Save Lives By Striking on April 1
This is a guest post by Claire Rudy Foster, a queer trans writer from Portland, Oregon. You can find him on the frontlines in the Rose City or just on Twitter.
The first suspected case of COVID-19 came to Portland, Oregon at the end of February. (The Portland Metro area rests on traditional village sites of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Bands of Chinook, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes.) When coronavirus came to our city, I was pushing a mop over the gleaming linoleum of the Multnomah Athletic Club, a members-only elite social club for Oregon’s millionaires. I’d worked there as a janitor for four months, observing the private habits of the rich and writing about the painful economic disparity between the members and the staff who provided every imaginable service to them.
That February weekend, the MAC hosted a youth racquetball tournament. The Club was crowded with student-athletes, their coaches, and their families, from babies to grandparents. Some of them came from Lake Oswego, where only hours before, an employee was presumed to have COVID-19. I watched hundreds of people hugging, sharing plates from the buffet table near the competitive courts, and leaving handprints on every surface. Some of them commuted to Tokyo every week or flew to Seattle for work, as though they were taking the bus. I heard more than one person shrug off the danger, commenting that they could afford to get sick. They weren’t worried about insurance, access to hospitals, or finding someone to bring groceries. All they cared about was what the pandemic might do to their stock portfolios.
One woman commented to her friend, “I’m so mad they gave coronavirus a female name. It’s anti-woman.”
After an eight-hour shift of disinfecting workout equipment, door handles, and countertops, I went home and washed my hands until my knuckles cracked. I stood in the hottest shower I could tolerate. I wasn’t going to put my life at risk so these people could have clean bathroom mirrors. I put in my notice, spending my last paycheck on supplies and dry goods so I could self-isolate in my apartment and keep up with my freelance assignments. It was the end of February: I was ahead of the curve, but within the week, I wasn’t the only person stuck at home. The walls of my building are thin. I could hear the other residents on all three sides of me. They’d all been fired or laid off, sent home, and told to shelter in place. They were stressed about money. They didn’t have a backup plan.
All of them were coughing.
What’s worse: death by suffocation or death by starvation? Many renters are asking themselves whether to risk leaving their homes to work as the coronavirus pandemic closes one business after another. As hospitals struggle to find enough ventilators for patients, people who are still asymptomatic are trapped with terrible choices about survival. Although Oregon’s Governor Kate Brown issued an executive order for people to stay in their homes, leaders have failed to provide resources that will contain the crisis and save lives. That’s why we are protesting rent as our city shuts down---and calling on other cities to strike, too.
Portland, which is home to superlative restaurants, fitness and outerwear giants, and boutiques with a bird on everything, has effectively shuttered. Even cultural landmarks like Powell’s Books are firing workers without healthcare, severance, or any promise that jobs will be there when the 8-week shutdown ends. The Hilton, which claims to be the number one place to work in the United States, fired all of its workers last week, offering only a bus pass and a tube of Clorox wipes as “severance.” The Multnomah Athletic Club, after dragging its feet for weeks, sent employees home without pay but continues collecting dues from its members.
People who already have money and who are protected by their privilege are insulated from the crisis. The rest of us are in big trouble and fighting for our lives.
Service industry workers, sex workers, stylists, artists, and musicians that put Portland on the map are unable to work---and unable to support themselves and their families. Some employees can work remotely, but even people with an income aren’t spending money at local businesses. The only “essential” workers during this crisis are grocery store employees, healthcare workers, and government service providers like police, public defenders, and postal carriers. The rest of us? There is no work, which means there is no food, no insurance, and no rent. One by one, I saw friends lose gigs, cancel speaking engagements, and shut down their book tours. My neighbors were all home: when we passed in the hall, we sidled past each other, backs against the walls, not breathing.
A rent strike on April 1 means that tenants won’t pay rent, utilities, or other housing costs to landlords unless the city meets tenants’ demands. Strikers also demand the total suspension of interest and back rent, which would create an undue burden on people who are already paycheck-to-paycheck. Portland Tenants United has called for an “April Amnesty,” a one-month reprieve for renters. The union also asks landlords to sign a pledge saying they’ll support renters and waive or reduce rent for the month of April.
However, a one-month amnesty is unlikely to solve long term problems. The scope of this public health crisis is potentially years long, with an estimated 18-month wait time until an FDA-approved coronavirus vaccine and severe impact on the economy, including a potential collapse of the housing market. If death rates are as predicted, many apartments will be empty by fall---not because of evictions, but because renters have lost their lives to the virus. Helping tenants stay in their homes benefits landlords in the long run, making it more likely that their renters will survive the crisis and be able to pay rent once cities are open for business. Mass evictions put everyone at risk and also increase the odds that rent prices will be driven down, as evictions and deaths mean units that become available are likely to stay empty.
