Seattle Solidarity (“SeaSol”) is a volunteer network of working people who believe in standing up for our rights. Our goal is to support our fellow workers’ strikes and struggles, build solidarity, and organize to deal with specific job, housing, and other problems caused by the greed of the rich and powerful. Join us! Let’s fight to win.
Tenants stall rent hikes, win repairs, but many priced out
By the summer of 2016, residents of Beacon Hill’s Thai Columbian Apartments had long been used to living with broken refrigerators, broken heaters, water leaks, rats, and cockroaches. They put up with it, because the rent was low. Then they found two notices taped to their doors: a new management company called Tecton was taking over, and the rent would be going way, way up – by 25%.
Beyond posting rent increase notices, Tecton seemed unwilling to lift a finger. Broken appliances still weren’t fixed or replaced. Water still leaked, causing ceilings and floors to collapse. Trash still piled up outside due to insufficient garbage collection.
Tenants’ initial shock soon turned to fury. If they were going to start paying serious rent for these apartments, continuing to live in slum conditions was just too much. They had to do something.
Getting organized
One of the tenants who knew of SeaSol from a previous campaign distributed our contact info throughout the complex, and we quickly received calls from several Thai Columbian tenants. We met with them and began assessing if and how we could help them fight back. With rents skyrocketing all over Seattle, we recognized that we probably wouldn’t have enough power to stop the rent from going up, although it might be delayed through legal tactics. The tenants’ greatest anger was over the continued horrible living conditions, and on that issue we felt prepared for a fight. SeaSol voted to organize a direct action campaign aimed at forcing the slumlords to make repairs. Meanwhile, we could help tenants navigate the complex legal structures that are supposed to protect Seattle tenants from landlord malfeasance, and see if the rent increases could at least be delayed.
We began our campaign by organizing building-wide meetings with the tenants we were already in touch with. SeaSol members joined these tenants in knocking on every door in the two buildings to ask about the issues in people’s units and invite them to meetings. 15 to 20 different units were represented in these early meetings, during which we developed a list of issues throughout the complex which would serve as our list of demands.
It was the longest list of demands SeaSol had ever drawn up, but given the number of horrendous problems the landlord was ignoring, it had to be. In addition to broken toilets and refrigerators, there was one family with no lock on their door, another having water pour in through their living-room ceiling whenever it rained, and a gap in an outside railing over a three-story cliff, where a small child had already fallen and suffered serious injuries.
The fight begins
SeaSol mobilized a strong group of 35 community members and tenants at 10AM on a weekday to go to the Tecton Property Management offices and present the demands. We calmly walked into the offices, where one of the tenants read the demand letter to the CEO of Tecton. This was a particularly empowering moment in the campaign; she stood tall and delivered the demands in the office of the executive. He attempted to cut her off, stating that he “didn’t have time for this,” but she simply continued to read and made him listen to the demand letter in its entirety while the rest of us, packed into his office, looked on. Here’s the video.
Despite the urgency of the repair demands, we gave Tecton five days to begin fixing them before we’d take further action. Tecton chose not to do so. Meanwhile, we used this time to begin helping the tenants follow up about the rent increases with the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections (DCI), which is tasked with enforcing local housing laws. As one of the tenants had already discovered, Tecton’s rent increase notices were legally invalid, since they didn’t include required tenant-rights information.
While we are and always have been a direct action-oriented organization that intentionally avoids working within the parameters of the legal system as much as possible, in this case the potential value of delaying the rent hike was too great for us to ignore, so we decided to set aside ideological dogma in order to be as helpful as possible to the tenants.
After five days, we immediately began putting up “don’t rent here” warning posters around the buildings. This allowed us to build connections with other tenants and served as an initial shot across the bow, so to speak. From there, we began putting up posters around other Tecton properties in the region to warn prospective renters of how they conduct themselves. It was around this time that we received word from DCI that they would be forcing Tecton to rescind the illegally-posted rent hike. This came as a great relief to many of the tenants, even if it only amounted to two more months in the buildings before they were priced out.
Insult to injury
Tecton had the audacity to begin repairing and renovating units that had been empty since before the fight began, prior to beginning work on their current tenants’ homes which were still in severe disrepair.
