All About Portland Tenants United

evergreen_web_banner.png

KBOO is open to the public! To visit the station, contact your staff person or call 503-231-8032.


Produced by: 
KBOO
Air date: 
Mon, 01/25/2016 - 12:00am
Discussion of why a tenant's union is needed and the one that is growing and acting in PDX

Laurie Mercier talks with tenant union organizer and Old Mole Joe Clement about Portland Tenants United (PTU)  and tenant unionism as a response to the housing crisis. PTU is a tenant union that has grown out of a number of communities and have already helped stop one eviction, as Joe and Laurie discuss. They also talk about PTU's Open House on January 30th from 12:00 - 3:00PM at the SE Lucky Lab on Hawthorne between 9th and 10th.

Joe explains tenant unionism as a direct corollary to historically proven methods of labor unionism: strength of numbers, solidarity and collective action, and direct/material forms power in the landlord-tenant relationship. They also consider how a tight supply of housing doesn't adequately explain where rent increases come from. Joe argues that the provision of housing "as a business" or investment , and the overt or implicit class solidarity between landlords and other BIGGER profiteering interests (like banks, developers, and insurance agencies), is the elephant in the housing-crisis room, and is necessary to consider when assessing rising rents, expensive apartments, displacement, as well as discrimination and retaliation against tenants.

Audio by Topic: