Rural Kentucky Tenants Win Unprecedented Lease Agreement After Yearlong Campaign

The contract in question was a new lease agreement signed two days earlier by Jason Ostro, the out-of-state investor who owns Maple Grove and at least five other apartment complexes in Kentucky. After forming a tenants union, of which Myatt is a vice president, in June 2025, Maple Grove tenants not only brought Ostro to the bargaining table but won a raft of new guarantees: a 10-day grace period for late rent, advance notice in the event of the building’s sale, repair of a host of hazardous conditions issues (including broken AC) within 24 hours and, in what tenant organizers believe to be a first nationwide, cash payments of $250 per month to tenants in the event of a breach of contract.

Some 90 minutes after Myatt stormed into the property manager’s office, she said, her neighbor’s AC was whirring away.

When I spoke with Myatt in mid-March, she was still in shock. She and her neighbors had overcome months of what one local judge had termed ​“absurd” retaliatory tactics from their landlord — including Ostro’s staff sporting ​“FUCK THE TENANT UNION” t-shirts — while being consistently stonewalled by state and federal housing enforcement agencies tasked with ensuring safe living conditions in Maple Grove. Mostly, Myatt couldn’t believe the AC was actually working.

“That’s because we fucking joined this union,” Myatt told me. ​“This never would have happened had we not banded together for a whole year.”

It’s an unprecedented victory in the landlord-friendly South, where labor unions are rare and tenant organizing even rarer. The Kentucky Tenant Union (KTU), a statewide group comprised of local chapters in buildings like Maple Grove, has been fighting to change this paradigm. Since launching in Louisville in 2022, this is the first collective lease agreement the union has achieved — and it covers not just Maple Grove, but over 250 units across four properties owned by OSPM LLC, Ostro’s holding company.

The lease agreement is also a landmark achievement for tenants like Ostro’s who live in properties largely subsidized by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) rental assistance program, through which HUD provides direct payments to landlords in order to allow tenants to pay much cheaper rents. For decades, all HUD tenants have had legal protections against landlord retaliation, but those rights are neither widely known nor frequently, if ever, enforced. Additionally, President Donald Trump has hacked away at the agency since retaking office. In February 2025, HUD was ordered to reduce personnel by 50% as part of cuts demanded by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and in October, 442 HUD employees were terminated during the government shutdown, plunging the agency’s operations into chaos. But the tenants at Maple Grove could prove to be a beacon for other organizers fighting under the umbrella of a crumbling agency.

Indeed, Josh Poe, the KTU organizer who first sold Myatt on the idea of forming a union, was emphatic that this win can, and must, be replicated.

“I think the tenant movement really needed this,” Poe told me. ​“We don’t have a [National Labor Relations Board], we don’t have any of that. But there are conditions that can be created to get a landlord to negotiate and actually threaten capital. Now we’ve got a much better idea of what those are.”

“If something broke, it usually stayed broke,” recalled Kimberly Barr, the other elected leader of the Maple Grove union.

It’s a story that is by now familiar to an increasing percentage of renters. In 2021, at the height of the Covid-era real estate boom, Ostro, an out-of-state investor based in Texas, purchased more than 300 apartments across six Kentucky properties, adding them to his portfolio of over 1,500 units across four states. 

The results have been nothing short of catastrophic. 

“I had a flood and I couldn’t get nothing done,” said Mary Lou Abner, a union leader at the Ridgeway Park complex in Flemingsburg, KY, another Ostro property organizing with KTU. Holes in bathroom ceilings were standard. When toilets broke, instead of getting them fixed, tenants reported resorting to lining the bowl with Kroger bags in order to deliver waste outside to the dumpsters. ​“One building had a complete brown recluse [spider] infestation,” Heather Myatt added. ​“And the mold keeps spreading.”

Despite heavy backing from government subsidies, both in the form of Section 8 rental assistance and loans from Fannie Mae, public records show evidence of significant neglect across Ostro’s portfolio. By 2024, according to public records from Fannie Mae compiled by KTU, OSPM LLC should have been investing $39,000 annually on maintenance and repairs at Maple Grove but were in fact spending less than $15,000. Roughly the same was true at Ridgeway Park. Ostro and OSPM LLC did not respond to a request for comment before publication time.

In March 2025, KTU organizer Josh Poe visited a Louisville OSPM property called Regency Park, where the conditions were in a similar state of neglect. He made plans to look into other OSPM buildings around the state. The next month, he knocked on Myatt’s door at Maple Grove.

At first, Myatt thought Poe was trying to sell her something. ​“I thought, ​‘Why are these people here trying to help us?’” she recalled. “‘What are they going to get out of it?’”

Still, Poe convinced her to show up to the complex’s first meeting, along with about a dozen of her neighbors whom KTU had canvassed. The meeting did not go unnoticed.

“The retaliation started as soon as I stepped on the property,” Poe told me. ​“I’ve never seen a landlord try that hard to keep me from talking to tenants.”

