A profound moment of inspiration unfolded in New Haven during the 1965 rent strikes, as the people of the city harnessed the collective power of their community to safeguard their fundamental right to live with dignity.
The rent strikes were sparked by neglectful landlords, pervasive surveillance, and an increasing loss of control over their living spaces. In response, the tenants of 29 Ann Street took a stand. “After just a few weeks of organizing, the tenants… had claimed their apartment building as their own space. Ten families who had never held any legal ownership over the small, dilapidated spaces they called home had–through organizing—transformed discrete, run-down units into a strong collective space.” After “orchestrat[ing] the withholding of rents at four hill addresses, the tenants began planning direct actions.”
While the rent strikes were successful in “forcing some repairs and taking the landlords to court for fines and damages,” the lasting affect of the strike was that it “fundamentally changed the tenants’ relationship with landlords… and City Hall by proposing an alternative model by which organized tenants could challenge the power imbalance that had—to that point—fostered hopelessness and anger.”
