I cannot describe how it felt to hear the attorney for the ‘Y’ say — in open court — that its tenants did not deserve due process in evictions because many of them are people with mental disabilities.

Another highly-publicized AATU action of the 1990s, the Baker Commons rent strike of 1994-95, inspired all of the AATU staff and associates who worked on it. Baker Commons is a public housing site serving seniors and people with disabilities. Responding to requests from tenants, the AATU organized a rent strike to compel the Housing Commission to make urgently needed repairs. While about a third of the building’s tenants began the strike, threats and misleading information from the Housing Commission soon reduced the number of strikers to a handful. The Housing Commission then sued to evict the remaining strikers but dropped the suit as soon as they realized that the tenants had a lawyer — the same Jonathan Rose who had represented the AATU back in 1970. Negotiations dragged on and then failed. The tenants sued the Housing Commission, asking the judge to order the repairs made. In the strike’s 16th month, the case was settled out of court since most of the repairs had been made or were in progress; the settlement allowed the tenants to permanently retain almost all of the rent that they had withheld.

Speaking at an AATU educational seminar in 1993, founding member Steve Burkhart said that the students who organized the rent strike of 1969 succeeded in part because they wholeheartedly believed that they could. The same could be said of the Baker Commons tenants. Commenting on the staying power of the AATU, Burkhart stressed the importance of relationships in community organizing.

In a sense, unionism is nothing other than the creation and maintenance of relationships. The AATU has survived against the odds precisely because of the relationships — both among people and between people and the organization — that it has engendered. In the fall of 1997, the AATU faced a funding crisis so severe that the continued existence of the organization was in question. There was no money to pay staff members and no guaranteed source of funding for the coming year. A team of community volunteers — including four former AATU coordinators, several former AATU volunteers, and members of various organizations with which the AATU had worked in the past — came together to rescue the AATU. In short order, they staffed the tenant counseling line, held fund raising events, secured grants for the coming year, and hired a new coordinator. Today the AATU is as strong as it ever was, serving 200 tenants per month on its counseling line, organizing tenants, putting out The Tenants’ Voice newspaper, and producing its weekly radio show, Tenant Talk.

That busy schedule is another of the secrets of the AATU’s success. Unlike many other organizations, the AATU has never chosen between service and activism. In the absence of activism, social services provide short-term solutions for long-term problems. On the other hand, activism aimed at long-term solutions often leaves people without solutions for the problems they face right now. While it has often taken heat from every direction for doing so, the AATU has steadfastly insisted on pursuing both paths. Tenants who contact the AATU receive the tools and information they need to solve their immediate housing problems; they are also given the opportunity to learn about, and work to change, the underlying causes of those problems.

The AATU’s preference for the tactics of direct action is another reason for its continued existence. I define ‘direct action’ as any tactic that actually does something about the problem it seeks to address. Demonstrations just… demonstrate. While the common tactics of marches and rallies do have expressive value and do provide some education to the public, they no longer have the power to bring about change by themselves. New activists fed on a diet of only demonstrations and marches soon become depleted and demoralized. In contrast, direct action offers something to do with all of the energy stirred up by demonstrations and provides visible results at every turn. Rent strikes are direct action: the target (the landlord) is actually affected by the action from the moment that it commences. Other forms of direct action used by various movements include needle exchange programs, reclamation of abandoned buildings, and physically blocking the destruction of environmental resources. Each of these examples of non-violent direct action actually does something about the problem while at the same time, through media coverage, educating the public about the problem and its potential solutions. By consistently including non-violent direct action in its spectrum of activities, the AATU has ensured that activists new to the AATU will be offered the chance to actually affect the problems which concern them.

As Jonathan Rose often says, “tenants have more rights than they know and less rights than they need.” The housing problems that face us today are different, but no less compelling, than those of 1969. The AATU is doing something about them every day, and stands ready to do more. The AATU’s present coordinator, Melissa Danforth, has a clear vision of several energetic actions that could and should be undertaken by the AATU in the coming years. However, she reports that the AATU’s resources are currently stretched to the limit by the costs of routine operations. Volunteers and donations are urgently needed to help the AATU bring its legacy of activism into a fourth decade and a new century.