The History and Possible Future of Rent Strikes

Cody, Robert and Katy discuss the past, present and future of rent strikes.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Worst Year Ever, A production of I Heart
Radio Well Together everything, so don't don't do it's Yeah.

(00:25):
Still some might say the worst although early to say,
too early to say it's only April. It's only April. Well,
I guess to be fair, we have to look at
all the other years that come after this year. Really
pass judgment on it if this is the worst year ever.
But it's shaping up to look that way. Oh no,

(00:47):
I mean, Katie. I I actually called earlier in the
year and it continues to be my contention that this
will be the last year ever. Um, yeah, not next year.
I figured, like, this is no worst year, but then
the last one, we don't even get one more. Nope, okay,
that's something positive to look forward to. Last year ever.

(01:09):
Uh Now I can't say if that's because uh we're
the world will end or because we're going to finally
uh smarten up and go back to using bock tunes
to measure the passage of time. I'm maybe maybe the
word year just won't have any relic exactly. That's my way.
So just like you're just gonna change up some calendars,

(01:31):
it's fine. Speaking of fundamental shifts in the nature of
society that might be necessary to save our lives, like
using anyway, let's talk about rent strikes. There's a rent
good transition. Yeah, thank you. I impared myself on that.
I hope I remembered accurately what a bock tune is
the artful? I don't know. I just kept my mouth

(01:54):
shut and smiled. Um, yeah, there is a rent strike.
Should we talk about? Yes, so I think that's what
I'm prepared to talk about. All right, Well let's do
that for between forty minutes and an hour. Um. So, yeah,
things aren't great in in the you know, the economy. Um,

(02:15):
it's uh, it's not at its best at the moment.
The coronavirus has put a lot of people out of work.
And for a little bit of context of like just
how bad it is, um, In March, the Bureau of
Labor Statistics officially noted the economy lost seven hundred and
one thousand jobs. Uh, and it was that was that

(02:36):
made it the worst month for American jobs since the
Great Recession into that's bad. So seven thousand one jobs, though,
is just like what actually got registered in the month
of March. Obviously, it didn't really hit most of US
until right at the end of that month. And so
that seven seven hundred one thousand jobs, which is the

(03:00):
worst month of job loss since the Great Recession, is
actually a tiny fraction of how bad it is. UM.
At the moment, we're looking at six point six million
UM new claims fire by US workers for unemployment last week,
and then three point three million a week before that
time we were recording this. We've got to be over
ten million UM last week. Yeah, it is, it is

(03:23):
a lot. It's dare I say it, unprecedented. Yeah, It's
never happened, not like nothing, Nothing on this scale of
job loss has ever happened before, which is bad. That's
that's bad. Yeah. So obviously, like ten million people out
of work, a chunk of those people are going to

(03:44):
have trouble paying rent for the next month because Yeah,
and you find different statistics based on who you listen to.
I found one article from two thousand nineteen during you know,
you remember that government shutdown that I barely remember now,
but it was the longest one in history, that ridiculous
government shutdown, the one from forty years ago. Yeah, but

(04:07):
it was two thousand nineteen, right, Yeah, forty years ago
or so back back in the before times, UM, when
that hit, obviously a lot of people found themselves having
trouble paying rent. UM. And during that time, Career Builder
put out a survey that suggested about seventy eight percent
of U S workers lived paycheck to paycheck. UM. Now

(04:29):
there's other that's too many. There's other I I kind
of there's a bunch of different daddy here. So UM,
there's a Nielsen survey that suggests half of workers who
make under fifty grand lift paycheck to paycheck UM, or
up to seventy four percent of all employees. UM. That's
from an American Payroll Association UH study. So anyway, between

(04:50):
fifty and seventy five is a pretty safe guess for
the number of Americans who live paycheck to paycheck. UH.
At least three and ten Americans have no emergency savings whatsoever. Um.
And you know, even one in four families making a
hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year or more live
paycheck to paycheck. Because that's not actually that much money

(05:11):
in our current Yeah, depending on where you live, right, Like,
it's a shipload of money in rural Ida, yeah exactly. Um, Yeah,
it's a very good point. So, uh, and back into this.
In seventeen, there was a wave of stories suggesting about
six out of ten Americans couldn't cover a five dollar emergency.
So I think it would be safe to say that

(05:32):
of that ten million people, at least about six million
of them aren't going to be able to cover rent
without assistance for this next month. You know, they probably
got this month because a lot of people work through
all over most of March. You know, really April one
is kind of the first month people are getting affected
by this, But I think June is going to be
when it starts to bite. Yeah. Oh, so it's not

(05:55):
gonna be one month and then everything's fine. It's sure
not Cody. So, so we're in this situation where, um,
you've suddenly got conservatively six million Americans who can't make
rent next month, and a lot of people are saying,
now is the motherfucking time for a rent strike? Right? Like,
what else are we gonna do? And Sophie and I

(06:16):
conducted an interview with a young man UM who organized uh,
several buildings all the people who are under his landlord. Um,
he and a partner organized everybody into a rent strike.
UM or at least a sizeable chunk of the of
the people living there. And he pointed at a couple
of things that I thought were interesting. One of them was,
I'm trying to even figure out how to describe this

(06:36):
piece of bullshit. It's really fucking shitty. So basically, the
landlord sent out a letter announcing a rent freeze, but
he wasn't actually freezing the rent. He was just agreeing
not to increase rent, and that's what he was calling
a rent freeze. But a lot of the people in
this this this is like a low income building that
this dude, um Ali Khan Pabani lives in um And

(06:56):
and that's the guy who organized the strike, And he's
like a lot of the people who live here are
are um there. They're immigrants, you know, they're folks who
don't necessarily understand what's being written in the letter. They
see rent freeze. So a lot of folks, he found,
mistakenly thought they didn't have to pay um Yeah. Um
so like shady ship like that going down um And, Yeah,

(07:19):
it was. It was an interesting call. So he like,
there's individuals who have started doing this. There's a lot
of them up in New York to our guy was
in Ali cons in uh Toronto. Um, there's people trying
to do it in parts of Los Angeles. Um. But
there's also like this kind of movement among some groups
to try and like this should be a national thing, right,
Like it'll some people, Like it'll work out for some people,

(07:42):
it won't for others, and nothing will happen for the
whole of American workers if they're not some sort of
mass movement to actually do this, which has never happened before.
There have been big rent strikes, but never like a
nationwide one in the United States. UM. So yeah, that's
kind of where we are at them. It's a good
broad overview here. Um. The mo I like that. Yeah,

(08:05):
I try to keep things fun. It's complicated. What do
we think the likelihood of being able to organize a
nationwide rent strike looks like? Yeah, and that that's something
Alcan mentioned about. Like when you're trying to get organized
just a building for a rent strike, there's a certain
minimum threshold, you know, of people in the building you
need to get. You don't have to get everyone on board,

(08:26):
but if you don't get more than a certain number
on board, then it's pretty easy for the landlord to
just you know kick you all out. Um. Yeah, yeah,
like you have to get most of you know, the
people available to agree to stop to actually have any
kind of threat to make. And it's kind of the
same looking at nationwide, like a certain number of people
needed would need to be a part of this. So

