As Tenants Organize, Landlords Embrace Old-School Union-Busting

The story grew even stranger when, on Dec. 8, the Sunset Ridge tenants traveled with CTTU to Capital Realty’s New York headquarters to demand a meeting with Moshe Eichler, the firm’s president and public face. There, the tenants were met by another group of counter-protesters holding signs denouncing anti-Semitism, an apparent reference to Eichler’s religion. A police officer called to the scene said that the counter-protesters, many draped in Israeli flags, were present at the invitation of the property owners, according to a recording shared with In These Times.

“Mr. Eichler could meet with us to discuss our proposals for what needs to be repaired,” Sunset Ridge tenant Cynthia Vega told the crowd, as the counter-protesters attempted to grab some tenants’ signs from them, according to video of the incident. ​“Instead, he’s recruiting people to go out and disrupt our press conferences.”

“Tenants from across the country have gathered here today … to make sure Mr. Eichler and his team understand a few things,” Vega continued. ​“You can’t bust our unions — we will not stop organizing.”

The Sunset Ridge tenants, as well as the action at Capital Realty’s headquarters, are part of a wider campaign to unite tenants across the firm’s portfolio, which comprises some 22,000 apartment units across 28 states, the majority of them federally subsidized affordable housing. Since August, tenants have unionized in nine Capital Realty buildings across six states under the umbrella of the Tenant Union Federation (TUF), of which CTTU is a founding member. The new tenant unions are demanding that Capital Realty meet with them as a group to bargain a new lease agreement, akin to the contracts workers negotiate with their employers. 

By embracing tactics from organized labor—including launching multi-building unions, waging prolonged rent strikes and demanding democratic negotiations — TUF-affiliated tenant unions have won unprecedented concessions from landlords. By picking a shared target in Capital Realty, they’re hoping to break new ground by winning improvements for low-income tenants across the firm’s thousands of units nationwide. 

But landlords appear to be learning from their counterparts in the workplace, too. As Capital Realty tenants organize, the company has mounted an active opposition effort, even retaining a law firm specializing in anti-union campaigns, according to communications reviewed by In These Times.

Each year, employers spend hundreds of millions of dollars on third-party firms offering tried-and-true techniques for defeating labor union drives. In early October, tenant organizers learned that Capital Realty had retained one such group, the law firm Reed Smith, whose services include ​“robust union avoidance programs,” according to its website.

Meanwhile, organizers allege an uptick in retaliatory tactics, including threats, increased surveillance and the attempt by building management to create a rival, landlord-friendly tenants association. Tenant organizers are contending with tactics ​“straight out of the playbook” of anti-union employers, says Tara Raghuveer, TUF’s director. 

While it’s not exactly welcome news that landlords are leveling up their resistance, Raghuveer says it’s proof positive that the group is succeeding in its core mission: transforming local tenant unions into a force that can go toe-to-toe with the powerful real-estate actors that own apartment complexes around the country. The reaction from Capital Realty, she says, is evidence of ​“the seriousness of the threat that organized tenants potentially pose against big corporate players.” 

Eicher and Capital Realty did not respond to a detailed list of questions from In These Times.

Kate Bronfenbrenner, the director of labor education research at Cornell University, says that it’s unsurprising to see the real estate industry embracing employer tactics to quash tenant organizing. Some real estate firms are themselves large employers with considerable experience fighting unions, she notes, while others can easily adapt the standard tools of an anti-union campaign. 

Bronfenbrenner, who has studied the outcomes of thousands of workplace organizing drives, characterizes these typical tools as threats, interrogation, promises and surveillance. All of those ​“fit neatly into an anti-tenant campaign,” she says. ​“It doesn’t take much creativity to think of all the ways you can make someone miserable in their apartment.”

In an era of runaway inequality, there’s a ​“natural symbiosis” between labor and tenant organizing — and between the powerful players reacting to it, Bronfenbrenner adds. ​“Tenant unions are learning from labor unions, and the real estate industry is responding,” she says.

Yet according to TUF, that day came and went with no further communication from Eichler. And as more Capital Realty tenants went public about their organizing, the company ramped up retaliation, the group alleges.

There are now majority-backed tenant unions at Capital Realty’s 72-unit Park Ridge complex in New Haven; its 122-unit River Pointe Tower complex in Detroit; a 214-unit building in Louisville, Ky.; a 112-unit building in Billings, Mont.; a 200-unit building in Denver, Colo.; and three buildings comprising nearly 500 units in Kansas City, Mo. While tenants’ exact complaints vary by building, TUF asserts that there’s a common thread: Capital Realty renters are living in dilapidated and potentially dangerous conditions while the company collects millions in public subsidies in the form of cheap, federally backed financing and Section 8 rental assistance payments. 

“We charge retaliation, we charge abuse by management, we charge theft of our public resources,” declared Kansas City-based organizer Lawrence Sims this October, as tenants from Capital Realty tenant unions across the country rallied during a TUF convention in the city. 

In the kind of federally assisted housing operated by Capital Realty, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) regulations protect residents’ rights to organize. The regulations also define ​“legitimate” tenant organizations as democratic and ​“completely independent of owners, management, and their representatives.”

