Decommodify and Democratize

When their rent strike began, in late 2019, the Fruitvale tenants demanded that the landlord either carry out the much-needed repairs or sell the building to OakCLT. They intensified the pressure through TV and radio interviews and by reaching out to tenants from other buildings owned by their landlord, showing up at his home and business, and holding a Halloween-themed protest. In response, the landlord hounded tenants via texts and letters placed under and on tenants’ front doors demanding they pay their mounting rent debt or “face the consequences” (i.e., eviction) while taking punitive measures like denying Maria access to the building’s washing facilities when her apartment was infested with cockroaches.

Four months into the rent strike, after having rejected their initial offers, Calvin Wong caved and agreed to meet with OakCLT in February 2020 to discuss a possible sale. But when the pandemic hit a month later, negotiations fizzled. The tenants continued their rent strike, now with the protection of the COVID-19 eviction moratoria. Nevertheless, Wong raised the rent by an additional $100 dollars a month, in the middle of a global pandemic, and later tried to pressure the tenants to apply for rental assistance through the rent relief program. Maria described a heated exchange in which the landlord came to her door, and her daughter, who was translating for Maria, grew fearful that the landlord would get physical with them: “I kept telling him that we are not going to apply. ‘Either you do the repairs or we’re going to keep the strike going.’”

Even with the eviction moratoria in place, some of the Fruitvale families moved out, fearing that displacement was inevitable. Others lost hope and ended their participation in the strike. For the families who stayed and watched their rent debt grow month after month, the pressure took a toll. Jesus Alvarez, who moved in eighteen years ago and lives with his wife and two children, said in Spanish: 

It was just a really hard time. I was very worried for my family because if we didn’t reach our goal, we didn’t know what would happen. It was hard to fall asleep at night because the worrying was constant. It wasn’t good for my health.

In mid-2021, with the tenants nearly two years into their rent strike, OakCLT submitted a letter of intent and reengaged Calvin Wong about a possible sale. OakCLT spent much of the rest of the year negotiating the deal, and in December 2021, just as the tenants were preparing for a Las Posadas–themed protest, reenacting Mary and Joseph’s search for shelter, they learned that Wong had agreed to sell, turning the protest into a celebration.

OakCLT purchased the building for $3.3 million dollars using municipal bond funds from Oakland’s Measure KK, an infrastructure bond passed in 2016. The use of municipal infrastructure bond funds for the decommodification of housing indicates an emerging commitment to the preservation of affordability as well as a recognition that homes, and existing tenants of those homes, are part of the city’s critical infrastructure — a testament to years of hard work put in by tenants and organizers. (Although the funding available under Measure KK has run out, ACCE and other organizations are campaigning for another housing and infrastructure bond measure that will be on the ballot in November.) It’s also a departure from the last forty years of entrepreneurial city governance that has prioritized for-profit projects and policies strategically designed to attract investment, encourage economic growth, and improve the city’s standings with bond-rating agencies over public need.

OakCLT assumed ownership in June of this year, and is starting a process of building capacity with the tenants to ultimately transfer ownership of the building through a Limited Equity Housing Cooperative (LEC) — a housing model that grew out of the labor movement in the early twentieth century and draws on Scandinavian cooperative housing traditions. The tenants will eventually be collectively responsible for the management, maintenance, and financing of the building in partnership with OakCLT, which will continue to hold the land in trust and provide tenants with a ninety-nine-year ground lease that renews automatically. Combined with the LEC resale formula and the use of municipal funds, this prevents the building from returning to market rate, and OakCLT will have a right of first refusal if a tenant moves out. The rent, meanwhile, will be affordable in perpetuity and regulated through the city, which means the tenants will no longer have to worry about annual rent hikes. Steve King, executive director of OakCLT, explained:

We’re not doing this work to create a traditional affordable housing organization. We’re really trying to create an infrastructure where we can bring properties in through this pathway, stabilize tenants, and eventually transition them to resident ownership. That will free up our capacity to keep the cycle moving.