We took this antagonism as a signal to escalate our fight, organizing a series of pickets targeting the buildings’ owner, Mark Shuler, at the home which served as the office for his architecture firm in Ballard. Prior to this, we made sure to poster the area (with Shuler’s face prominent on the posters) as well as go door to door to speak with Shuler’s neighbors and explain our intentions to picket on their street. While we were always sure to bring the noise to these pickets, we wanted to be sure to engage with the neighbors to make sure they understood the reason for the disturbance, and who was to blame.
Some get repairs, while many have to move
Faced with these tactics, the landlords finally began acknowledging our demands, and repairs began to happen at a glacial pace. They finally closed the gap in the railing where the child had fallen several months earlier. They replaced the broken laundry machines and some of the units’ broken appliances. They fixed the mailboxes, which had fallen into such disrepair that the postal service had been threatening to stop delivering to them. They hired pest control people to at least try to address the cockroach and rat infestations.
We were able to further delay some of the rent increases in early 2017, after one of the two apartment buildings failed a DCI inspection that we coordinated with the tenants. Despite our efforts on this front however, the majority of the tenants were eventually pushed out of the apartments over the next few months. Tecton worked tirelessly to try and rent out the newly-renovated units at much higher rent levels, but didn’t find much luck with it. This was partly because of the warnings we posted around the buildings and online, but also because the rents they were asking for were just too high. Rather than keep rents at a reasonable level, the landlords in effect chose to collect no rent at all from most of the apartments, and in the end we couldn’t stop them from making that choice.
Finishing it
Even after the rent increase took effect, there remained a core of Thai Columbian tenants who were engaged with SeaSol, and several still-inhabited units had major problems that had not been addressed. One family still didn’t have a working refrigerator. Another still had water coming in through the ceiling during rainstorms. A tenant still had water leaking from the pipes in his bathroom. There still wasn’t sufficient garbage collection, so the area out back was still a rodent-infested trash heap. We were determined to give the landlords no peace until all remaining tenants had gotten their original repair demands met, or else received relocation (either money or a new apartment) that was acceptable to them.
To highlight the remaining repair demands, every week or two we chose a specific issue to bring to the landlords’ attention continuously, via request forms, emails, text messages, and phone calls. Meanwhile we launched a satirical “ShulerAID” charity campaign, asking people to spare change for this unfortunate landlord who was too poor to maintain decent conditions. We publicized it online and with posters around Mark Shuler’s neighborhood, culminating in a “benefit concert” in front of his home. We also rallied a small group of about 15 people who marched into the onsite office to submit a pile of repair requests on behalf of a tenant who was still dealing with a huge leak in their ceiling. We covered the area around the Thai Columbian with posters encouraging neighbors to complain about the lack of adequate garbage collection. We combined these tactics with a series of weekly ShulerAID postcards that we sent to the homes of Mark Shuler’s Facebook friends.
All this appeared to do the trick. The broken refrigerator was replaced. The leaking bathroom pipe was fixed. The tenants with the leaking ceiling were given a different apartment. The landlord added an extra weekly garbage pickup. With all of our demands now having been met, we voted to end our fight.
Takeaways
This was a difficult fight for both Seattle Solidarity Network and the tenants. Our organization joined the fight only a month or so prior to the initial rent increase going into effect. This left us without a lot of time to fully engage all of the tenants in the buildings. Although we did end up significantly delaying the rent increases and forcing an improvement in living conditions, some tenants had already given up and moved out in the fall of 2016. Despite our best efforts, it takes a lot of time to get 30+ apartments-worth of individuals with a variety of language barriers on the same page and organized. In the future, we need to find ways to build more prep time into our campaigns, or else get it done faster while still being thorough.
We are still very proud of having helped the tenants delay the rent increases even for a few months, saving each of them hundreds of dollars and giving families who had to move more time to find other housing. In the process, we learned a lot about how to navigate the subpar legal systems in place for tenants. While these systems helped us create some breathing space, it ultimately still came down to ourselves and our direct action tactics to actually get the repairs made. Meeting all of our repair demands was definitely a costly experience for the new owners of the building. However, it was nothing compared to the human cost of making people live in slum conditions.
