Tenant Organizer Will Lawrence Is Taking on the GOP in a Deep Purple District

Data centers have become a fault line in the midterms, but in the bipartisan backlash, Lawrence also sees the seeds of a broader fight against a rigged economy. He’s best known as a co-founder of the Sunrise Movement, a youth climate action group. But Lawrence has also spent the last several years helping to build tenant unions and win new renter protections in his state through the group Michigan Rent Is Too Damn High. Even with a Democratic governing trifecta in Michigan from 2023 - 2024, tenant organizers were unable to make headway on many of their priorities, including allocating funding for social housing. Lawrence says that the hard-won state legislation was still a ​“drop in the bucket” compared to the scale of the crisis and that bolder solutions are urgently needed. 

In These Times talked with Lawrence about his housing platform, what it means to run on an affordability agenda, and why he’s avoiding partisan labels.

The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

You’re a tenant organizer and also a renter — something that is still rare in elected office in and of itself. One 2022 study found that as many as 96% of members of Congress were homeowners, although this has started to change. Why is it important to bring these perspectives to Washington?

Just knowing what it’s like to pay rent is incredibly important. Mortgages and property taxes have gotten a lot more expensive, so it’s not only renters that are subject to housing insecurity. But renters certainly have less security than homeowners in the housing market we have right now, and that fundamentally shapes your perspective on the economy.

When I moved back to Lansing in 2017, I saw my friends moving back in with their parents; I saw people leaving the area in search of more affordable rent or higher incomes.

So I helped start Lansing Rent Is Too Damn High, a tenants union here. We also have a statewide housing justice coalition that, under the Democratic trifecta government, fought for and won some tenant protections and helped win investments in affordable housing. But there’s so much more to win. What has been achieved is a drop in the bucket compared to the scale of the crisis.

We know that housing costs are a key concern in the midterms; one recent survey found that it was the top issue for young voters. But it’s still unusual for federal candidates to campaign on housing, which is more often considered a local issue. Talk about your platform on housing, which includes new federal investment in housing and a federal tenant bill of rights.

There are two sides of the coin. We need tenant protections to help prevent acute housing insecurity: people getting evicted and ending up on the street. Right to counsel in eviction court is an obvious measure that would do a lot to help prevent exploitation.

We also need housing supply, including more owner-occupied homes but also alternatives in the rental market. And I’m a big supporter of the social housing model that, in the United States, has been pioneered in Montgomery County, Maryland, and is now being implemented in many other places. We need to build a new generation of public housing for the 21^st century that can give people an alternative to renting from a private landlord and options that are truly affordable for people at a variety of stages of life.

“Affordability” is the watchword of the midterm elections, but depending on who’s talking about it, the proposed solutions might be very, very different. What does a focus on affordability mean to you?

No voter says, ​“I have an affordability problem.” They say, ​“the rent is too damn high.” Or ​“this energy bill is outlandish.” Or ​“I just paid $17 for three chicken breasts at the grocery store.” The economy is rigged to the benefit of the billionaires and against working people, and it’s great that we’re talking about that in this election cycle. But many ​“affordability” fixes are short-term. They may be necessary, but if that’s all we’re looking at, we won’t build a fair economy.

Let me put it this way: Some people in my district aren’t struggling to pay their bills each month, but they are still deeply worried about the state of the economy. They can pay their bills this year, but they doubt their ability to pay them next year — and they certainly doubt their kids’ ability to do the same. Some homeowners are comfortable, but when you start talking about their kids, they say, ​“Housing is way too expensive, I don’t know how my kid is ever going to buy a home, and I fear for what the future looks like for them.”

So security is the concept. Take healthcare: Even people with good health coverage now don’t have any confidence they’ll keep it. People don’t have any confidence they’ll be able to collect Social Security. That is what causes the kind of anxiety, worry and dread that takes years off people’s lives. People deserve to sleep easy at night, secure in the knowledge that they and their families will have the basics in the future. Almost nobody has that right now, and that’s what I’m fighting to change.

Data centers have become a flashpoint in your race and many others. Were you intending to focus so heavily on this issue?

It wasn’t something I anticipated when I got into the race last August. But I started to hear over the fall and winter from residents becoming aware of data center proposals in their towns. Often, residents are the last to know because township officials sign non-disclosure agreements and try to do it behind the scenes. I’ve spent my life standing up to corporate power, whether that’s Wall Street landlords trying to evict people here in Lansing or polluting corporations threatening Michigan’s water. So, it wasn’t a stretch for me to stand alongside these residents fighting these data centers.

I’ve often been asked, ​“What is this really about?” Because it’s such a politically heterodox coalition and people highlight different issues. Certainly, it’s the noise pollution, the water usage, the energy bills, the property values, and you could go on. But above all, I think it’s about who decides. The fact that these Silicon Valley and Wall Street corporations are coming in and bullying their way into small towns with no regard for public opinion or the will of the community is undemocratic. It shows how this kind of concentrated economic power is, in some ways, incompatible with the premise of democracy. That is a big part of what people are rebelling against.

What is exciting about this issue is that it is bringing together a cross-partisan coalition of Democrats, independents and people who don’t know what to call themselves. That’s a precious thing.

People are coming together and saying, ​“We don’t trust these giant corporations to decide the future of our communities. We would rather decide ourselves.” That invites a question: What will we decide? We don’t want hyperscale data centers, at least not this way. But what do we want? And I think that there is an opportunity to build a type of politics that looks very different from what has existed. But it depends entirely on the conversations that we have next.

What kinds of conversations are you trying to have with residents who don’t identify as progressives, or Democrats, or anything in particular? 

Over the course of the campaign, I’ve heard a very clear set of issues that are bringing people together and that there’s a real potential to fight and govern on. That’s saying no to these AI data centers, saying no to these stupid wars around the world, bringing our money home to invest in housing and healthcare, and getting money out of politics. 

When we keep the conversation at the level of specific values and policies, we find the opportunity for a new and better politics. That is what I hear every day around the district, and what we’re building in this campaign. 

Editor’s note: As a reader-supported 501©3 nonprofit, In These Times does not support or oppose candidates for political office.