After they met with Poe, multiple tenants began receiving notices of lease violations — a key preliminary step for potential future eviction cases against Section 8 tenants. Kimberly Barr got one for having a pet that had lived with her for years without issue. Myatt received one for not letting property managers inspect her apartment while her children were home alone.

On May 8, in the first of many such instances, while Poe was leading a canvass of Maple Grove apartments, a property manager went door to door ordering residents to call the police and claim Poe was trespassing, according to Poe and multiple tenants.

But Poe kept returning, and tenants kept meeting, until suddenly, residents from a majority of the complex’s 55 units had signed union cards pledging their membership. On June 11, the group held a public union launch at which all the union members who had received a lease violation set the notices ablaze. In Brandenburg, a town of just 3,000 people, even a rally with dozens of attendees was seismic.

“That was a big boost for me,” Myatt said. ​“I felt powerful, with all these people standing beside me.”

But OSPM’s retaliatory campaign, along with KTU’s subsequent legal battle that would bring Ostro to the bargaining table, was just beginning.

When KTU filed a formal retaliation complaint against OSMP LLC with the Southeast HUD office last summer, the office was legally mandated to respond: first by attempting to mediate between the tenants and their landlord, then by investigating the complaint if mediation failed. 

But for months, HUD was silent.

This was unsurprising to Michael Kane, former director of the National Alliance of HUD Tenants, which 25 years earlier had helped agitate for HUD’s ​“Tenant Participation” regulations for Section 8 tenants. The regulations enshrined the rights of renters in privately-owned, HUD-subsidized buildings to organize free from retaliation. 

But Kane says that meaningful enforcement of these regulations has ​“never happened.” In fact, according to a 2019 report from the housing publication Shelterforce, HUD never even issued a sanction against a landlord for infringing on tenants’ right to organize until 2018. The agency did not respond to multiple requests for comment before publication time.

Luckily, KTU had another path. Four Kentucky counties have adopted a state law, which local governments may opt into, dictating that any rent increases, decreased services or threats of eviction are presumed to be retaliatory if they occur within one year of a tenant organizing with or becoming a member of a tenant union. Regency Park, OSPM’s Louisville property, is covered by these protections.

On May 22, in coordination with KTU, Regency Park tenant Marcie Stotko filed for a Temporary Restraining Order against OSPM in hopes the courts could intervene where HUD would not. Stotko had received the same kind of ​“lease violation” notice as Barr and Myatt, which included the line ​“FAILURE TO COMPLY will result in legal proceedings against you” — a transparent threat of eviction. Crucially, Stotko and KTU asked for the restraining order to apply to tenants at any OSPM properties where KTU was organizing, arguing that retaliation anywhere in OSPM’s portfolio damaged Stotko’s ability to freely organize her own building. OSPM filed a response denying any wrongdoing.

On July 1, Jefferson County circuit court Judge Julie Kaelin sided with Stotko, issuing an order prohibiting ​“retaliatory conduct, abuse of access and diminution of services,” as well as any other actions that would interfere with tenant organizing. 

“In the past, our legal team solely served to play defense to be able to keep people in their homes,” said Sarah McGeeney, who leads KTU’s legal team. But ​“because the fight was so intense out there… we decided to attempt to use legal offensively. And we won.”

Suddenly, tenants at Maple Grove and Ridgeway Park had a new path to enforce their own rights. OSPM promptly ignored it.

At Maple Grove, after tenants posted a copy of the temporary restraining order on a bulletin board in the complex’s laundry room, OSPM shut down the facility on weekends and taped up a notice saying the disruption was due to ​“vandalism.” At Ridgeway Park, the night before a union meeting was scheduled to take place at the picnic tables in the complex’s yard, property managers collected the tables, chopped them to bits and threw them in a dumpster.

In addition to the ​“FUCK THE TENANT UNION” t-shirts, OSPM LLC property managers reportedly compelled some tenants to sign a petition disavowing the union under threat of eviction and attempted to launch a smear campaign directly against Poe.

Mary Lou Abner, a 58-year-old grandmother, even said she was followed and physically assaulted by one of the Ridgeway Park property managers during a canvass. At a later court hearing over the temporary restraining order, that property manager acknowledged an altercation had occurred.

“Nothing changed [after the order],” said Amber Goldsborough, another member of the Maple Grove union. ​“If anything, [the retaliation] ramped up. Like, a lot.”

On July 17, the union filed a motion to hold OSPM in contempt of the restraining order. In his early trainings with the group, Poe had helped the tenants prepare to document the ways they were being mistreated. When their contempt motion was heard in late August, residents came armed with an avalanche of screenshots, audio recordings, videos and witness testimony.

In a scathing ruling, Judge Kaelin found OSPM’s defense — particularly regarding the conduct of its property managers — to be ​“disingenuous” and ​“frankly ridiculous.”

She ordered OSPM to pay a $10,000 fine, or $2,500 for each violation. Less than two weeks later, Ostro personally contacted the union and indicated, for the first time, that he was interested in bargaining.

