Organizing — HOME Line

2024 was a busy year for HOME Line’s organizing team! We focused on a broad array of issues brought to us by tenants across the state.

Notably we organized in;

Section 42 LIHTC subsidized apartments in pursuit of affordable rent, utility billing adjustments, timely repair issues and management compliance issues
Section 202 Elder Housing where we organized public demonstrations in response to a lack of repairs, confusing recertification processes, and administrative responsibilities being ignored and put onto tenants.
Coalition with tenants across the metro to develop independent tenant leaders and a strong sense of belonging.

In most of the buildings we organize in, tenants have various cultural backgrounds, are multilingual and have differing levels of understanding of their rights and the complexities of the subsidies in their housing.

Our organizing team is lucky to have brought on Ubah Shire to our team part-time as she expanded her role as HOME Line’s Somali-speaking Tenant Advocate and Coordinator.
Ubah’s lived experiences and cultural background has significantly increased our capacity to work with the Somali community across the Metro. She has helped us build bridges of trust with her community for the last few years, but in 2024 her impact was heightened as she established herself more fully within the different program departments at HOME Line.

When advocates and organizers can approach tenants of all backgrounds with respect, knowledge and empathy it is an opportunity for tenants to find ways in which to build collective power in order to work together for the benefit and positive impact of all.

Educate

While listening to tenant’s issues, we regularly hear that they are concerned about insurmountable rent costs, critical maintenance problems and unlawful management practices that make daily living stressful and unstable. Many times tenants don’t realize how powerful they actually are, particularly when they work together as a collective.

While we have changed some of our intake systems and methods of outreach, our organizing practice remains interdependent with the tenants who reach out to us.

Our first step is to explain how forming a tenant association can give back tenants’ agency through solidarity with one another. We assist tenants in determining their three most pressing issues. Then we support tenants in establishing a particular campaign strategy to win these issues through legal pathways and tactics such as media outlets, protests, rallies, public speaking and through lobbying local, state and national lawmakers to increase the enforcement of tenant’s rights.

A massive feat we completed this year as a team and in partnership with Housing Justice Center, was the publishing of the Minnesota Renter’s Guide to Tenant Organizing. Our Managing Organizer, Regan Reeck was able to use her background as a journalist and editor to continue and help complete the efforts of previous HOME Line staff. This guide is the first of its kind and a new cornerstone of our team’s outreach and training efforts. You can read through it here.

Engage

We have found over and over that an organizing protocol engaging tenants on all levels inspires tenant leadership which in turn increases one’s sense of power, hope and fortitude.

The educational and engagement piece in organizing really never ends. Part of our efforts to support more tenants has been the development of HOME Line-based coalitions centered on bringing people together and tackling big issues as a group.

Currently we have two spaces, one focused on Section 42 properties and the other focused generally on any tenant looking to have an impact in their community.

Minnesota Tenants Unite Coalition

In 2024, six tenant associations from Section 42 subsidized housing formed the Minnesota Tenants Unite Coalition (MNTUC) to increase their capacity and broaden the scope of their efforts towards making affordable housing affordable. The space, facilitated by HOMELine Tenant Organizers Katherine Banbury and Ubah Shire, have been organizing with tenants in these buildings to combat exceedingly sharp rent increases over the last few years. The formula that is used to calculate the rent increases is lopsided, and difficult to change, however this has not stopped tenants from working tirelessly to build their tenant associations up and connect with other associations experiencing the same challenges. Going forward into 2025, MNTUC is equipped with the new Tenants Right To Organize statute to build their base inward and outward for an even greater impact and chance for success.

Tenant Coalition

In 2024, HOME Line’s Tenant Coalition entered its third year and celebrated by onboarding three stipended tenant leaders. We hosted monthly meetings, regularly bringing together a dozen tenants to tackle individual housing issues, learning organizing skill sets like meeting facilitation and issue cutting. Regan, in partnership with Ian Rosenthal from Jewish Community Action and Sedia Omar from New American Development Center have helped this space flourish and we are looking forward to continuing our efforts in 2025!