(08:48):
my we'll get into this as we get into the
episode a bit more. Um. And I looked a little
bit into the economics the potential economic fall out of
something like this, and you know, there's no answers, there's
just ideas of what could happen. But one of the
things that occurs to me is that there are a
lot of big property management companies. Of course, there are

(09:12):
also a lot of properties that are owned by small businesses,
by a family that depends upon this income to pay
their mortgage, and maybe they don't qualify for mortgage relief.
Like my parents they're struggling right now because they're not
sure how they're going to come out of this with
their house, Like they're not going to get the mortgage relief. Um,

(09:36):
but that's a separate issue from this. But uh, and
so that to me, it's like, yes, the the idea
of a rent strike. Absolutely, I'm I'm behind this, but
unless it's on a scale that causes a big enough
ripple where the government takes action to protect the homeowners
as well in some capacity, you know, like these people

(09:56):
that will be losing their entire savings when they lose
their home. Um, And and that's what makes me very nervous,
is like, how do we get this to the point
where it makes a big enough of an effect that
the government interjects, do you know what I mean? Yeah?
And it is important. So let's talk about some numbers
here when it comes to individual landlords. So one of

(10:17):
the things that happens whenever there's discussion about a rent
strike is, um, you know what about like very few people.
Nobody really feels any sort of sympathy for somebody who
owns a massive, five hundred room condo, right Like, it's
usually some gigantic corporation, and people don't. Really you're not
gonna get anybody on board that morally, but you can
get people on board with like these little mom and pop.

(10:38):
I think there's like the kind of archetypal idea of
the little old lady who's running out her basement or
something like that, and UM, so I wanted to kind
of establish what the scope of that is. How many
of those folks there are? So there are between eight
they're around eight million individual landlords in the United States. UM.
And an individual landlord is somebody who owns between one

(10:58):
and ten properties. And so people who fall into this
category owner managed half the rental properties in the nation. UM.
And how's about forty eight million Americans? Uh? And that's
it's that data is simultaneously. UM. That's a lot of data,
and it's also almost entirely useless for actually answering this
question because you'll notice there's a you say, everyone who

(11:23):
has between one in ten properties is um is an
individual landlord. That means that you're throwing into the same
category people who do literally rent out a spare room
in their house and people who own ten buildings, which
is probably fifty million dollars in property. And like a
reasonable city, you know, that's a big business who has

(11:46):
made this decision to to find that between one and
time because there's that's such a huge gap. Yeah, it's
a vail um, which is a v A I L no. No,
I mean like the company that conducted the study. Uh.
And there they're a software company. They sell like online

(12:08):
rental platforms and stuff. I guess. Uh. So they conducted
this study with mom and pop landlords, which again includes
people who have a hundred fifty dollar house and a
converted garage and a guy who owns ten buildings in
midtown Manhattan. Yeah, it range. It ranges from mom and
pop to but that also like dozen include like you know,

(12:29):
if somebody owns a building with four units versus somebody
who owns one, or owns four places with one unit
versus somebody who owns one building with four hundred units.
These are all like very different. Yeah, it's it's fucking
hard to figure out how many people fit in that
because my current living situation is actually that sort of thing.

(12:50):
I don't have a traditional landlord. I have a friend
with a house and they had an empty backhouse, and
we worked out an arrangement whereby I pay rent and
they it helps cover their mortgage. But like they're not,
this isn't most of their income. This is just like
you all of a sudden stopped paying them rent right
now when they've lost their work as well. That could

(13:11):
be a tricky situation for that that would that would suck,
and I would feel I would not do that because
they're like friends of mine. Um, but that so and
and one of the very frustrated Yeah, uh, it's I mean,
there's a couple of there's a number of moral complexities here,
but I do think it's really clear and important to

(13:33):
mention that, like most people don't have a good landlord,
I have a lot of landlords, and about twenty of
them were people who I care about and don't want
to see fucked over at about them were criminalolutely. I
mean in any pushback year getting from me right now
is not to say that I don't support this or not. No, no, no,

(13:53):
vitally interested in it. It's just a a real concern
with all of this. I mean, let's run our own
internal pole. Robert has renting a backhouse one person. My
apartment complex is owned by a big company who sucks.
Cody Copy. Did they suck? A lovely A lovely man.
This is is a rental property. Do they suck? I

(14:15):
do not want to not pay rent great? Yeah, off
the record, they're not great. On the record, not great.
My place I've been. I've been fighting with them on
certain things during this time. Very very very very very
strongly and certain different different things. It's it's very frustrating
living in a building owned by a big corporation that

(14:36):
is not taking care of their residences. Yeah, and my experience,
there's there's two kinds of rentals in Los Angeles. Um
expensive and run by giant companies UM who do things
but are a pain in the ass about it. And
then affordable properties that are run by criminals and you

(15:00):
will get no maintenance and it will be a fire
hazard and that's but you're gonna be able to live
on the West Side for nine bucks a month. So
criminals are are what you go with. Yeah, I think
the numbers are important to get into Katie. It's in
it's kind of impossible to say, like how many people
will that like people and not giant companies will get

(15:23):
fucked over if there's a rent strike, um, but it
is worth noting that the people who will get fucked
over most within the community of landlords will probably be
the small landlord. Yeah. The big companies get have some
protections they're going to so they're bigger. They also especially

(15:45):
like in the current climate, when the leader of the
country is landlord essentially, you know, I like I I
took some of this Twitter to try to get some
other people's perspective on it, and the answer is kind
of like, well, they could probably we renegotiate their mortgage,
or you know, maybe you can work out a situation
where the renters have um a little bit of money,

(16:09):
you know, are now sure make people part owners in
their buildings. I think that would be awesome. But but
I again, I don't find that to be a realistic outcome,
say for your landlord Proberly, Yeah, I think it's a
realistic outcome for people whose landlords are giant corporations. If
you're like living in somebody's fucking spare room, no that

(16:29):
that they may not be on board with that. And
I don't think it's necessarily fair. Um. But yeah, it's um,
it's it's a problem, and there's a there's another problem
that we also need to talk about when we talk
about the impact of a rent strike, because it is
important as well. About seventeen and a half million people
in the United States are directly or indirectly employed by
property owners and management companies. UM. And these are everyone

(16:52):
from like the guy who wakes you up at seven
in the morning with a leafblower, UM where probably shouldn't
be there to your your plumber who it provides an
incredibly useful uh uh fucking um service in and shouldn't
be out on his ass. None of them should be
out on their ass. But not to mention the people
that work in the offices and whatnot. But yeah, just

(17:15):
the maintenance, the staff people that are employed. Yeah, even
if and I think it's fair you you you accept
plus of of of landlords are doing something shady or
fucked up and I hate them. Um. Like there's a
lot of just random folks who are going to be
affected by this, and then they will be unemployed and
then they will and like there are also problems in