The Thai Columbian campaign also brought several fantastic individuals and organizers into our organization who were tenants at the complex. As always, one of our most important goals in a campaign (secondary only to getting the demands met) is to develop organizing skills amongst the individuals we are working with so that in the future, they can assist in other organizing campaigns while knowing that they have Seattle Solidarity Network watching their back should any other predatory landlords or bosses decided to wrong them. We are only as strong as the people who make up this organization and gaining active organizers is a critical component of continuing to build a vibrant resistance to capitalism and all of its toxic consequences in our community.
Seattle Solidarity Network remains committed to the fight against gentrification in our community as it represents an all-out attack on the working class at the hands of those who already have the most. If you or somebody you know is experiencing wrongdoing in the workplace or housing, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us by call or text at 206-673-6074 or by email at info@seasol.net. If you are part of a solidarity network and need advice on a campaign or are looking to start one, please get in touch with us as well. We want to continue to be a resource for organizers across the globe as we each begin to take action in our respective communities to build a strong and responsive network to fight alongside the working class.
Fight begins for decent living conditions at Thai Columbian
For years, the landlords of the Thai Columbian apartments in Beacon Hill have failed to maintain habitable living conditions. The buildings have been infested with rats, roaches, and mold. Water leaks through ceilings and walls. Garbage piles up uncollected outside. Walls, floors, doors, and appliances are broken. There is a gap in an outdoor walkway railing through which a child has already fallen three stories, causing serious injury.
When the property changed owners and management in late summer of 2016, nothing changed — except the new owners posted huge rent increases. Fed up with appalling conditions and equally appalled by the rent increase, tenants are organizing to demand decent living conditions.
In early November, a group of around 35 SeaSol supporters and tenants delivered a letter to Tecton Property Management demanding essential repairs for over half of the 40 units. Since then, Tecton has begun making repairs at the apartment buildings. However, almost all of the repairs are being done to empty units, while the tenants continue to face extreme issues within their own units that are largely going unaddressed.
To add insult to injury, while tenants were able to get the initial rent increase notice rescinded due to the format of the original notice, Tecton has now posted a new notice for a major rent increase set for 2/1/2017.
Join us to tell Tecton that their greed cannot take precedence over renters’ rights to decent living conditions. Here’s how you can help:
– join us at upcoming actions. Get in touch at www.seasol.net/contact - are you a Tecton renter? Share stories at: www.slumlordwarning.com/tecton
It’s time to fight back.
A win and a loss: Prospero and the Silver Cloud Fight
Our dear friend and comrade, Prospero, passed away quietly on July 18 while enjoying a movie at the theater. SeaSol and Prospero had just won the fight against Silver Cloud Hotels on the 16th. We are incredibly lucky to have gotten the chance to know Prospero. We will remember him for his kindness, generosity, and determination to fight for justice.
Prospero was a warm and humble man, but also a tenacious fighter. He worked hard, washing dishes and working as a custodian until the end of his life. Despite old age and failing health, he stepped up again and again to participate in SeaSol, first for Neftali’s fight against Greystar last summer and then for his own, because that was what he believed in. In strategy discussions at meetings, he often said, “We need to hit them harder!” We never saw him happier than on the picket line.
Prospero worked for Silver Cloud Hotels for several years as a dishwasher for their in-house restaurant, Jimmy’s, before suffering a heart attack on the job. His manager was reluctant to let him leave work and refused to call an ambulance, but eventually paid for a taxi to take Prospero to the hospital. While Prospero was recovering, the manager at the Stadium Silver Cloud Hotel fired him for having a heart attack, using the outrageous excuse that Prospero “no call, no showed” while he was in surgery for a heart attack he suffered at work. In addition to unjustly and illegally firing Prospero, Silver Cloud stole the accrued sick and vacation pay Prospero had earned over the past two years rather than paying out the leave at the end of his employment. Their actions were in violation of the federal Family Medical Leave Act, city law, and universal rules of human decency. They thought they could get away with mistreating and stealing from a poor, 76-year-old man. They assumed Prospero would not stand up to them. They were wrong.
