Tenant unions encourage struggling renters to organize: 'We're all in the same boat.'
If it hadn’t been for the Belden Sawyer Tenant Association, union member and Logan Square resident Sarah Rooney believes she would've already been kicked out of her apartment building.
"It's the fact that I'm rent striking and sticking with my union" Rooney, 30, said. "Knowing that we're all in the same boat, it makes you feel protected against these systems that are meant to scare and intimidate you."
Several union organizers from Logan Square, Austin, Uptown and Rogers Park who are also tenants struggling with living conditions or the threat of eviction rallied Sunday in Palmer Square Park to stress the importance of using unions and actions like rent strikes to stand up for their rights.
Like Rooney, most members of the Belden Sawyer Tenant Association are facing uncertainty about whether they'll be able to remain in their building on Belden and Sawyer avenues. The union began rent striking March 1 along with partner union Fuerzas Inquilinos de Broadway y Cuyler — who began rent striking April 1 — in an effort to negotiate with landlord Andrew Millard and property management company 33 Realty.
"You can’t just wait for City Council to pass a law," said David Amato, who helped found the Belden Sawyer group in December 2024. "We have to organize and fight for ourselves on the ground."
Sunday's rally comes days before the Just Cause for Eviction ordinance is set to be introduced in the City Council.
The ordnance would allow landlords and property owners to evict tenants, but only for specific reasons such as nonpayment of rent, criminal activity, or other documented violations of a tenant's lease agreement, according to the Chicago Housing Justice Coalition.
Under the ordinance, landlords would have to provide relocation assistance if the landlord chooses to live in the unit or have a relative live in the unit, make substantial repairs, convert the unit into a condo or demolish the unit.
"It's maybe a first step," Maya Odendahl, an organizer with the All Chicago Tenant Alliance, said, referring to the proposed ordinance. "It doesn’t really help in a lot of situations where landlords would come up with reasons like renovations to push tenants out anyways.
"Rent control is one thing, legislatively, that I would like to see," said Odendahl, 28.
Organizers believe passage of the ordinance would be a step in the right direction, but they feel more could be done to help struggling tenants.
"We can only speak in a language [landlords] understand, which is money," John Gould, a 26-year-old organizer in Rogers Park, told the crowd of about two dozen Sunday afternoon. "As poor and working-class people, we only have two things — labor and rent.
"You have to be willing to fight, to struggle, to withhold your labor in your workplace and your rent at your home," Gould added.
Amato, 32, stressed the importance of collective action to help combat "rising displacement by corporate landlords."
"You don’t have to lay down and take what these landlords tell you," Amato said. "You can find people who are willing to fight and want to help you fight."