(17:37):
terms of like if we're a huge amount of any
given cities, UM budget comes from the taxes that property
owners pay UM, which is what will allow them to
provide things like relief to people. I mean, unless you
you get the federal government coming in UM. And I
guess one of the things Ali can pointed out is

(17:58):
that like sort of the point of doing a rent
strike is to get all of those people on board
and demand. So like there's nothing that says that if
you're rent striking and you have a landlord that is
a little old lady who has an investment property, Um,
then it's in your interest to lobby for her to
get mortgage relief too. Like these are both part of

(18:20):
the same problem, which is that like we were trying
to play by the rules and we got fucked, and
it's not fair that we get fucked by this, and
we're if you really are that that little old lady
who's not going to qualify for federal stimulus because that's
going to go to the people who own sixty giant buildings, Um,
then then we're in the same We can be on
the same fucking side of this advocating for each other

(18:41):
to not get fucked. Um. It really is more a
matter of it's more of a class thing, right. There's
the people who can afford and the people who can't. Ye. Yeah,
and yeah a lot of people. Yeah, some of those
people who are landlords are in that same category. And
also it's it's important to note not just the people
who can't right now, but the people who can reasonably
envision and this includes everyone in this podcast a future

(19:02):
in which they might not be able to pay rent.
You know, Um, that that's that's uh, where like, And
that's one of the points Alikin made is that, like,
you also need a lot of people in the building
who are still employed and can still make rent to
agree to sign onto this thing to protect both their
neighbors now and themselves in the future. That's important. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah,

(19:24):
speaking of solidarity, you know who expresses solidarity and payments
to our podcast the products and services that supports am
I allowed to say damn straight right before? Now? Yes,
damn straight Together, we're back and Cody and I are

(19:55):
talking about our Rhona beards and whether or not we
should shave them medically. Yes, uh lifestyle, Lee, what about
my Rhona pits? Should I save my runa pits? No,
you're good, Yeah, unless you put unless you put a
respirator on there, in which case I don't think that's
going to do much. But yeah, So I think before

(20:18):
we get into this, so I put together a little
bit of data on historical rent strikes and some fun
anecdotes from those. So I want to get in a
little bit of history. But before we get into a
little bit of history, I'd like to have one election
related side conversation, which is Andrew Yang endorsing and infecting
American soldiers with the coronavirus to help with readiness. Oh boy,

(20:42):
excuse me, but um pardon me? Did you not hear
about this? No? Oh my god. Okay, Uh, I'm gonna
find the exact text of the quote. This is just
like something that fucking happened, and it's awesome. What a
bizarre trajectory for this guy. He is having himself a

(21:02):
real A real evolution is a character. I love the
disruption candidate hopping on CNN and endorsing Joe Biden. Here
is the tweet that Andrew yang Uh made on April five,
quote an army vet friends suggested that soldiers and vets
be allowed to voluntarily get the virus in order to
maintain readiness, provide an immune workforce, and research antibodies. These

(21:26):
guys and gals are hardcore American Flag eighteen thousand and
eight likes. I also like that he's sharing that without
actually editorializing on whether or not that is a good
or a bad idea. He's just saying now and the
the the best response. You have to scroll down a
bit to get it, but it's by Miriam Williamson Marian

(21:47):
Williamson almost twenty thousand likes, and she just she no, no, no,
She's right on this. She just responded, no, Andrew the hero.
We didn't know we needed. That's the right response. Just

(22:10):
give soldiers the plague herd immunity with the soldiers bringing
out well for Boris, I wonder how much that responses
dovetails with her vaccine opinions. Yeah, we don't need to
get into that. But we don't need to get into that.
Let's just celebrate that moment on response way to reply.

(22:32):
But but back to the topic of the episode. Yeah, yeah,
So if we want to think it's valuable to talk
about other rent strikes that have occurred in the United
States and the rest of the world, to talk about
kind of how these things can be organized, um, and
what makes them work or not work. And so I
want to go I want to go back in time

(22:52):
to nineteen o seven Machine Noise please. Yeah, can you
get on that, Cody, Jesus Christ, Katie why, I'm sorry.
It was just such a set and you know, people
would have said something online if we didn't do it. Everyone.

(23:15):
I don't always support these things, but I have to
be fair. It's done so that was terrible, terrible. Wasn't
my idea. It's never my idea, Robert, Please continue with
this is exactly how I wanted it to go. So

(23:37):
in nineteen o seven, sixteen year old Pauline Newman had
been a resident of New York City for six years. UM.
She she lived with her sisters um. They were all
from Lithuania on Madison Street on the Lower East Side.
Uh and they had a tiny tenement with no bathroom
or windows. Um. Pauline eventually got a job shoe sewing

(23:58):
shirtwaists in a factory called Triangle Waste Company, which not
a great story there, but this was about three years
before everybody died in a horrible fire. Um. So, as
you might guess from somebody who lived in like the
the factory that's most famous for being a death trap
in the history of factories. UM. She encountered some frustrations

(24:21):
visa via the labor class versus the capital holding class,
and she became a labor a labor organizer um. And
she was also really frustrated about life in the tenements
in New York City. Uh And in nineteen oh seven,
landlords instituted a rent hike without actually making any improvements
to the filthy, um serviceless buildings that were basically just

(24:43):
holes to throw human beings into that that they owned.
So Pauline got really pissed. He's like, you can't charge
us more money and not provide us with anything else. Um.
And she got four hundred other working girls together. Um.
These were young women who supported themselves in factories. How um.
And they went out and started talking to their families um,

(25:04):
and trying to get their their fathers and brothers and
you know, their family members on board with the idea
of collectively bargaining while demanding really rent decrease um. Yeah.
And this was this was a big deal because in
the last two years, rented increased in that neighbor um. Yeah.

(25:25):
So they were basically just trying to like pull things
back down to something vaguely affordable. Yeah. That's yeah, that's
the uh man. So many of these stories, there's like, yeah,
they demanded to get it down to a slightly more
manageable level. Yeah. It's never like they're demanding a pie
in the sky. It's like it would be nice if
our lives didn't suck uh as much. Yeah. Yeah, And

(25:51):
like the rent strikers now the current rent striker is
like for the duration of social distancing, we want a
moratorium on rents. Um. Yeah. And it's not torri um
being a delay um no, meaning they do not they
are canceled. Actually, holding a rent strike doesn't mean that
your end goal is to not have to pay rent.
You can withhold rent in order to get a decrease

(26:12):
in your rent. You can withhold rent in order to
get necessary services, you know, done upgrades on the building
or whatever. Um. It's just an idea of withholding rent
to get something out of the people that you pay
it to. UM. And I think what's cool about Pauline
is that she she thinks, actually, since we're in a
plague year right now, she thinks, like a virus where

(26:32):
you want to get you you you want to pick
a group of people who are going to be influencers,
like these young women who are kind of like part
of the first generation of young women in New York
City who are like working and supporting themselves. And they
all have, you know, families, and they're all going into
those families and trying to spread things that way. Um.
And so if each of them, you know, convinces two
or three family members. Then suddenly, like you've got this