The emphasis on resident ownership is significant, because although community land trusts provide a mechanism for decommodification, not all share or maintain OakCLT’s commitment to tenant control. Instead, many fashion themselves more as affordable housing providers, not the harbingers of collective participation and ownership envisioned by the Civil Rights Movement organizers who pioneered the concept in the 1960s. The root cause of this development, writes Olivia R. Williams, is the dependency on external funding streams that necessitates both a professionalization of the organization and a reorientation of goals to meet intricate grant stipulations and requirements rather than ideals about housing democratization and participation.

But beyond permanent affordability, resident control and influence on land-use decisions should be at the center of housing, whether public, private, or provided by a CLT. Tenant control is necessary to combat what David Madden and Peter Marcuse term “residential alienation,” describing the psychosocial experience of home as another precarious place that results from our hypercommodified housing system — the feelings of dread, anxiety, and disempowerment Alvarez described suffering. Housing should be a manifestation of the residential needs of those who live there, not a vehicle for someone else’s profit accumulation.

That is what the Fruitvale tenants achieved, with support from ACCE and OakCLT, through a six-year struggle, using a nearly two-and-a-half-year rent strike and a CLT as tactic and tool. They forced the decommodification and democratization of their housing, putting tenants at the center of decisions regarding their homes, and winning both stability and agency. They hope their victory can be used as a blueprint for other tenants in similar situations.

Alvarez says: “I feel a huge weight off my shoulders. It’s been a massive change for my family. It brings me peace that I can finally sleep well at night knowing that this whole situation is over.”

A New Tool in the Belt

More tenants will likely have an opportunity to achieve what the Fruitvale tenants did using a type of legislation known as Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Acts (TOPA), which are being passed or reviewed in cities across the United States, including in Oakland. TOPA legislation requires landlords to notify tenants if they decide to sell a property, giving tenants the chance to purchase their building or, in some cases, transfer that right to a “qualified purchaser” — typically a nonprofit or CLT with community ties and a track record of managing housing. Tenants then have a limited period of time to form an association and secure funding as well as the right to match an offer from another buyer, putting them in position to collectively purchase and own their homes, often in an LEC structure.

Giving tenants a first right of purchase helps level the playing field with corporate landlords that are buying up large shares of the housing stock while also helping stabilize neighborhoods by preventing “flipping.” Ideally, invoking TOPA removes homes from the speculative market entirely, although that is not always the case. In Washington, DC, where the legislation was first implemented in 1980, the TOPA regulations lack a permanent affordability requirement unless public funds are used for the purchase, meaning tenants who purchase their building using private funds can later sell it at market rate. DC tenants are also allowed to sell the right to purchase to the highest bidder, whether nonprofit or for-profit, counteracting TOPA’s potentially stabilizing effects on tenants and neighborhoods.

But if crafted carefully, TOPA can be a tool for decommodification and democratization, and most cities that are drafting this type of legislation are putting permanent affordability and community control covenants in place to prevent the pitfalls of the DC version. (Although many buildings in DC remain LECs as a result of TOPA, as Amanda Huron writes.) In addition to these safeguards, cities and states need to expand funding streams to make TOPA accessible, since tenants invoking TOPA are still required to pay market rate, as well as provide adequate support and guidance for those looking to exercise their right to purchase. If those elements are in place, however, tenants whose landlord decides to sell their building can achieve what the Fruitvale tenants did and avoid being at the mercy of slumlords or corporate landlords, ultimately securing a permanent right to stay put.

As eviction rates skyrocket across the nation, reaching or even exceeding pre-pandemic levels, and corporate finance deepens its colonization of the rental-housing sector, it’s imperative to invest in not only the preservation but a massive expansion of housing stock that remains off the speculative market and under tenant control. This will require a commitment to a host of different policy interventions and housing models, ranging from public housing, housing cooperatives, limited equity co-ownership, and universal rent control to expanded tenant protections that secure tenant tenure, expropriation of expiring affordable and vacant housing, regulation of corporate landlords, and CLTs — as well as TOPA legislation.

If crafted with an emphasis on tenant control, these models and interventions can help combat residential alienation and bring us closer to the realization of housing as a human right, not a tool for profit maximization.