National Tenant’s Bill of Rights
We have some exciting news!
The Reclaim Housing Task Force has launched a campaign for a Philadelphia Tenants Bill of Rights. Throughout the month of November, we have been speaking with fellow tenants across the city about your housing experiences. We want to know - what challenges have you faced? What is your vision for solutions that bring us closer to safe, affordable and accessible housing for all?
We are starting this campaign with deep canvassing shifts every weekend in November. Deep canvassing is a way to build relationships. It goes beyond traditional door-knocking efforts to have more meaningful conversations. We are not selling anyone anything, what we have found is many tenants in Philadelphia just want to be heard. To join our canvassing initiative, sign up for a shift here. If you don’t have experience, that’s totally fine! We have canvass trainings every Wednesday night. We also have phone bank shifts to turn folks out to canvassing. Sign up here.
We are also holding two Imagination Sessions. At these sessions, we’ll collectively identify the rights that we believe are most critical to us as tenants and unhoused people. The first Imagination Session was November 13 in partnership with the Philly Rent Control Coalition at their Tenant Power Weekend. The next session will be November 18th. Sign up here.
This will be the first iteration of a longer campaign throughout next year to speak with 30,000 tenants in Philly.
This campaign is part of a national movement for a National Tenants Bill of Rights, led by our partners at Homes Guarantee. The national movement has a goal of talking to 1 million tenants about what we all need for housing. It will set the stage for a century of powerful tenant organizing!
A Tenant’s Bill or Rights is not just wishful thinking. Kansas City passed a Tenant’s Bill of Rights to address its history of racist housing policy and to ensure housing security for the City’s renters, almost half the population. This TBOR consisted of a resolution and ordinance outlining tenant protections around habitability, a right-to-notice, landlord retaliation, and prohibitions against discriminating against tenants who have an eviction on their record. The original, proposed TBOR contained several elements that were excluded from the final Bill, including a line about racism in housing, utility cost requirements for landlords, and right to counsel for tenants.
The current housing system is violent and unjust. So many of us and our neighbors, especially Black and brown tenants, are being pushed out of our homes and communities, are paying too much in rent, are having to endure poor living conditions - all for someone else’s profit. We need a bold vision for what a new system could be. With a local Tenants Bill of Rights, we can define the steps to take us there. Join us.
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