(26:54):
massive sudden increase in the number of people involved. And
by December, UH, Paul had ten thousand households agreeing to
pay rent. And so they all went on strike in December.
UM building code they and they didn't just like stop
paying rent. They went through all of their buildings and
they tabulated like building code violations and reported them all

(27:14):
in an organized fashion. That so there were suddenly mass
reports coming into this the city against these buildings. UM.
There were demonstrations in the street. Kids burned an effigy
of a landlord. UM and Pauline, who became kind of
the the rent strikes spokesperson, was dubbed by The New
York Times the east Side Joan of arc Um. And Yeah,

(27:35):
and there were there were pushbacks from the landlords. They
shut off water, UM, they ordered evictions, but tenants would
like gather up and stop people from being evicted. The
the NYPD obviously refused to recognize the rent strike. You know,
they were still willing to evict people. So, yeah, they
hold this rent strike. There's a back and forth that
goes on. UM and then in early January they come

(27:56):
together and they uh, they come to an agreement and
about two thousand families got reduced rents. Um. And the Uh,
this didn't get them everything they wanted in other words, right,
like that's that's not nothing, but it's not like most
of what they were asking for. Um. But it started this, Uh,
it started this chain of activism that took about twenty years. Um.

(28:20):
But it led eventually to the passage of rent control laws,
like the first organized rent control laws like in the
United States. So that's like where this comes from. Yeah,
people eventually um. And the the the goal behind those laws,
by the way, was to cap rent att of a
worker's income, which obviously we didn't get most most people
don't live like that and they but we could advocate

(28:45):
for that. Um. It's a good goal. It's a great goal.
It sure sounds nice. Yeah. Um, so that's cool. Rent
controls cool. And Pauline is cool. She wound up running
for Secretary of State of New York. Is a socialist
even though women couldn't vote yet. Um yeah, yeah, yeah,
she was. She was a cool She was a cool activist. So, um.

(29:07):
There's a lot of cool histories, like during the Great Depression, right,
farmers out in the middle of nowhere would do this
really cool thing where um, when somebody who would, like,
you know, a farmer who had bought their land from
the bank and couldn't pay their mortgage anymore when they
got kicked off of the farm. Um, it would be
auctioned by the bank, and so a group of farmers
would show up with guns and would using violent force,

(29:30):
stop anyone else from bidding on the land and let
the new farmer or let the let the guy who
had been kicked off of his land put in a
low bid to get his land back, um, and he
would be the only person who would bid, because a
mob would threaten to murder anyone else who did. Um.
So this happened in some communities as a way to
like uh uh yeah, I mean it was like kind

(29:52):
of there, they're equivalent to this, right, It was like
a mortgage. It was a little bit more of a
crime than a mortgage strike, but it accomplished the same. Um.
It was like people, but it's a fun story. So yeah,
when I was looking into this, I found a really
cool article from website called crime think um who put
out a bunch of fun little booklets that people should

(30:15):
look into. The A lot of great content online. And
it was a strategic It was actually a copy of
a Spanish study by some activists that was an appraisal
of rent strikes throughout history, attempting to analyze all these
different rent strikes around the world and figure out what
the key elements of a successful rent strike are based
on sort of all of the historic data we have.
It's a really cool study. UM. And before I get

(30:37):
into their conclusions, there's a couple of neat, little little
individual stories they want to highlight. They talk about a
nineteen o one rent strike in Roskaman County, Ireland, UM,
with the baron who owned the land, uh like, with
him fighting against all these different local renters who had
like connected together um as part of like a resistance
movement to English colonialism UM in a group called the

(30:59):
United ire League. Uh. And yeah they uh it was
um like. So in nineteen o one there was this
horrible um rainy season that destroyed the harvest and drove
up the price of feed UM and made it impossible
for these people to make their rents. And the baron
who was in charge of things refused to reduce the
rents even in the face of this natural disaster um,

(31:21):
which put a lot of people into debt and led
to a bunch of families getting evicted. Um, which doesn't
sound familiar at all. Um. Yeah, So the people who
lived in this baron's lands put together a strike in
November of nineteen o one. Um. They organized clandestine ly
uh and informally because this was you know, if you

(31:41):
were a landlord in those days, you weren't against having
a bunch of people break the legs of people threatening
a rent strike. Um. And eventually they were able to
spread until ninety of the tenants on this guy's lands
took part in the rent strikes. They built barricades, they
threw rocks at the police, They illegally constructed new buildings
buildings to service their needs. Um. And it was just
like kind of impossible for local law enforcement to really

(32:04):
do anything about it because all of these buildings were
just like completely filled with people who were resisting um
their obligation you know what the baron saw as their
obligation to pay rent um And yeah. Uh. And it
led to in nineteen o three, the English Parliament adopting
extensive agrarian reform and putting it into the system of
tenant farming UM in which people you know, basically lived

(32:27):
like sharecroppers UM on the land of a landlord. So
it worked. You know, all they had to do was
set up barricades and throw rocks at the cops. UM.
But again you see like kind of the some of
the characteristics that shares with New York, where you've got
this clandestine system of organizing that leads to leads you
very quickly getting a large number of people, like an

(32:49):
overwhelming number of the people in the property on board
with the strike. UM. You see like a willingness to
get out into the street, UM, and in some cases
to resist physically UM. And that Yeah, it it also
takes a shipload of you know, months in in this
case of UM commitment to the cause. You know, it's
not it's not a simple thing. It's not over quickly.

(33:11):
So yeah, I don't know. I think that's that's interesting.
I think the history and this kind of stuff is
important to talk. It's obviously different, we live in a
very different world than when these things happen, but it's
a good foundation and it's it's uh, it shows how
they can how effective it can be. Yeah, yeah, yeah,

(33:34):
there's one I really. The last one I really want
to talk about is nineteen thirty one in Barcelona. Um So,
in nineteen thirty one, Barcelona was the most expensive city
in Europe and rent regularly was thirty of people's wages
as compared about fifteen percent and the rest of Europe.
So that actually kind of sounds like where we are
right now. Um yeah, uh, and it was. It was

(33:57):
just a bad situation and a lot of people couldn't
afford to live in real houses, and they had these
horrible little these basically pod hotels for workers where you
would have like a tiny little closets amount of space,
and a lot of particularly young men in Barcelona lived
in these hell holes. Um, which again doesn't sound anything
like what we work, was trying to get billions of
dollars to provide to people. Uh it's fun. So uh

(34:21):
it was. It was bad and in April of of
nineteen thirty one, a rent strike erupted with participants demanding
a forty drop and the cost of their rent. And
this strike went on from April until December and involved
between forty five thousand and a hundred thousand people. Yeah,
and it was um. The so the group that organized

(34:42):
This was essentially founded by the CNT, which is like
the National Confederation of Workers. It was like a construction
worker union kind of sort of thing. Um. And yeah,
neighbors again built barricades together. They resisted evictions. Um. And
when you know, the police would come to evict someone
they were successfully able to fight the police off. They
would throw big parties in the streets, and when the

