On Strike — No Rent
This May 1 in New York City, housing activists are organizing “Can’t Pay May,” a citywide rent strike that will dramatize the impossibility of making rent under lockdown — and the need for a radical overhaul of the housing system.
People wait in line to receive food at a food bank on April 28, 2020 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. Spencer Platt / Getty
Today is May Day. It’s also the day that rent is due. Thousands of New Yorkers, facing economic devastation from the coronavirus — on top of the everyday struggle to pay for housing in an unaffordable city — will be going on rent strike to demand relief from Governor Andrew Cuomo.
Striking tenants, from those in Woodside, Queens, organized by the Bangladeshi Tenant Union, to those in Central Brooklyn, organized by the Crown Heights Tenant Union, are all part of a “Can’t Pay May” campaign, the latest example of how housing justice activists are organizing on matters of material survival, through community organizing and building electoral power.
New York housing politics has already demonstrated the critical importance of both political tactics. Activists won significant protections last year — the first real advances in renters’ rights in decades — a victory due to years of issue campaigning and a 2018 influx of progressive legislators independent of the real estate industry.
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