On February 13, 2024, eight tenants met with three representatives from their new corporate landlord in a conference room at the office of the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco (HRC). The parties, who were joined by organizers from HRC, convened for a joint bargaining session over issues brought forward by tenants at two buildings belonging to an extensive portfolio that their landlord had recently acquired: 434 Leavenworth Street and 709 Geary Street.

Imagine a labor contract negotiation, but instead of bosses and workers, the two sides are tenants and landlords. In the private US housing market, such face-to-face negotiating sessions are rare. This one, however, which lasted for two hours, resulted in huge wins for the tenants.

Tenants left the negotiation having scored victories on issues ranging from improved language access, transparency of maintenance contracts, firing of a building manager, resolving of code and maintenance issues, lowering of monthly rents to their July 2022 and May 2023 levels (when the landlord was first notified of the buildings’ respective habitability issues), and a 90 percent rent refund for all tenants from those dates totaling more than $1 million across the two buildings.