(35:04):
police won, they would break back into the evicted house
at night and then throw a celebration inside the house
once they reopened it. Um. They were helped by the
fact that the same workers who would shut off the
electricity or the water in the morning were also strikers,
and so we'd just come back in the evening and
turn it back on. Um. So this was all, this
was all cool. They were also protests in front of

(35:25):
landlord's houses. Um. It was uh, it was neat um
and it had there were a lot of times actually
the series of red strikes. UM. But I don't know
if this is the right crowd for what I'm about
to say, But I keep having that song from Rent
going through my head and about how weren't going to

(35:48):
pay last year's rent? All of it? Anyway, that I
just imagined like a big musical party in Barcelona. Yeah,
I can't imagine a strike in Barcelona that didn't have
a musical compose on it. Daniel, if you could put
that track from the musical Rent in this episode, just
dropped the whole musical Rent in here. That's where two

(36:10):
hours we'll be back, after the entirety of Rent together everything,
we're back. Oh my gosh, you guys, there are some
catchy tunes, choreography. Oh my gosh. I remembered Rent as

(36:32):
a very long musical um, and was surprised that it
was a series of ads for toothbrushes, but um, wild
memories work um, but still worth making a movie version of. Yes,
nobody's ever disagreed with that, because I'm sorry that so anyway,

(36:54):
those are some fun historical examples of different rent strikes
and yeah, there's so crime think you know. They published
this um this the Spanish sort of analysis of different
rent strikes throughout history, and it came to some conclusions.
I don't want to quote those conclusions, um, because it
notes that to succeed a rent strike requires three elements
shared dissatisfaction UM, which means that neighbors have to collectivize

(37:16):
their demands and have to like like agree on what
the problem is, not be happy with like the status quo.
You have to have a lot of angry people at once, right, Um.
And also you know, it has to be shared, which
is part of building, you know, communication between different groups
of people who are all affected by this. UH. Number
two is outreach. UM. Most of these strikes begin with
a small number of people and then grow rapidly. UH. Therefore,

(37:38):
they need the means to spread their call to action,
communicate their complaints, and ask for support and solidarity. In
many cases, strikers can win with only a third of
the renters of a property participating in a rent strike,
but sufficient outreach is necessary to get to these numbers
and to make the threat that the strikers spread convincing. UM.
And the the rent striker that we talked to, and
we'll be publishing that interview unedited as a separate things.

(38:00):
You can hear the whole thing. But one of the
things he pointed out with is that, UM, the whole
plague thing that we're in right now means you have
to go differently about organizing. You have to be careful.
You can't you don't want to be just like putting
papers in people's like mailboxes, because you could spread it
that way. He had a number of different tactics that
he used to eventually get the word out to people
who would reach out to other people they knew, and

(38:20):
they got each other on online and they communicated mainly
through like email at that point, and that was kind
of one of his goals was to get everybody online
and talking privately as quickly as possible. And of course,
one of the fun stories that's come out of this
is that this one building and I think it was
New York, succeeded in organizing a rent strike because the
landlord emailed them a letter saying that like, nobody's getting

(38:41):
any rent relief and he c seed everybody. So they
suddenly had like, oh, here's everybody who's pissed that story.
That's a good one. Um, okay. And so the third
thing that that you need for a successful rent strike
is support. Um. The people who are actually striking need
legal support for court procedures. They need housing support for

(39:02):
people who do get evicted if that happens. Um, physical
support to fight evictions. This is all the stuff we
were talking about. You know, you have to have a
community trying to take especially if it's a large scale
rent strike. People need to be able to see to
their at least immediate needs while they fight for the
chance to have a better life. Um. So so much
easier when you are a tenant in a building with

(39:25):
a lot of other people, or you know, again a
property management company versus people that are renting a home
or what right. Yeah, and that's gonna be really one
of the tough things. So a lot of my time
when I lived in Dallas, we had a wonderful slum
lord who I actually am very as slum lords go,

(39:46):
one of the best that you could possibly have. Um,
which is by which I mean when the roof collapsed
on me while I was showering, Um, it was fixed
and only six months. Sorry, I'm sorry. I was taking
a shower and the roof collapsed on me. That actually
happened to me one of my places, like years ago,

(40:08):
to the roof, the roof you know, cut that to
it was it was taken care of. Actually, Katie fun story. Uh,
there was a thunderstorm with hail happening. When the roof
collapsed during hail, it was it was like freezing outside.
That's what caused it. Oh my god. So I had
a fun winter of very very cold, hot showers. There

(40:30):
were sometimes it was actually quite nice once we got
some of it knocked away, but it took six months
to actually affect the repairs. But but the repairman did
come the next day, and while there was nothing he
could do for months, he sold me weed. So as like,

(40:54):
I know what the upside of this is going to be.
So anyway, the situation, this guy, the the slum lord
who owned my place, owned a bunch of properties. I
don't know if he owned more than ten, but he
probably had more than a hundred individual tenants in all
of his properties, just based on what I was able
to figure. But we didn't know who each other was.
He didn't have a he didn't have a sign in
front of every house that said like this is this

(41:15):
in such companies? Yeah, and it would have taken I
think back now, if i'd been interested in really fucking
with him, which I didn't at the time because I
had no money and it was very cheap because he
was a criminal. Um. But if we'd been trying, if
we'd tried to organize for something like this, um stuff
that I might have worked would have been like searching

(41:36):
for the name of the realty company in like past
Craigslist ads or other sort of like to see like
what properties were up recently to try to build an
idea of you know, who lives where and then But
you've got to be careful like all this stuff, you know,
not just because of the COVID nineteen. You have to
be careful. You have to take like the steps we're
all taking to not spread it. But you also you
don't want your landlords to know you're trying to organize

(41:57):
a strike. All these strikes that were successful, by the
time the landlords realized what was happening, a shipload of
people were all on the same page, right, Like that's
an important part of it. Yeah, I imagine a lot
of them would see this coming now, Yeah, I mean
they will now everyone's now people are talking about it exactly. Yeah.
And there's a large petition that's that's going around that's

(42:18):
with um rent strike and yeah, their demands, uh, they're
making to governors in every state, every governor of every
state is to freeze rent, mortgage and utility bill collection
for two months UM. And they've got about a million
and a half Americans who have signed on to that,
and that actually strikes me as just based on historically
we're looking at, I think that's a pretty good list
of demands. Um, I think it's reasonable and achievable. Yeah,

(42:42):
I'm gonna enter Jack with a very similar question to earlier.
That's a freeze, and a freeze still would mean that
they would need to pay eventually. No, no, no, no,
no no no. A freeze you do not pay eventually.
This is all This is very helpful for me because
I've heard to find in different ways, know all of
these things I've heard used in different contexts with people. Yeah,

(43:04):
and I get you're absolutely right. And that was something
again that Ali conventioned at the start where the landlord
was defining a rent freeze as I just won't increase
your rent. Right. So there's different they're actually demanding is
that we don't have to pay for these it does
not accumulate for two months. It seems to me that
are reasonable, Like this is this understanding of like, yeah,

