Rent is a scam
let's stop falling for it
Hi, I had trouble sleeping last night because my brain just kept thinking why are we living in a dystopia. Today I’m sharing some good news from Kansas. Onto the news…
News that made me feel like we need a rent strike forever
The Kansas City Tenants Union started a rent strike against the owners of the Quality Hill Towers and Independent Towers on October 1st. The tenants from the two buildings went on strike to protest unlivable living conditions. Imagine having the audacity to name your building Quality Hill Towers when walls are caving in and it’s a utopia for roaches. That is the audacity of a landlord. Landlords already commit the sin of stealing people’s labor for a living so making people live under a caving roof is not that much of a moral stretch.
I’m simply overjoyed that the tenants of these two buildings came together to hold their rent until the landlords make the demanded repairs. Honestly I’d be even happier if the tenants never paid the landlords ever again, but we live in a dystopia so I’ll take whatever tiny good news I can get. It’s like when you are really hungry and all you have in the fridge are vegan hotdogs and a tortilla. You wrap the hotdog in a tortilla and call it a pig in a sheet. Yes, it would be better to have a well-balanced meal, but you take what you can get.
The tenants of Quality Hill and Independent Towers are also calling for a 3% national rent cap for buildings backed by the Federal government. I love the solidarity so much that I almost forgot to be angry at the fact that the government is backing slumlords’ loans. Almost! Yes, it is absolutely wonderful that these tenants are using their collective power to fight for tenants nationwide. However, I can’t help but scream at the top of my lungs. Why is the government giving loans to corporations to buy housing when it could just let tenants have the housing? I know the short answer is that the government and corporations are evil besties who sit down at brunch together to come up with new ideas on how to torture us.
However, why do we let them torture us?
Why don’t we all go on a rent strike? The price of housing is increasing to the point that a family of four needs $318K a year to be comfortable in New York City. If you just threw up after reading that, imagine how I feel. The government is trying to gentrify my neighborhood. One of the only affordable places left to live in Brooklyn. Everyone is so nervous around here that we don’t tell anyone about our neighborhood because we are too scared they’ll move here and we’ll be forced to move out.
Instead of treating our neighborhood like it’s some sort of secret lair where you can get lunch for $5 while the person behind the register yells at you because you don’t know whether you want chili or tamarind sauce, we could all stop paying rent. I know it sounds like I’ve eaten way too many edibles, but if the tenants of these two towers can collectively come together and demand better housing, why can’t we all come together and say paying for housing is a scam and we all reject it?
That’s it for the news but don’t go yet
This week on TikTok I posted a video about the government trying to gentrify Flatbush.
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