Prospero made efforts to contact management for months to discuss the unjust firing and stolen wages, to no avail. He came to the Seattle Solidarity Network at the recommendation of a friend who had seen SeaSol in action in the past. When he first came around, we had no capacity to take on new fights. That never stopped him from doing his best to make it to every meeting in spite of his health. He helped out with other people’s fights, which we won with his help, not once asking us when we would be able to begin his. He wanted to help everyone that he could. When we finally were able to begin his fight in late 2015, we discussed our demand for the fight and what we would consider a win. He was adamant that it was not about the money for him, that it was about letting management know that they can’t treat people the way they treated him. Most importantly, he wanted to show his former coworkers that it is possible to stand up for yourself in the workplace. In late January 2016, Prospero and a group of forty fellow SeaSolers delivered a demand to the manager of the Silver Cloud: Pay Prospero his accrued sick and vacation leave, or face further direct action from SeaSol. Unwisely, the company did not respond.
For six months, we engaged in a tireless direct action campaign against the hotel chain. With support from our comrades in the Portland Solidarity Network, we postered around Silver Cloud hotels and handed out fliers in both cities. We held a series of noisy early-morning pickets in front of the Seattle hotels, very successfully annoying management and guests. We had a noisy late night picket complete with a message projected on the side of the hotel (our first light action) labeling Silver Cloud “wage thieves.” We visited the owner, Jim Weymouth, in his wealthy Medina neighborhood multiple times to alert him and his neighbors of the injustice Prospero suffered working at his hotel. One of these visits involved a land picket in front of the Weymouths’ 6-million-dollar home and a simultaneous lake flotilla on the water behind the house. We reached out to companies who hold conferences at Silver Cloud, discouraging them from doing business with the hotel.
We had another picket in the works when Prospero received his long-awaited check in the mail. We grieve the loss of our friend and comrade, and take some comfort in knowing that he got to enjoy a little taste of victory while he was still with us. We will have a gathering this month to celebrate Prospero and the Silver Cloud fight. For details, please contact info@seasol.net.
Multi-city campaign forces Greystar to return tenants’ stolen money
For about two weeks they did not have a functioning bathroom. Greystar’s compensation offer? A pair of free movie tickets. The issues with their plumbing were so extensive that contractors had to tear down an outer wall of their apartment in October. Rather than relocate Neftali and his family, Greystar forced them to live in an apartment with a missing wall for over a week, leaving their unit exposed to the street. Meanwhile water rained down from ceilings and raw sewage bubbled up from drains, damaging rugs & paint before the leaks were finally fixed. When Neftali and Yusdel moved out, Greystar charged them for the damage. When Neftali asked that the bogus charges be removed, the landlord arrogantly told him to go take Greystar to court. Neftali refused, saying, “The judge is your friend. I’m going to talk to my friends.”
Initial research revealed that hazardously neglectful management and wanton theft of tenants’ money is business as usual for Greystar, the largest apartment manager in the U.S.
A few highlights from other Greystar tenants’ online reviews:
- “A closet door broke right off of a rotting wall and collapsed on me!” (yelp)
- “I’d rather be shot in the face than to live in that apartment again!” (pissedconsumer.com)
- “All over the apartment is mold and my kids are so sick… The lady who was our neighbor died in her apartment and [Greystar] left her there for a month…” (ripoffreport.com)
- “We had asked that the second floor balcony be secured better because our toddler could slip through the railings. Greystar’s eviction attorney came to our home and asked me to hold my toddler out through the railings to prove that he could fit” (yelp)
You get the idea. Greystar’s CEO, Bob Faith, explains his business model here:
(“Many times we take over an asset that was managed by a smaller organization that hadn’t been focused on the bottom line, and we can drive dramatic savings out of the expense side of the equation”)
In other words, they boost profits by dramatically cutting back on maintenance and allowing thousands of peoples’ homes to decay and fall apart.
Usually they get away with it all, but when they ripped off Neftali, they messed with the wrong guy. Neftali and Seasol formed a nine-person fight committee and voted to take on Greystar. On July 21, Neftali, Yusdel, and 22 others marched into the Seattle office of Greystar to deliver our demand of $575.01. We gave this large company a week to meet our demands, vowing to take further action after the 28th of July.