(43:26):
I need to pay my mortgage. I also understand that
you are in a position where you can't pay rent.
Let's make a deal. I've seen these stories of people's
in ord interacting directly with their tenants saying can you
pay two hundred dollars for the next three months, you know,
with people on a human level, or saying like, okay,
then let's negotiate the back pay. Let's negotiate what I've

(43:48):
lost and say like or a payment plan or some
sort of a situation where you're working with people with
the understanding that I'm not going to put you out
on the street. And I'm not saying that I think
that that is better than the rent strike either, just
that there has got to be some grappling coming to
terms of the fact that people cannot pay rent right now,
and homeless people are a huge drain. Not to stated

(44:13):
like that, but it's a huge expense for the country
as well, and and that's a negative effect on our economy. Um.
I think the way to look at it, and this
is something I didn't express uh well in the Mark
Cuban interview, But the fundamental issue I have with like
kind of talking about this in other ways, like bringing
like um, I think the thing that we have to

(44:36):
focus on is that like people have a right to
not be out on the stress. You know, you can
choose live on the street if you want to. I'm
not saying you don't have that right, but you have
the right. People have the right to shelter. Um we
haven't we have enough homes, you know, it's not a
problem of not enough homes have been built. Yeah, people
have right to shelter. This like, even if there was

(44:57):
not a plague. Yeah, even if it wasn't a plague.
But let's take the plague as an opportunity to get
everyone talking about how people have a right to shelter.
And so when something like this happens, we have to
we have to not funk up their ability to stay sheltered. Yeah. Yeah, So, uh, Cody,
did you want to get to um uh your chunk

(45:19):
of this, because that's what I got, motherfucker. Oh, I
do want to. I wanted to state one last thing
that that came up in our our interview with um
Ali Khan, which is that his landlord started reaching out
to people one on one when the rent strike began
and offering them repayment plans that were like special deals
he would give them. And once you sign onto a

(45:41):
repayment plan, you've committed to pay your rent one way
or the other. But it's also he was Alikan was
concerned that, like, I think this is an attempt to
get a bunch of people out of you know, rent
controlled apartments by setting up a payment plan that because
they already lived paycheck to paycheck before the coronavirus, they're
just knock going to be able to make no matter
how reasonable it seems. And then this landlord's got an

(46:06):
ability to not just get them out of the place,
but to stagger it because they're not you know, these
especially these landlords who want a lot of properties, these
giant companies, they're not dumb. They know that it would
be bad pressed to kick a whole building out on
the street at once. Um, So they're going to stagger
the evictions like that's their goal is to still push
people out and raise the rent um and not uh

(46:26):
not have to take the bad press um. And so anyway,
that was something like and it's generally this idea because
I think most people, you know, I've I've never been
in I've never like worked in a in a union.
It was never really an option for the places I worked. Um.
But when you have like a union negotiation, you have
to stop, like that's the reason for collective bargaining is

(46:48):
we're not gonna take I'm not gonna try to get
an individual deal like this is. I'm gonna stand for
this for everybody. Um. Yeah. Uh So that's anyway, That's
that's what I had to talk about. And now it's
I'm going to turn it over to you, Cody. Yeah. Um.
This so I'm sort of gonna go through a little
bit about what individual states are doing, uh and what

(47:10):
is happening on a federal level in regards to rent
evictions and things. It kind of touches on what you
just talked about, Robert and Katie, the questions that you've
keep coming back to. Um, because federally, Uh so Trump
announced this halt on foreclosures. Um, it's good, it's helpful. Um.
It's moretant to note that it's an order. The order
put a moratorium on foreclosures for single family home mortgages

(47:32):
backed by the Federal Housing Administration or obtained through Fannie
may or Freddy mac So it's not really saying like
nobody can get evicted. There these very specific guidelines to
who it applies to. Similarly, the Stimulus Bill forbids evictions
and late charges on any property receiving federal aid. So
again it's very specific to these these these kinds of properties,

(47:54):
but also in regards to the eviction stops, and basically
anytime you'll see something about evictions, it is it pertains
to a certain period usually just a few weeks um.
That might extend as this continues, as people sort of
started taking more seriously. Um. But it only stops the
courts from processing the eviction requests from landlords. The rent
is still owed, the landlords can still submit requests, um.

(48:18):
So when this is all over and the courts resume,
then those requests will be we'll go through the courts. Um. Yeah,
it's the it's the most like what it actually does.
The policy, as it stated, just sort of recognizes that
like we don't want to make the like, we don't
care about these people. All we care about is just
like not making the plague worse right now, exactly. Yeah,

(48:41):
and also not like there's also an element of like,
here's what we're doing, so everybody calmed down, let the
market stabilize, you know, like we're the economy is fine,
we're protecting you when you're not not really yeah, exactly,
it's not it's not as not as protective, I guess
as it's sort of being presented um, because yeah, you'll

(49:04):
still owe that money, and you might be evicted because
your landlord might have submitted an eviction requests while the
courts weren't processing them. Um. According to uh ali Asa
Dorona of the Eviction Lab at Princeton University, it does
not prevent landlords from filing. It might mean that the
marshal won't come to your door to physically evict you
from the house, but your landlord can still initiate an
eviction process. We call it the scarlet e that eviction

(49:27):
could prevent them from accessing future housing, trigger future job loss,
affect their mental and physical health, and their families well being.
So while these moratoria are important first steps, it does
not blanketly ensure that renters everywhere are going to stay
housed um so um. For example, I'm gonna read this
passage from an intercept article, the title of which I

(49:48):
will reveal when I'm done quote on March. On March
twenty five, Westminster Management, a unit of Kushner Companies, filed
a lawsuit requesting sheriff services to enforce an a fiction
against a man residing at the company's Harbor Point Is
State apartment in Essex, Maryland. Days later, on March thirtie,
this is six days ago, Kushner's company filed a collection

(50:10):
lawsuit against another man in the same complex. Um So, anyway,
that article is called coronavirus hasn't stopped Jared Kushner's real
estate empire from hounding tenants with debt collection eviction lawsuits.
It's a long title, a long title, very descriptive about
the president's son in law, Cody. That makes me wonder,

(50:32):
is Jared Kushner involved in this somehow? It seems like
it's possible that the real estate mogul's real estate moguls
step son in law is maybe doing the exact thing
that he's told not to by the federal government. Um So, yeah,
just a lot of these, uh the state actions are
just very similar to what's going on federally. UM Alabama,

(50:52):
for example, no evictions during a public health emergency. It's
all sort of like, no evictions during when this state
declares this and urgency. UM Alaska UH forestall divictions of
tenants covered by the Alaska Housing Finance Corporations, Specifically UM
stall diviction hearings until May one. That date is going

(51:13):
to pop up a lot that general time period. A
lot of these are just for April UM. Again, I
assume that these are going to be extended as this progresses,
But a lot of them have started out being very
conservative about like, Okay, April, we're gonna take care of.
But then I guess you know, you're on your own.
So a lot of these apply only April, except for

(51:33):
the next state alphabetically, which is Arizona. UM who stalls
on evictions is supposed to last twenty days since March UM.
So there are some states that are didn't know how
long this is going to take, and like, okay, for
four months, for three months, Uh, this is gonna take effect.
Uh in California. Oh so in Arkansas they have not

(51:56):
announced anything. Um, they're good, They're fine, they're good, They're
they're good. Um, California, all of our advice should be
except for Arkansas, y'all got this. Yeah, I know you
can take care of You're good. You're good. I'm not
eve gonna check in with you. You're you're good. I'm
just gonna assume that story is ending happily. Um, California

(52:16):
no evictions through May. Some programs uh exist to differ
mortgage payments. Again, it's like a variety throughout the states.
On theme with what we've been talking about. There's a
piece in the l A Times. L A has a
coronavirus eviction ban, but landlords are finding ways to demand
rent and yeah. So one example describes a woman losing

(52:37):
her job as a bartender and then many many hours
and her other job and talking to her landlord and
then quote the company responded with a letter outlining terms
for it to agree to temporary relief and a repayment plan,
among them that she turned over any money from a
federal stimulus check or from a charity within five days. Um.

