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As the housing crisis spirals out of control nationwide, homeowners and renters are increasingly facing the pinch, if not outright eviction and foreclosure. With 20,000 more layoffs every day, the working class has been pushed onto the defensive, fighting to maintain our individual daily existence amidst growing cutbacks.
It is a grim picture, but not the whole picture. In small pockets, workers are beginning to come together—at their workplaces, in their schools and in their communities—to resist the capitalist offensive. The Party for Socialism and Liberation exists to help bring together and develop these incipient struggles during the capitalist crisis.
To highlight one such struggle, Liberation newspaper interviewed Frances Villar, a PSL member in the Bronx, who recently organized her neighbors into a tenants’ association. In addition, Liberation interviewed Berkys Espinosa and Julio Cruz, vice president and secretary of the tenants’ association, respectively.
What inspired you to start a tenants’ association?
Villar: On Feb. 7, my bathroom ceiling completely collapsed. I could not sleep that night, I was so busy and worried trying to deal with it. I had to call the Fire Department because I was scared of all the water and electrical cords on the floor. I pay $1,250 per month and my bathroom ceiling falls down. I have a five-year-old son and a four-year-old daughter. It’s unsafe and unsanitary.
I took pictures of my bathroom and the next morning created a flyer calling for an initial meeting for a tenants’ association. I passed the flyer around to every single one of my neighbors, going door-to-door. I showed them a picture of my bathroom ceiling, and the flyer said, “This is why we need a tenants’ association.” That was it. I opened my apartment for the first meeting, people showed up, and we started the tenants’ association. Now every tenant in the building is signed up.
It is funny how in the richest city in the world, affordable livable housing is still a problem in the Bronx. Banks get trillions of our tax dollars as bailouts, Mayor Bloomberg buys another election, the government spends $230 million on the war daily and the New York State budget is $55 billion. But there is no money for housing.
Workers spend 61 percent of our incomes on rent, but we still have to fight to live in a decent place. Our landlord acts as if we are inferior because we are workers. But it doesn’t surprise me how people united for this cause. We all got sick and tired of complaining, so we acted and organized.
In our tenants association, we say, “Housing is a right!” We are demanding not only recognition of the association but a full inspection and maintenance of the building, or we’ll withhold rent. We will continue to fight until our demands are fully met. We need to have a say-so in the management of the building, if not ultimately be the management of our building.
Espinosa: The abuses of the landlord. Someone calls the management company and all they tell you is, “What you want is to live like rich people”—that’s what the landlord told me. I told him, yes, I do deserve to live in a clean and respectable place, better than he does, because I work too much and I pay too much rent to live in a place where not even animals should live. I asked him if he wanted to live like this and he didn’t answer. One week later I received a flyer from Frances about the problems in her apartment and I realized that we had the same issues.
Cruz: I want to improve the quality of life in my apartment. The wiring is old, so we pay 15 percent more electricity than other people, and the walls are collapsing. We have been living here for 30 years, and they don’t really fix anything in our apartment—they just patch things up and make forthcoming problems.
What did you learn about your neighbors in the process of organizing?
Espinosa: That we all had the same problems—the walls, the ceilings, the rats—but we never knew because we never took the time to speak to one another and meet each other. In reality, we are more similar than we thought, and in the building we are African Americans, Muslims, Latinos and Caribbean. We don’t all speak the same language, but we have the same problems.
As the main organizers of the association, has it been harder or easier than you thought?
Espinosa: In terms of organizing it, we give the credit to Frances, she organized the association easily. She’s the expert, the communist, but we are realizing that to keep everyone active is a little difficult. The landlord does not want us to organize, but it is not difficult to unite in the same struggle when you are a victim of the abuses of housing discrimination.
Villar: It is a struggle like every struggle—it has its ups and downs. Forming the association itself has been pretty easy. I would say the only hard part is getting our dead beat landlord to recognize us. He doesn’t even come by the management office, so we scheduled a meeting to give him more paperwork so that he recognizes us. Then it will be easier for us to get our demands met.
Cruz: It was easy to form, but we have to keep reminding people and knocking on their doors. They do come, but the problem is most people are afraid to voice their opinions from fear of retribution from the landlord and management company.
What are the next steps?
Espinosa: To remain strongly united and to fight back. Every day it is a new struggle. This week we are going to meet with the landlord for recognition—not the management company but the owner, and the owner is the real aggressor.
We are basically novices in this, but in the end the objective would be to take control of our building. That our association here at 2363 Valentine Avenue would be the management of the building, we who live here should be the ones that manage the building, we who pay the rent to live here should decide how the money that we work so hard for is spent.
Villar: The next step will be to keep meeting once a month, and try to get as respectable and livable a place as we can. We have just organized ourselves, and are trying to keep full attendance at our meetings and as many people active as we can. We voted to have two meetings per week, so that people who can’t make it on Wednesdays can come on Fridays. Ultimately we want to take greater control of the building. The landlord owns the building, but this is our home.
Cruz: To get recognized by the landlord, block, neighborhood and our county. We ultimately want to be able to make decisions where we live and have control of our daily lives.
This is a day-by-day thing here in the hood. We have to fight for our basic civil rights, like the right to breathe fresh air on our own front steps.
