Last November, Initiative 1 was voted on and passed in Tacoma. Can you explain what Initiative 1 is?

Initiative 1 is also known as the “Tenant Bill of Rights,” which was the popular title we gave it. It is a local ordinance that enacted the most progressive tenant protections in our entire state.

There are two protections to highlight. One is rental relocation assistance. If a landlord raises rent by over 5 percent in Tacoma, they’re required to offer relocation assistance to the tenant. It’s a minimum of two months of rent; it can be more under certain circumstances.

The other important piece of this initiative was that we banned cold-weather evictions and evictions of children and educators during the school year. Those are the big highlights. The initiative did a couple other things as well — [for instance] we also capped late fees and move-in deposits.

What is the significance of the Tenant Bill of Rights passing in Tacoma?

I think it put Tacoma for All and the main recognized force behind it, Tacoma DSA, on the political map — moving us from the margins of politics to the center of Tacoma politics. We are already in close dialogue with labor and community allies about future ballot initiatives around a workers’ bill of rights we’re likely to run. A Tacoma DSA candidate, Devin Rydel Kelly, is running a serious campaign for state house.

For a lot of the people in the leadership of this campaign — who see this [as part of] the fight to build a sustained, working-class political alternative in this city, this victory opened up a lot of new doors for us. I think it’s recognized as such by our opponents and our allies alike, which is why the opposition fought so ferociously against us and why the city council worked so hard to undermine us. I think they did not want to see the Left, socialists, and the labor movement score such a significant victory.

What organizations and individuals were involved in the Tacoma for All campaign and how did they contribute?

The coalition brought together a number of community groups and organizations. There were folks in Tacoma who work on social justice issues; we had other political and environmentally focused groups. We reached forty major endorsers, and that includes local politicians and prominent community members and people who have taken a stand for positions in Tacoma before.

Before we decided to pull the trigger on the initiative, we went to our strongest ally in the labor movement, UFCW Local 367, which represents eight thousand grocery workers in the region. The union had supported some of our tenant organizing work before because a lot of its members were facing housing crises; they were sleeping in their cars, sleeping on coworkers’ couches. Members were coming to the union for help.

So UFCW was invested and had a whole-worker organizing approach on this issue. So it bought in early, and it was through UFCW’s early support that we were able to also get the Pierce County Central Labor Council on board and a number of other unions donating, endorsing, and so on.

An exciting moment to show the breadth of our coalition came in the summer beforehand. The city council was trying to cut across us; it voted in July to put forward a competing ballot initiative, a watered-down version. When you looked at who was supporting theirs versus who was supporting ours, they had the Chamber of Commerce, the landlord organizations, and a few individuals associated with housing issues. But we had almost every housing justice organization in town endorsing ours; we had lots of labor unions, we had most progressive-leaning organizations.

A majority of the city council didn’t support it, but we had support in state legislatures and other more left politicians. So in some ways, we were successful at politically isolating the mayor and the majority of the city council. We were proud to have built what effectively was a socialist-led but genuinely broad united front against big business and the landlord lobby.

What was Tacoma DSA’s role in this?

This effort was born in DSA. It quickly became a community coalition, but there was always a lot of DSA presence and leadership inside of the coalition. It certainly started with the chapter, but it reflected issues that were important to the entire community.

The Rental Housing Association, one of the main landlord opposition groups, did polling where they asked, “What would you think if socialists from Seattle were trying to impose rent control policies from California?” That obviously wasn’t true. Tacoma DSA is made up of Tacoma residents, people who lived here — a lot of people with many years in the movement. But our opposition certainly tried to seize on DSA’s acknowledged leading role to demonize and undermine us. It didn’t work.

What were the issues renters in Tacoma were dealing with prior to the campaign?

We had the highest rate of evictions in Washington State when we looked at recent data. Folks were getting kicked out of their houses right and left. Rent increased 43 percent in the last five years.

If you look at where progressive tenant legislation is passing, it’s usually in places with similar conditions: where rent has gone up significantly and tenants are cost-burdened, and they’re also experiencing the slow violence of the state when it comes to evictions and losing your home.

That’s something that happened to me personally. It’s part of the reason I’m so passionate about fighting for housing justice. I know what it’s like to be homeless and a single mom with a child, and a lot of other people here were going through that.

You mentioned some of the opposition groups. Who was the opposition to this campaign, and what was their strategy?

The folks with the deepest pockets were the Rental Housing Association of Washington and the Multifamily Housing Association. They were major opposition at one point during the campaign.

We actually debated the executive director of the Rental Housing Association. Myself and one of our other steering committee members did this very public debate — I think it was attended by over 150 people. About half the room were landlords; the other half of the room were our supporters. That brought the opposition into clear focus for us.

There were moments during that debate when they asked, “Are you from Seattle?” [And they were saying,] “You’re socialists,” which is something we proudly owned.