(53:00):
The landlord then yeah, yeah, Um the landlord said that
the letter was a draft and it was not supposed
to be sent out. Um. So this speaks again to uh, Katie,
your questions and Robert what you were talking about. Um.
The the whole article describes how some landlords are being,

(53:20):
you know, very dishonest about the process of not paying
rent during this time, about the process of proving that
you can't and the process of paying it back, which
for a life of places like up to a year,
despite the letter having that part that said within five days. Um.
And despite that letter that was a draft, it was
not supposed to be sent out. And so I'm actually

(53:44):
gonna kind of stop there, uh, because we could go
through all the different states, but none are that different. Uh.
They all have sort of similar program similar eviction moratoriums. Um.
I would look into your specific one because those rule
are important, and like we're saying, uh, they're going to
try to get you to sign these these contracts and

(54:07):
these waivers to get you to get on this on
a payment plan that isn't necessarily what your state is
uh is a part of or approving. Yeah. I just
wanted to briefly mention something that I read in the
Guardian today. Um uh. And it's about Oakland and they
seem to be doing a pretty doing something interesting at
least different than the rest of the country. I'm not

(54:28):
saying it's good enough, but it's something. Um. Anyway, the
city of Oakland has passed what advocates say was the
strongest protection in the state, with a moratorium that prohibits
all evictions and prevents late fees and rent hikes. In
the next two months. While tenants will owe back rent
when the emergency is over, the ordinance prohibits landlords from
evicting them because of nonpayment during that time. Um. And

(54:51):
that's a move that's meant to encourage people establishing payment plans. Uh.
And I And I yeah, I'm not saying that that's
good enough, but it is something saying like not only
is there a moratorium or whatever, it's saying that you
can't be evicted because you're struggling to pay this back pay,
you know what I mean? Right, right, Like knowing that

(55:12):
like these it's not just the moment, but it's not
like it's not like we're throwing you to the curb
the second this is over. It's let's work together to
figure this out. Right. A lot of these situations are like, Okay,
in may or or June, you're going to start trying
to evict me again, um. Right. And I think that's
a good example because I think that there it's less

(55:34):
about like on the federal level in the States, and
more like individual cities that are sort of doing these
kinds of things. Um. There's very little about rent specifically.
It's all about just sort of you can't get evicted
during this month. You still have to pay the rent
in the future. Um, but I wanted to call it
just a few. In Boise, Idaho, um Public Housing has
waved rent um as well as any removals. Chicago is

(55:56):
providing two thousand residents with one tho dollar grants to
help cover rent. And yeah, I know, I'm like really
stramping the bottom of the barrel. It's like, I find
Chicago's nickname the city of exactly two thousand people. But
at least they're doing that versus other places that aren't

(56:17):
doing anything exac But it's like the Cuomo argument, like, well,
he's not shipping his pants and screaming exactly. We don't
want any cities to be doing that. Screaming isn't helpful.
We'd have to have a much larger conversation about what

(56:38):
a city is and how do they ship itself exactly?
How is that possible? What are you going to do
with all the ships? You know you can use it
for stuff. Yeah, I think there's going to be. If
we really want the answers to these questions, we're going
to have to start conducting some interviews. And it's only
right that we start with should I should I throw
some more shade at Cleveland. Go for it, do it. UM.

(57:02):
But yeah, so Massachusetts UH is providing five million dollars
in rental assistance. These are like rental assistance programs. It's
not saying like you can't UM. In Nebraska, actually, a
landlord group UH called Metro Omaha Property Owners Association UM
has requested it. Sounded excited before they said this. His
request is members reduced rents by ten percent in the

(57:24):
months of April. UH. So, like I know, solving the problem. Unbelievable. UM.
Speaking of Andrew Crow Andrew Cuomo UM, he said he
quote took care of the rent issue despite having no
policy in place about it. It's interesting phrase to say,
I wish there was I wish there was a comparison

(57:45):
to a leader that says stuff like that. UM. Just
sort of like I did it. I took care of
It's a great deal. But then there's nothing behind it.
I don't know. It's nice to be light about in
the traditional way politicians lie as opposed to being led
about about. For example, fake medicine. Yes, backward politicians would

(58:07):
take credit for introducing policies that didn't exist and that Yeah,
those halcyon days. Uh, let's let's think about about that
and do some time machine noises. Uh. Oh so also
so quoted today announced seas increasing maximum fines uh if

(58:32):
you violate social distancing the social distance or from five
to one thousand dollars. I've seen a lot of praise
for this, um unbelievable. Like like, so, I guess, like
if you're struggling to pay your rent despite the if
you're if you're struggling to pay rent despite Cuomo saying
he took care of the issue and having no order

(58:53):
in place, if you violate social distancing in order to like,
let's say, try to pay your rent, enjoy your thousand
dollar fine. I mean, Cody, It's not like the the
NYPD have any history of enforcing the laws in extremely
specific ways to target one chunk of the community and
ignore others. That's a good point, and I will not

(59:13):
look into it anymore. Yeah, to to find out what
you're referencing. This is uh slightly off topic. But did
you see uh the l A that the l A
mayor mayor is uh doing a snitching thing, rewarding people
for snitching on on businesses or their neighbors. Violating the
stay at home order. And I read a really good

(59:37):
article by a doctor and I think it was it
might have been in the Guardian. It wasn't. It was.
It was by an Australian like like medical professional talking
about what he saw. Is one of the threats of
like actually fucking up um social distancing and our response
to the coronavirus is to attack people too harshly and

(59:58):
put too many limitations on because that makes it like
there's parts of Australia where it's like you can't use
a public park even if you're obeying social distancing, you'll
get ticketed. And it looks like Cuomo's kind of pushing
for the same things in New York and it's like
if you do that, you will bring more people over
to the side of like fuck it, I don't care
who dies. I can't look exactly exactly. They're like, I

(01:00:19):
have nothing else thinking everything away from me. Yeahlo slow
slide into authoritarianism to deal with this. It's not yeah,
I I want serious action to be taken. I am
not willing to let the police arrest me for jogging
in a public park. Also, don't call it a snitches rule. Yes,

