This past weekend, tenant advocates, labor unions, workers, and renters from across LA marched in downtown to demand good wages, better employee benefits, and housing security.
Yvonne Wheeler, president of the LA County Federation of Labor (LACFL), was at the march, emphasizing the issues of tenant evictions and increased homelessness. She believes the housing and labor movements are fighting the same battles.
“We're in a homeless pandemic, where working people are collecting paychecks … but they still can't afford to pay the rent, let alone live in the city where they work,” Wheeler says. “And so when we see the inequality … when we see that these tenants are living in deplorable conditions, we know that we have to ally with one another, and fight this fight together. Because we are the community – we're not separate and apart.”
Miracle McKinney, a tenant advocate at The Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, adds, “You're having people live in deplorable conditions, having to fight off evictions from their landlords. And so these measures that we're advocating for really are important because, on a day-to-day basis, people are having to struggle with tenant harassment and many different issues.”
In the 1990s, labor unions started advocating for affordable housing projects. Those unions were the backbone of the movement for tenants’ groups, says Peter Dreier, a politics professor at Occidental College.
“But in the last five or six years, we've seen this incredible renewal of both tenant organizing and labor organizing – and Los Angeles has been ground zero in that battle,” he notes.
In LA, thousands of workers — from entertainment and hospitality industries — have gone on strike, protesting that “the rent is too damn high, and the wages are too damn low,” says Wheeler.
But Dreier says the coalition of housing and labor activists together can continue to reach their goals – like when they passed Measure ULA last November. “That was such a big success that … those groups are now working together on an ongoing basis.”
Next Friday, October 13, the LACFL will hold a summit on poverty and homelessness, where community members will meet with city officials like Mayor Karen Bass.
“You're going to start seeing people really making a stance and really advocating for themselves. And the most important thing is that the city hears us,” McKinney says.