Empower

HOME Line participates in multiple coalition spaces across the state pushing for housing justice reforms to help secure sustainable housing for all tenants. Notably in 2024, HOME Line was part of the effort to pass the Tenant Right to Organize through our participation in The Alliance’s coalition, Equity in Place.

Katherine contributed greatly to the process by sharing testimony of her own experiences attempting to organize with her neighbors under a landlord who opposed her efforts. As of January 1, 2025, all residential tenants in the state of Minnesota have the right to organize and form tenant associations in their buildings or across landlord portfolios. This bill will empower tenants to feel safe and seek real protections against landlords retaliating against their tenants for organizing.

Additionally, HOME Line’s participating in Housing Justice League, a local coalition focused on housing protections in Minneapolis, saw serious momentum in passing Opportunity to Purchase ordinances this year. The Affordable Housing Preservation Ordinance, authored by Councilmember Ellison and Vice-President Chugthai passed council with a 9-3 vote, before being vetoed by the mayor. Now, the council is shifting from an Opportunity to Purchase for a selected list of qualified buyers, towards passing an Opportunity to Purchase for tenants.

We are so looking forward to the new year and all of the experiences and good trouble we will stir up!

What is the Purpose of Organizing?

Sometimes tenants’ rights can be enforced through simple communication with a landlord or individually through legal action. Other times, it takes the action of an organized group of tenants to make their voices heard. When rental problems affect more than just one person’s unit, organizing may be the best method for solving the problem.

A group of tenants can collectively exert more pressure than an individual tenant can on his or her own. A group of tenants speaking with one voice is difficult to ignore. A landlord has more difficulty intimidating a group of tenants because the landlord cannot easily single people out. In subsidized housing and manufactured homes, formal tenant associations have stronger protections from landlord retaliation.

Chances are that if there is a problem a single tenant thinks is serious, others will share the same concern. The most common rental housing issues that HOME Line has worked with tenant groups to resolve include:

Shared repair issues among neighbors.
Emergency repairs or loss of essential services such as running water, hot water, electricity, or sanitary facilities.
Loss of heat or inadequate heating.
Utility shutoffs due to landlord nonpayment.
Poor management, bad record-keeping, abusive or retaliatory behavior by management, and privacy violations.
Possible loss of affordable housing.
Tenants who successfully organize to address these issues in their buildings are often able to use their organization and experience to work as strong advocates to strengthen renters’ rights and provide more affordable housing on a local, state, and federal level.

Tenant Organizing is a powerful resource and activity that renters use to improve their housing situations. Whether it be in response to substandard living conditions, poor maintenance or management of rental properties, efforts by landlords to convert affordable subsidized apartments to higher market rates, or simply an interest among neighbors to build a stronger community, tenant organizing results in safer, more affordable, decent rental housing.

During the past decade, our organizing work has focused on the “preservation” issue. We have spearheaded efforts to organize tenants in more than 50 federally subsidized apartment complexes when the owners of this housing have announced plans to convert to market rents, threatening the displacement of the low income residents. Tenant leaders working with HOME Line and other state advocacy groups played a major role in securing major state appropriations for preservation in 1998.

We also work with residents of market-rate apartments, many of whom contact HOME Line’s tenant hotline for individual assistance. We have worked with tenant groups in numerous apartments across the state to address housing livability issues such as: utility shutoffs, landlord foreclosure, emergency repair issues, general repair issues, accessibility and elevator access, mismanagement and rent ledger issues, condo conversion, privacy violations, wrongful security deposit withholding, and many others.

Organizing goals

Organize tenants in federally assisted (HUD and USDA Rural Development), privately owned housing where the owners are attempting to leave the subsidy program that keeps their housing affordable and work to play a meaningful role in the preservation process.
Reach out to tenants in at-risk buildings and their communities before their housing is threatened with the loss of subsidy.
Prevent cuts to the Section 8 Voucher Program by working with affected tenants, landlords, housing agencies and elected officials.
Involve tenants in the statewide and federal policy discussions that affect their lives by strengthening tenant protections and increasing resources for affordable housing preservation and new development.
Respond and react to emergency and collective rental housing situations as we become aware of them via our tenant hotline.
Work proactively with tenants and local governments to address rental housing licensing and code enforcement as it relates to improving rental housing and protecting Minnesota renters.