The funny part of that was that the director, Sean Flynn, doesn’t even live in Tacoma. The Rental Housing Association’s office is in Seattle. He lives in a suburb of Seattle, and he’s coming down to Tacoma to call us out as outside agitators. It was pretty scandalous.

The majority of landlords in Tacoma don’t live in Tacoma. Ninety percent of the money that flowed into this race came from statewide and even national groups; the National Association of Realtors dumped $200,000.

The opposition campaign broke all records of previous spending in any previous Tacoma election. It was quite the campaign. We raised $130,000, but they raised almost four times that.

There was also a homegrown opposition. The Tacoma City Council, long before the landlord lobby reared its head, was operating behind the scenes. The council took the lead and tried first to co-opt us. We had five meetings with the mayor, city staff, or different city council members where they tried to give us a seat at the table and negotiate a compromise. We accepted the negotiations; we took it seriously and engaged.

They wanted us to not turn in the signatures to trigger the ballot initiative. That was their ask of us. But in the end, as the deadline approached to do that, their offer was extremely weak on eviction protections and had nothing on the tenant relocation assistance, the two biggest-ticket items that we were proposing.

They couldn’t co-opt us. Then when they tried to put their ballot initiative forward, but they did it sloppily, and we were able to take them to court and force their initiative off the ballot by the end of August because of a legal mistake they made. That’s when the landlord lobby swooped in at the last minute with this massive funding against us.

Why do you think you were able to win, despite the massive spending against the campaign?

The material conditions in our county had become pretty extreme. With a high rate of eviction and the significant increase in rents, and then you combine that with other economic factors and other pressures that working families are facing, like inflation and groceries costing more — you’ve got a situation where something’s got to give.

That’s part of the reason that we were able to win. The other part is the success of our coalition and the power of being backed by the labor movement locally. That made a huge difference for us, both in getting folks to vote and the donations that we received as a result of union support.

I would like to see more of that nationwide, unions backing housing justice. Because you fight for these gains at the bargaining table like higher wages, but workers often win and then turn around and that’s all eaten up by increased rents.

When you look across the country, you see tenant laws being passed, particularly in big urban centers like Seattle, San Francisco, New York, and so on, where the extremes of wealth inequality are highest and where housing prices have gone highest. But I think Tacoma is emblematic of a rising trend nationally over the last few years, where traditionally more affordable, working-class cities are suddenly experiencing massive investments from outside real estate moguls.

During the course of the campaign, we had an activist and her family facing eviction, and we found out her massive apartment complex was owned by two San Francisco private equity billionaires. And we found one of them bragging on a podcast about his philosophy. Basically they buy apartment buildings that poor people live in, renovate them, push the poor people out, add a few things, and then rent them to richer people.

That business model, I think, has moved on an aggressive scale into a lot of traditionally blue-collar, more affordable areas over the last few years. So Tacoma experienced this rapid shift from being a city that prided itself as “grit city,” as an affordable blue-collar city, to increasingly finding working-class residents feeling squeezed and pushed out. I think that sense of change fueled a lot of our support as well.

Since the bill passed, what has Tacoma for All been doing? What has the response been from the community and from the opposition — namely the landlords and city council?

Tacoma for All has been engaging in lots of tenant education and getting information out to folks about their new rights. That’s not something we’re counting on the city doing; in fact, it has signaled that it doesn’t want to tell tenants about their new rights. They’re not undertaking any effort at this point to educate renters.

Like most tenant rights in Washington, some of the protections in the bill have to be accessed through the court system. So there is a huge need for education and letting folks know. We’ve had teams canvassing every weekend this past month. We’re planning “know your rights” workshops, and we’re going to keep on making sure that people understand the new protections and that we can develop materials that will support them in accessing those.

Beyond tenant rights, Tacoma for All is thinking about what we do next to continue building working-class political power in our city. In alliance with UFCW 367, we’re looking at putting a workers’ bill of rights ballot initiative in 2025. That would raise the minimum wage from $16.25 an hour — that’s a statewide minimum wage — to around $20 an hour, which is what Seattle and a number of suburbs of Seattle enjoy. Alongside that, [it would include] a fair scheduling provision, increased mandatory sick days, and a number of other workers’ rights. What we’re excited about is that corresponds in terms of timing and issues to the contract battle that UFCW 367 is about to wage for their eight thousand grocery workers.

The number-one issue for them is guaranteed hours and wages. Whether it’s at the bargaining table with Kroger and the big grocery monopolies or through the legislative process, we’re going to fight hard to make sure UFCW members and all workers enjoy a basic standard of economic stability and stable working hours with predictable schedules.

The union itself is gearing up for a potential strike. It believes that Kroger and the grocery monopolies are not going to give guaranteed hours without a strike. We want to use the fight for a ballot measure on these issues to mobilize mass solidarity for the grocery workers.