(01:00:46):
it's called it's literally so you guys, I'm sure he
got a lot of this announced last week and like
last Friday there was like ten in the building next
sort whether there was ten guys not wearing masks working
on like power drilling the pool for a remodel like

(01:01:09):
that is unnecessary. You're putting those people at risk. Stuff
like that where it's like it's like, but people shouldn't
be but they're now anyways, but they're incentivizing by saying
we will pay there's a reward for snitching people. Yeah, anyway, anyway,
I don't like that don't Conversation program. I don't love

(01:01:34):
the phrasing, but I do I do kind of understand
them being like, hey, like we want to keep people safe,
but snitching, I think you can report businesses. Yeah, in
a in a period where people are struggling to pay
for food and rent, it's just like it's hard. My
my next door neighbor, it does not live their shoes
in the middle of renovating a property to be rented

(01:01:55):
and has continued to have workers come in and it's
bothered me. But at the same time, I know that
she needs that income that she's hoping to be able
to rent the property when she can. At the same time,
I know that those workers need the money, and it's
been like a real camp. Brought up some conflicting emotions
in me, but I'm not going to do anything about it.
You're not going to quote snitch. I'm not going to snitch. Know.

(01:02:20):
The primary moral thing that we all need to keep
in mind is don't call the cops. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I think that's that can be that can be a
constant during the plague. Yeah, don't don't call the cops. Yeah.
But yeah. So to sort of close this out, I
I did want to highlight one thing because again, this
is like not states aren't really doing rent freezes, um

(01:02:43):
or anything like that. It's all about just like not
processing evictions that can still be filed during this month. UM.
But there's this piece in York Times recently about um
Mario Salerno. He owns eighteen buildings in Brooklyn and he
waived rent for all of his ten it's for April's
good for him, um, And I just wanted to point

(01:03:04):
that out and say good for him. UM. Maybe happened
like statewide or like on a national level, who knows, UM,
But yeah, so if if you're dealing with any of this,
I would say definitely look up your specific state, UM,
and also don't like sign those payment plans that your
landlord might be offering you because chances are the fucking
lying to you. Yeah. Yep. UM. I'd looked into uh

(01:03:31):
potential economic impact of of you know, rent strikes, and
I've kind of peppered in things throughout this episode, So
I don't have this big section prepared here, especially since
it's hard to know. UM. The stuff that you find
online written up are usually just about all o eds
and generally particular like it would be terrible, it would

(01:03:53):
be terrible. UM. This is an interesting quote, uh from
Carol Galante. UH. She's um okay, faculty director for the
Turner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley. UH, and
she says those mortgages are often securitized, their package up
into bonds and they're sold as investments, and those investors

(01:04:13):
are expecting a certain interest payment off of those securities
on an ongoing basis. If they don't get those then
those investors suffer. And Okay, so we're like, so what
you know their investors And then she goes on to say,
so you say, well, who cares about the investors? But
the fact, the fact is that many of those investors
are things like pension funds, and those pension funds support teachers,

(01:04:35):
first responders, and other and others in ways that may
not be initially imparent. Every time tenants or homeowners right
out their rentom mortgage checks, there's just some interesting things
to to to think about. You know, I think that's
the most well articulated thing that I've seen. Um. You know,
there's the argument, like I've put out of you know,

(01:04:59):
smaller business is a property owner, people that that don't
have a lot of capital, they're not huge companies, or
what Robert mentioned earlier about all of the people that
are employed via property management or either directly or indirectly
as as contractors and all of that. Um. But the
truth is is, like like I was suggesting earlier, it's like,

(01:05:22):
if this is at a broad enough scale, wouldn't that
it would probably trigger some sort of a response from
the government, some sort of you know, help on the
mortgage end of things. It's just it's really that's kind
of the goal of a rent strike on the national
level is to get this to be big enough that

(01:05:42):
like it has to be a government response, you know,
but there there's no other option, you know, like none
of the individual rental companies, there's nothing they can do.
It's out of you know, local law enforcement's hand. It's
something that like there has been a federal response because
it's been forced. So we're at the end of this
and I don't know, it's uh yeah, the long and

(01:06:07):
the short, and this is what I the rent strike
going around. Part of what I like about that is
it does focus on it. They're trying to be like
a broad base, like we're going to freeze rent, and
we're going to freeze mortgage. And if you freeze mortgage,
then you a lot of these folks, um, you don't
have as much to claim or as much to complain
about UM now from the landlords. Now that still leaves there,

(01:06:31):
you know, there is still the point of like without rent,
then these landlords aren't going to have the funding that
is necessary to actually maintain buildings, which means people go
without jobs, which means you know, I think if you're
actually talking about what kind of national rent strike movement
could gain steam, it would have to it would have
to take care of those people too, not only just
it would have to be well, yeah, Katie Golden responded

(01:06:55):
to me on on Twitter, and I might be missed.
I'm not directly quote because I don't have it in
front of me. But you know, there's you know that argument,
you know, employing all those people that do maintenance and
stuff like that. If there's some collectivized you know, the
tenants are getting together to pay for those things, that's
certainly significantly cheaper than the rent. Yeah, extra level of organization. Yeah, yeah,

(01:07:20):
I think that is, Like, I don't know, I I
think it's it's not impossible, you know, um to do,
and I think it would be necessary if you're going
to try it. But it is. It is like, this
is a big thing. We're talking about a rent strike.
We're not just like, it's not just we agree not
to pay rent um. There there need to be structures
set up within the strike in order to make it sustainable,

(01:07:42):
otherwise it won't be yep. Yeah, so all right, we
solved it. That's cool. So that's cool. It's yes, sir.
Are you gonna firebomba leasing office? Did you text me
saying you wanted to fire bomber leasing office? Is that
a conversation we had or is this another one of

(01:08:04):
my fantasies. Yeah, so on the record, on the record,
off the record, both at the same time. Yeah. Um, okay,
so I guess my answer would be stop it's answer.
Oh my god, how dare you today? Actionable answer? Yeah,

(01:08:26):
you guys can check us out online at worst Year, Pod, Instagram,
and Twitter and we'll be there. Will not be making
those sounds. You can't type those out and not be square.
We could type that, we can't. I would type it
out as p F l U b B. Also, I

(01:08:49):
just want to put out there if you are have
a landlord story or a rent striker situation going on
that you're dealing with, tweet at us. Yeah, tweet at
us and check out will be posting the interview that
we conducted with Ali Khan Pabani, the the rent striker
who uh chatted with us. Um, it'll be a whole

(01:09:10):
fun interview. Um. And you know he kind of gives
he gives you a very granular look at like here's
how we started things out. Here is who we like,
got people together in the building. Here's like how we
you know, organize our messaging campaign. If it's something if
you're looking to do this yourself, if you're in the
position of wanting to do this in your neighborhood, you
might find it really useful. Um yeah, so yeah, yeah,

(01:09:34):
all right, have do what Cody's unsettling noises have told you,
which which actually translates Please watch. Every Worst Year Ever

(01:09:57):
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