The strike is intended to force policymakers and leaders to freeze rent and any housing costs until the pandemic is over. Portland isn’t the only city to feel the impact of the pandemic or the only one to take action. Similar strikes are planned for Atlanta, Philadelphia, New York City, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, and Austin. The New York State Senate just introduced a rent freeze bill. San Francisco and San Diego have both implemented eviction freezes, but haven’t offered relief to tenants struggling to pay rent. In Oregon, Gov. Brown placed a 90-day moratorium on evictions, but these measures don't go far enough: they merely delay the inevitable.
April is just the beginning of this crisis. By May 1, it is likely that people will be out of money. The number of reported infections and deaths are increasing exponentially. The United States is the global epicenter of the disease. This is not going to get better in the next month. If anything, it is only going to get worse.
In Portland, activists confronted Mayor Ted Wheeler at City Council, placing themselves in danger of infection, but cries for help have fallen on deaf ears. Leadership continues to drag its feet, limiting gatherings to 10 people or fewer and closing businesses, but not doing what is necessary to provide for people in desperate need. Without any way to earn money during the shutdown, facing extreme job scarcity, it is cruel and unrealistic to assume people will be able to pay back rent (with interest) once the brunt of the pandemic passes. The average rent in Portland is $1,300, so stimulus checks are not a viable solution. People who are undocumented, people who are independent workers, and people who are unhoused are at a disadvantage in this deal. It is simply not enough. More than 50 percent of Americans do not have a savings account. Most people are one flat tire away from a financial crisis. Thanks to coronavirus, our local and national economies are blowing out. We need more than a patch kit. We need a new car.
Rent strikes are coordinated through viral online petitions and via social media. Face-to-face contact is severely limited, due to the risk of passing COVID-19, but virtual networks and mutual aid groups are linking like-minded people. Almost 40,000 Portland renters have signed a petition announcing their intention to strike on April 1. Neighborhood groups started organizing the rent strike weeks ago as Portland began to feel the effects of the pandemic. Rent Strike PDX created a tenant support toolkit for people trying to organize their buildings and push for a freeze. Working with my neighbors, I’ve resorted to text messages. Without work and without any sign that help is on the way, we are all scared. We have time to organize. We have a reason to work together.
Rent relief is critical to save lives and slow the spread of coronavirus. Encouraging people to self-quarantine means eliminating any reason they may have to leave their homes. According to the CDC, the most effective way to contain the virus is to keep people in their homes. One sick person can infect 59,000 others. To prevent mass infection, crowding at hospitals, and death, leaders must initiate a rent freeze everywhere and provide immediate rent relief to everyone. We must shelter those who lack stable housing; release prisoners; enact an eviction moratorium; protect tenants from owing back rent or interest; provide utilities such as heat, water, gas, power, telephone, cable, and internet; guarantee universal health care with the assumption that anyone can be a carrier; support people and their families with food stamps and unemployment benefits regardless of their status; and relocate unhoused people into vacant apartments, hotel rooms, and Airbnb units.
If this seems extreme, consider that up the economic food chain, policymakers are already taking care of people in higher income brackets, like the people I cleaned up after when I was mopping at the MAC.
Some landlords and mortgage holders have been granted a break from payments of up to one year as HUD and other federal regulators have put a moratorium on foreclosures and suspended mortgage payments without interest. There’s no reason not to do the same for renters. Without any way to know when the danger will pass, or the extreme impact of the pandemic on our economy, we must have our basic human needs met. The alternative is a total collapse as people run out of food and begin to risk their lives in order to earn enough money to feed their families. The longer people attempt to carry on “business as usual,” the longer the pandemic will last. Every neighborhood in every city is equally at risk, and nobody is immune. The time to act was yesterday.
Many people will take part in the strike out of necessity, not solidarity. We cannot pay. Even those of us who can pay are deciding whether it’s wiser to save rent money for food, medicine, or the crushing medical bills we’ll get if we contract the virus. April will be difficult for many. May, June, and beyond? That’s anyone’s guess. If every tenant sits out rent, the impact will be wide-reaching and immediate. In 2019, Portland paid $4.7 billion in rent: nationwide, we paid $512 billion. Removing that money from the system because people cannot or will not pay will affect everyone. It is in leaders’ best interests, in Portland and elsewhere, to take immediate action to use every resource at their cities’ disposal. This is not a drill. It is not a joke. We face annihilation and we cannot waste a single hour deliberating about whose lives are worth saving.
Portland is calling on its leaders to protect the people who live here and ensure that when the pandemic passes, we have a city that is still strong, healthy, and viable. We can’t gamble our lives on stop-gap measures that show up “too little, too late.” There will be no livelihoods after this if we don’t act now. There may be no lives. From Portland, Oregon to Portland, Maine, we must organize and strike on April 1. Our survival depends on working together.
My neighbors are coughing. I’m not paying in April, and I hope you won’t, either.