TANC

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TANC (Tenant and Neighborhood Councils) is a member-run housing organization built out of the East Bay Democratic Socialists of America. We encourage all unhoused people, public housing residents, and tenants of private landlords to join us in organizing councils.

Existing avenues for combating rising rents, slumlord behavior, and evictions are channeled through non-profit organizations. These types of organizations do not necessarily challenge the larger structural dilemma that we face—the subjugation of housing under capitalism, also known as the housing market.

Any chance of challenging well-heeled landlords, developers, and state managers, depends on our ability to forge new forms of collective action out of individual struggles. Only then can we build our capacity to fight back against the forces that structure our lives.

The market treats housing as storage containers for wealth with high rates of return rather than places to call home. We are organizing against those who profit from precarity and misery in our daily lives. We are building power towards a future where housing is constructed and allocated according to necessity—not according to profit.

DSA roots

The San Francisco Bay Area is a logical place for tenant organizing to gain momentum, as rents have infamously skyrocketed in the region. Despite a slight dip in the early uncertain months of the pandemic, rents are already back up, with $2,000 being a common rate for a one-bedroom apartment.

So, instead of waiting for policymakers to take the crisis seriously, some tenants have formed a union to solve their most pressing needs. Today, thanks to organizing by members of East Bay Democratic Socialists of America, the Oakland-based Tenant and Neighborhood Councils (TANC) has more than 400 dues-paying members.

Representing Oakland, Berkeley, and the rest of the eastern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, East Bay DSA (EBDSA) is the fifth-largest DSA chapter in the United States. TANC grew from EBDSA but is not officially connected to DSA. Although a resolution to create the tenants union within EBDSA failed at the chapter’s annual convention in 2018, some 15 EBDSA members decided to form TANC as a completely autonomous group, eventually expanding it to nearly 80 members by the time the pandemic hit in March 2020.

“COVID basically exploded that and made growth happen ten times faster for six months,” said Matt Takaichi, a member of both TANC and EBDSA as well as current co-chair of the EBDSA Social Housing Committee.

The primary goal of TANC is to help tenants organize themselves and take action. A handbook provided by the group begins with a broad introduction to the power of thinking and acting politically amid a worsening rent crisis—”solidarity is our weapon”—but also offers a detailed escalation guide with tactics tenants can use on their own (such as citing the law in communications with landlords or filing official complaints with local municipalities) as well as tactics that leverage TANC’s resources and connections to other tenant councils.

While EBDSA’s Social Housing Committee has one working group focused on promoting social housing policy, the other big working group focuses on tenant organizing work through the newly formed Socialist Housing Organizer Project (SHOP), which was approved by democratic vote within both TANC and EBDSA to function as an intermediary between the two.

A concrete program designed to help individuals become disciplined socialist tenant organizers, SHOP starts with an extensive onboarding process, including reading materials to give a crash course on why housing is broken and how it can be fixed through a tenant movement. Far from being only theoretical, however, the ongoing process is tailored to each member, encouraging them to examine how they can improve their own situation, connect with other tenants, and ultimately negotiate with landlords over specific issues.

Central to all of this is the fact that SHOP and TANC are teaching the fundamentals of organizing, including how to canvass, how to avoid alienating people, and how to run a meeting. While TANC was initially formed entirely by DSA members, the vast majority of TANC members today are not associated with DSA. For many, it’s their first experience with organizing.

“There are more people becoming active organizers and supporters,” said Justin Gilmore, an EBDSA member and co-founder of TANC. “There are more people organizing their buildings and attending local meetings. There are more people joining as members. The sum total of that is to create a new constituency that didn’t exist before that has a level of class consciousness around the housing question. That’s probably the most important thing TANC is doing, and if that continues, I imagine it will help change the political landscape in the Bay in a few years.”

STU and TANC are both part of the Autonomous Tenants Union Network (ATUN), which is made up of representatives of all the tenant unions that exist in North America. Today, 25 unions across Canada and the U.S. are dues-paying members of ATUN. With the tenant movement still growing, ATUN helps connect smaller tenant unions to more established groups like the Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU), which has thousands of dues-paying members as well as the resources and solutions that come with experience.[1]

TANC slate

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TANC June 16 2019.

TANC was founded by a handful of rank-and-file members of the East Bay Democratic Socialists of America. Our analysis of today's housing is solidly Marxist.

Housing is not a 'single issue' problem, but an issue that's embedded within the totality of capitalist society. Building out our organizing without doing other political work is political suicide.

That's why we are supporting this slate, in collaboration with the Democratic Socialists of America Communist Caucus. Help promote this type of organizing throughout the country by supporting this DSA slate!

Matt Takaichi, Nick Thacker, Daniel Tutt, Kevin Steen

TANC network

Solidarity With A Survivor of Domestic Abuse Fighting an Eviction

C is a survivor of domestic abuse who has been served with an illegal and punitive eviction from her landlords, Fred and Courtney Morse, a father/daughter landlord duo who own and manage several hundred units across the San Francisco Bay Area. Fred Morse is also a director of East Bay Rental Housing Association (EBRHA), an influential landlord class organization promoting and strategizing evictions during the pandemic. Courtney Morse is a realtor for Keller-Williams. Fred and Courtney are attempting to illegally exploit loopholes in current eviction restrictions, causing intense disruption, heartache, and trauma for C as she focuses on rebuilding and sustaining her life post crisis.

Please sign with your name and any organizational affiliation to support C’s demands for secure housing.

References

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