After a week had passed, SeaSol utilized connections with solidarity networks in other cities to launch a multi-city postering campaign against Greystar buildings. This coordinated effort got Greystar’s attention, and regional manager Garett Randall met with Neftali and SeaSolers, offering to pay approximately half of the demand. During the meeting, as he heard about Neftali and Yusdel’s experience, Randall laughed uncomfortably and said “I wouldn’t have lived there” multiple times. This manager also mentioned that Greystar would not pay back any money unless Neftali signed a confidentiality agreement restricting his legal rights. Neftali and Yusdel refused to accept, and fought on to win their entire demand.
Neftali, Yusdel, and SeaSol worked tirelessly to put up posters at Greystar buildings around Seattle. We held a poster-wearing action in front of a large downtown building that attracted a lot of negative attention for an incensed property manager there who followed Neftali around, tearing down posters as he put them up. We set up a website highlighting the shameful business practices of Greystar and encouraging prospective tenants not to rent from them. Meanwhile, postering continued across the country.
At a second meeting with Garett Randall on August 19, Neftali refused again to sign the ridiculous legal document and was walking away from the table when Randall ran up to him and shoved a check for $575.01 into his hands, preferring to give in to Neftali, Yusdel and SeaSol’s demands rather than face continued widespread direct action against Greystar.
A victory party was held in Seattle on August 22. We are very pleased with this victory after a well-organized collaboration with other solidarity networks. Thanks to comrades in Seattle, Oakland, Santa Rosa, Boston, Philadelphia, and many other cities, for acting in solidarity with Neftali and Yusdel.
Sticky-Fingered Bosses Forced to Pay Day Laborer
José did nine days of cleaning and landscaping work for these bosses as a day laborer in mid-2014. The owners of the company hired him at a rate of $15/hr for a total of 78 hours. When the time came to pay José for his work, the company decided to steal his wages ($1,170) instead. Frustrated, José contacted the Seattle Solidarity Network, who voted to take on his fight. José and a group of SeaSolers confronted Victor and Johnny at a coffee shop, demanding that José be paid in full. Both thieves were startled and confused as José confidently handed over the demand. We gave them two weeks to pay up.
After two weeks, the bosses hadn’t paid what they owed, so SeaSolers put up posters exposing their deeds around the office at 5470 Shilshole Ave NW in Ballard. When that wasn’t enough, we contacted and then visited one of their clients, a condo management company based in West Seattle. They promptly ceased doing business with the wage thieves.
Next, we sent out a letter to members of the brothers’ church, and followed up with a flyering action there in early March. The social pressure was on, but they continued to refuse to pay José’s wages.
In mid-March, SeaSol escalated the fight by delivering a demand to the company’s largest client, CWD Group. CWD, in their management of multiple condo buildings, hired Victor and Johnny to do cleaning work despite their public record of having been cited by the state for wage theft. We let CWD know that if they did not make sure that José’s wages got paid, we would hold them responsible for hiring a slimy, wage-stealing company to do their cleaning. We also let them know that we would soon be contacting the condo associations which employ CWD. Our response from a representative from CWD group read: “Once you left I contacted Victor … to follow-up on this situation. To my understanding, although Victor disagrees, he hired an attorney to draft a settlement letter (Release) and is prepared to pay Jose the money he believes is owed.” Victor and Johnny knew that they needed to start at least pretending to pay, and fast, if they wanted to keep their largest client.
Discussions of payment through the brothers’ skeezy lawyer throughout April weren’t going anywhere. It became clear that they weren’t going to pay up unless SeaSol and José took further direct action. Involving their largest client seemed to be the best way to put economic pressure on the wage thieves. We decided to target Ballard Condos, a 160-unit building managed by CWD, and cleaned by Jose, for our next actions. We sent letters about the fight to every unit in the building, and on Sunday, May 17, we held a very loud 7:30am “Wake up to Wage theft” action at Ballard Condos. Our noisy Sunday morning picket got the attention of Condo owners and CWD. Victor and Johnny took notice.
Following the picket, the worn-down bosses tried to pay José’s wages with some ridiculous conditions attached, and then dropped said conditions and paid José in full on June 2. We had a victory party to celebrate this fight on Saturday June 27th, with about 30 SeaSolers in attendance. Congratulations to José and to everyone who helped out with this fight.