We know that when it comes to a decent and affordable life, that housing is a human right. However, when it comes to renting versus owning a home, the policies and laws around those two different realities can become a battle between the landlord, property owners, and renters.
It easily becomes a battle between the haves and the have nots.
As the legislative session gets into full swing, this time of year, we the people – the renters – prepare to get our chance to speak on what really matters; going to the Capitol, telling our stories to the legislators and letting them know how it really is when living in a house owned by someone who isn’t always around.
In the last legislative session, we lobbied hard for SB143 An Act Concerning Evictions For Cause. The bill would have extended current protections for elderly and disabled residents, protecting most tenants from being evicted at the end of their lease without cause.
We the renters and especially the more marginalized groups who live in the low income public housing sector, are the ones who are sometimes forgotten; people think that since we are a part of the system that is supposed to help us then we are not at all affected by it. When we decide to assert our powers, show up at the Capitol to speak on the lack of concern for us renters, we face being either ignored by the landlord/property owners, when it comes to the decent living and affordability part of our homes.
They say the Legislative Office Building (LOB) is the “people’s place” but if you have ever been to the LOB, you’d realize right away that it’s not as easy to navigate. It can be very cold, dealing with the fact that some of the lawmakers seem to be so far removed from what the rest of us regular people are going through.
Traveling to the LOB itself can be trying; it is quite a distance away from where we live. We get there to give our testimony, we can get cut down due to “time” for everyone to be heard; these other voices can also include the landlords/property owners themselves, who think the laws that are being supported affect them more than it does us the renters.
Now we the renters then turn to the next thing to step up our strength in power, by also taking advantage of lobbying for our rights.
The steps to take for that however, can be an intimidating hierarchy, a pecking order if you will. When it comes to lobbying, it used to be an individual thing; setting appointments with a senator, you get a one on one with someone who you know would listen to what you have to say, and may even be concerned about how the decision they make affects you.
Nowadays there is a velvet rope set up, right in the hallway that leads from the legislators’ offices and their lunch room. We have to rely on the slight chance to get a quick word in when they are taking a lunch break, or heading back to their office, to say what we need to say, basically doing an elevator pitch because of the timing. Not much time at all, to explain a complicated issue.
The ones who are really interested will make the time, but then there are the ones who seem as if they are concerned, only to reveal as soon as the conversations start that they themselves are landlords – afraid that the law will lock them out. Making their own case as if voting for the right to have No Just Cause Eviction will be more of a problem for them and not the ones who are renting the space for their home.
This is where it becomes a problem, when the landlords see this as business and not a housing issue for the ones who are living in it. As Carol Hanisch tells us, ‘The Personal is Political.’
We put in so much work last year for this bill. Every energy was spent on gathering the folks that were aware of their rights and ready to submit their testimony in person: making sure they had transportation if they needed, internet connections if they the were not able to make the in person for testimony; everyone waiting their turns for the huge number of people who waiting to testify, the majority supporting the bill.
All this, only to find out towards the end of the session that SB143 did not pass. Eventually we found out the real reason for the bill not passing was nothing but a mere language dispute as to how the bill was written.
Somehow, we had to fall back from fighting that last leg of the fight to be able to come back better and stronger this season’s legislative session. Which we did: more travel, more testimony, more waiting and more lobbying on behalf of a new piece of legislation.
This year, the bill on evictions that has passed out of committee is already a compromise – it doesn’t give us everything we wanted. And now we must wait to see if it will pass the House and Senate.
However we remain faithful, strong and persistent in fighting the good fight. Because we know that when one wins we all win; and that when the ones at the bottom are lifted up to higher heights in quality of life, then everyone else is also elevated.
To give insight on how deep that goes, I leave you with a quote from the The Combahee River Collective Statement, “If Black women were free, it would mean that everyone else would have to be free since our freedom would necessitate the destruction of all the systems of oppression.”
Dione Dwyer is a member of the Connecticut Mirror’s Community Editorial Board.