“We acknowledge the Tenant Association for each property,” Ostro wrote in a Sept. 15 email viewed by In These Times. ​“We are open to meeting monthly or quarterly to address tenant concerns.”

However, the process then stalled for months as Ostro, according to KTU, again became unresponsive. The union continued to press; in November, they won a second ruling holding OSPM in contempt for continuing to violate the restraining order. Still no response. But as the months dragged on, Ostro, on top of having to contend with the $10,000 fine, was continuing to have to pay a multitude of attorneys to defend against the union’s various lawsuits. Costs were racking up quickly. In addition, Poe emphasized that during this time Ostro’s tenants were continuing to credibly establish that they would continue to talk and build community with one another no matter what Ostro did.

So when McGeeney finally managed to reach Ostro by phone this February, offering him a chance to ​“put this all behind us,” Ostro conceded, scheduling a bargaining meeting for early March.

“It didn’t feel real until we saw him park and get out of his car,” said Barr, who was joined at the March 9 meeting by McGeeney, Myatt, Abner and another union leader from Ridgeway Park. They had spent days performing mock negotiations. Still, she continued, ​“I had no idea what to expect, because I’ve never done a negotiation before.”

Abner gave the group some words of wisdom on their way in: ​“I know he’s rich, but he put his britches on the same as we do.”

This time, Ostro proved eager to reach a deal — by the end of the meeting, the parties had reached agreements on nearly every stipulation. Ostro’s sticking point, McGeeney said, hinged on the lawsuits. He wanted them to go away.

When the parties reconvened three days later, the union came armed with promises that their members would drop any suits that had been filed. In exchange, they secured two final victories: the enforcement provision that ensures tenants receive cash payments if the contract is violated, as well as the addition of two more properties, including Regency Park, to the contract. All told, over 250 units were now included. After a year of fighting, the union left with not only Ostro’s signature, but more wins worked into the agreement than any of them had thought possible — including a requirement that new tenants be informed about the union when they move in, helping ensure the group’s longevity.

As she looks ahead, Barr can’t believe that the mold outbreak she’s been made to live with since 2022 might finally be fixed, thanks to the contract’s stipulation that any units that test positive for mold be remediated by July 1.

“We’ve had allergies worse than we normally have [and] brain fog, fatigue,” Barr said. ​“I can’t wait to get that taken care of.”

From his more national perspective, Kane called the contract a ​“major victory” for tenants nationwide, and commended the union members for their legal strategy.

“Landlords think that they can just tell you to go away, and people are afraid to do the slightest thing. So [the tenants’] courage is remarkable,” said Kane, noting that in any of the majority of states with a law prohibiting landlords from retaliating against tenants for union participation, ​“this would be a model course of action.”

Though the new speed of AC repair at Maple Grove is a promising sign, technically, the contract is not yet official. KTU has until April 30 to settle the lawsuits with Ostro in court, at which point the contract will go to HUD to be certified as an addendum to the existing lease. 

Bridgett Simmons, a staff attorney at the National Housing Law Project who reviewed the language of the lease agreement for the union, believes there should be no issues getting the agreement certified. She also echoed Kane’s testimony that KTU’s achievement in spite of HUD’s historical failure to act on retaliation complaints should ​“put HUD on notice.” 

“There’s zero question that these tenant leaders endured retaliation because of their organizing,” Simmons said. ​“If HUD doesn’t want to impede progress, [the agency] should approve the lease modification.”

At Maple Grove, Barr has a similar takeaway, stemming from her experience being largely ignored or let down by the official channels that ostensibly exist for tenants facing a landlord like OSPM LLC. 

“When we first launched our union, people would ask me, ​‘Have you reached out to the governor’s office? Have you reached out to HUD?’” she said. ​“Ultimately, what got us this was us. The poor people living in these apartments did this. It’s crazy to think that we won something that all these rich, powerful people couldn’t give us.”

Goldsborough, who, like Myatt, Barr and Abner, hadn’t heard of a tenant union before Poe visited her building, said the fight for a contract has ​“completely changed me as a person.”

“It has lit a fire under my ass and I’m in love with it,” she said. 

The night the contract was signed, Barr found some old sparklers in her apartment. Soon after, she, Goldsborough and Myatt, along with their children, were jumping and dancing about the lawn of the complex, sparks flying every which way. They began crafting a plan to spread the news throughout the building. 

It was a surreal moment for Myatt in particular, who recalls being overwhelmingly elected to her leadership role despite never actually throwing her hat in the ring. She accepted the post, she said, because she saw her community believed in her and didn’t want to let them down. It’s a spirit, an instinct to protect one’s neighbors in the face of exploitation, that permeates Maple Grove and has now snowballed into a landmark victory for the future of tenant organizing. 

“We were terrified, being harassed, worried about losing our homes,” Myatt said. ​“Now, we have the power to make [Ostro] do what we want him to do. It’s like the rules have totally flipped.”