Victory Against Seattle Rent Hikes!
Originally published December 29th, 2014
Kshama Sawant
“This victory shows how working-class communities organizing and fighting together with a spokesperson in elected office who is prepared to resist the corporate political establishment can win real gains for ordinary people.”
Seattle’s revolutionary socialist City Councilmember Kshama Sawant and the city’s working class won a whole series of historic victories for workers and renters, like the nation’s highest minimum wage and the Amazon Tax. It also included a stunning victory against a federal attempt to destroy public housing on a grand scale in 2014.
President Obama and both parties presided over a nationwide program called “Moving to Work,” a plan to massively increase public housing rent. The purported idea was that the tenants of public housing would be forced to get higher-paying jobs, based on the neoliberal ideological claim that people are poor because they are lazy. In reality, Moving to Work was a neoliberal assault on a national scale on the little remaining public and affordable housing. Moving to Work was also racist and sexist, given that a large proportion of public housing residents are low-income families of color, many immigrants, and many single-mom households.
The Seattle incarnation of Moving to Work was given the Orwellian name “Stepping Forward.” If Stepping Forward had been allowed, it would have increased rents for 4,600 working-class and poor tenants of Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) by a stunning 400 percent over six years. It was a move to drive out tenants and begin dismantling public housing. Democrats and the SHA Board presented Stepping Forward as a fait accompli. But the tenants refused to accept it, and wanted to fight against what they knew was a pipeline to increased poverty and precarity and even homelessness.
Kshama Sawant’s City Council office organized hundreds of the tenants. The federal government, with the city establishment, had organized public meetings meant to force Stepping Forward on tenants. But Kshama and the tenants turned every public meeting into a protest action, speaking out boldly to expose the lies of the political establishment and interrupting the establishment speakers repeatedly with chants. These protest actions culminated in an incredible walkout of hundreds of tenants from the final meeting. Following the walkout, Kshama and the hundreds of tenants held their own powerful People’s Assembly!
The movement completely exposed the plans of the Obama administration and Seattle’s so-called “progressive” Democrats as hostile to working and poor people. Seattle’s Democrats were ultimately forced to join Kshama in publicly opposing Stepping Forward. In a historic victory, the Obama administration was forced to withdraw Stepping Forward and allow SHA tenants to stay secure in their homes with no rent increases! To our knowledge, Seattle was the only city in which Obama’s Moving to Work initiative was defeated. What this showed was that class struggle, not trying to negotiate with corporate politicians, is what gets the goods.
Below is the article first published by Kshama and her fellow revolutionary socialists in 2014, after the victory against Stepping Forward.
Dear Tenants and Housing Justice Activists,
Congratulations to everybody who participated in such an inspiring movement. On Monday this week, the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) announced that it will withdraw the proposed Stepping Forward program for a year. In this letter, Executive Director Andrew Lofton says the SHA “decided to put consideration of the Stepping Forward proposal on hold” until at least 2016. Stepping Forward, if enacted, would have increased the rents of low-income tenants by 400% over five years, which almost inevitably would have meant loss of shelter for countless families.
This was a program Andrew Lofton had tried to present to tenants almost as a fait accompli. The fact that our movement has successfully pushed back reflects a monumental victory. Now, the 4,600 families whose rents would have dramatically increased under Stepping Forward can take comfort this holiday season knowing that they will not lose their homes in 2015.
This has broader implications as well. Stepping Forward is only the Seattle version of a national Housing and Urban Development program called “Moving to Work,” which exists in 35 U.S. cities. To my knowledge, we are the first to successfully fight against Moving to Work. Like the $15 minimum wage victory in Seattle, which inspired other cities to pass higher minimum wages, we need to make sure tenants and housing justice activists all across the country understand how the movement beat back Stepping Forward and why we won.
Every step of the way, we were fierce in our opposition to Stepping Forward. Tenants and housing activists organized a series of protests culminating in a walkout at the last SHA public hearing, after which we held our own democratic tenant and community meeting, deciding with one voice to continue our movement.
Taking to City Hall, more than 100 tenants demonstrated at a Council budget meeting and later packed the Mayor’s office (see photo above) to insist that City officials take concrete and decisive action to stop Stepping Forward. With four of seven SHA Board of Commissioner members up for appointment and confirmation, tenants asked City elected officials to sign a proclamation pledging not to appoint or confirm board members unless they publicly expressed their categorical opposition to Stepping Forward and to rents above 30% of tenant income. Later, tenants and activists organized a spirited rally at the SHA Board of Commissioner meeting itself.
The unrelenting fightback by tenants forced the Seattle City Council to send a unanimous letter opposing Stepping Forward. The movement also ensured that the recent Mayoral appointees for the SHA Board of Commissioners are people who have expressed opposition to SHA rent hikes. In this context, the SHA has been forced to cut its losses and put Stepping Forward on hold.
Sisters and brothers, we should recognize the important work we have done, and remain vigilant and prepared to defeat Stepping Forward once and for all. We can start by keeping the pressure on City officials to only confirm SHA Board members who are committed to keeping tenant rents at no higher than 30% of income.
We also need to use the momentum from this victory to build an even stronger affordable housing movement to win rent control and a massive expansion of quality publicly-owned affordable housing, in order to address some of the root causes of the affordable housing crisis in Seattle.
Let’s take the holiday season to celebrate our historic victory with family and friends. Then, let’s get ready for even bigger struggles and wins in 2015.
Solidarity,
Kshama Sawant
Kshama Sawant is a revolutionary socialist, a founding member of Workers Strike Back, and a former Seattle City Councilmember who led the movement to win the nation’s highest minimum wage and the Amazon Tax on wealthy corporations to fund affordable housing. Kshama is now running for the U.S. Congress as an independent antiwar socialist.