What’s more, Capital Realty’s own lease, which In These Times reviewed, stipulates that both tenants and tenant organizers may conduct organizing activities in accordance with HUD regulations.

Yet at Sunset Ridge, the company’s on-site management has attempted to ban at least three organizers from the property, according to the Connecticut Tenants Union. Over the course of two weeks, both CTTU President Hannah Srajer and Vice President Luke Melonakos-Harrison say that management staff served them with ​“no trespass” notices and called the police as they went door-to-door with tenants, effectively banning them from the complex. 

Then, at the end of September, a curious notice announcing the formation of another tenants union was posted across the complex. But the signatories on this notice weren’t the tenants who had been organizing since the fall. Instead, they included at least one person who is employed by Capital Realty as a maintenance employee, according to LinkedIn. 

Another signatory is a local landlord who told NBC Connecticut that he has stayed overnight with a friend at Sunset Ridge a few times but lives elsewhere. 

Cynthia Vega, a lead organizer of the CTTU-affiliated union, said she had never met any of the individuals who signed that notice as she canvassed her neighbors. ​“They are strangers to me,” she says.

The day after the notice was posted, the complex’s property management hosted a first meeting of the new ​“union” replete with free food, a bouncy house and an ice cream truck. Other tenants remain barred from hosting parties or gatherings in common areas, according to CTTU. 

In early October, the Sunset Ridge tenants organizing with CTTU delivered a letter to Capital Realty’s on-site management office, demanding the company uphold tenants’ rights to organize a union and cease all retaliation. 

But a week later, CTTU contends, the company retaliated again following a press conference where April Hedge, a Sunset Ridge tenant of more than two decades, gave a speech explaining why she had decided to join the union effort. 

Hedge described serious and unaddressed issues at Sunset Ridge including roaches, mice and mold. More than a dozen tenants in the complex developed severe respiratory conditions after mold went untreated, according to a previous investigation by In These Times.

“People are getting sick,” Hedge told the crowd. ​“And we want something done today.”

When the event was over, Hedge began going door-to-door with another CTTU organizer, union cards in hand. But before long, she says, a Capital Realty maintenance worker began to follow and film them before also attempting to serve the organizer with yet another ​“no trespass” notice. 

In the following weeks, several other tenants reported being followed or surveilled, according to CTTU, while new cameras were installed throughout the complex 

“They don’t want the truth out,” Hedge says. ​“They don’t want to fix the units.” 

The scope of services being provided by Reed Smith remains unclear, and Watterson did not respond to a request for comment. Watterson represents clients in trial and appellate courts in cases ​“involving a wide variety of legal issues,” according to the firm’s website. 

“It remains to be seen exactly what position Capital Realty is going to end up taking here,” says Amy Eppler-Epstein, one of the legal aid attorneys representing Sunset Ridge tenants. 

But Reed Smith’s track record raises eyebrows for tenant organizers. The firm regularly assists companies with union avoidance programs, anti-union campaigns, defense against unfair labor practice charges and collective bargaining negotiations, according to its website.

In one high-profile case, the video company Activision Blizzard retained Reed Smith as two groups of quality assurance employees sought to join the Communications Workers of America (CWA) in 2022. The CWA accused the company and Reed Smith attorneys of attempting to stall the effort by refusing to recognize the unions voluntarily and then delaying the subsequent union elections through a series of legal maneuvers, including an eleventh-hour request that the National Labor Relations Board impound ballots already being mailed to employees. Pro-union employees also denounced anti-union material on Reed Smith’s website, including a PowerPoint presentation featuring a slide titled ​“Types of Employees Unions Exploit,” though the firm said the material was outdated and it has since been removed. 

It’s common for anti-union law firms to offer an array of services — from squashing nascent organizing, to helping employers prevail in a union election, to stonewalling newly unionized workers from winning their first contract, notes John Logan, a professor at San Francisco State University who studies the anti-union industry. If more landlords perceive a real threat in tenant organizing, it’s not hard to imagine law firms marketing more specialized services to counter it, or to drag out negotiations. 

“They’re always looking for ways to expand their activities,” Logan says of anti-union firms, noting that in the past they’ve honed industry-specific expertise as sectors like healthcare became hotspots for organizing. While the laws applicable to worker and tenant organizing may differ, he says, ​“the overarching theme of what these firms do is keep workers powerless and undermine the ability to organize effectively.”

TUF, with support from the non-profit National Housing Law Project, is tracking instances where Capital Realty’s responses to tenant organizing may violate specific HUD regulations that protect tenant organizing. The group shared with In These Times a list of more than a dozen alleged violations to date. 

In Kansas City, Capital Realty tenants say they also faced opposition as they recruited neighbors to the union, including threats from on-site property managers to issue lease violation or eviction notices to tenants who signed up, or even to call child protective services. The property manager at Paraclete Manor, a 119-unit building for seniors and tenants with disabilities, reportedly offered a bribe in the form of a $40 per month rent credit to tenants who agreed not to join the union. 

But tenant organizers allege that retaliation ramped up further after residents launched their unions and began demanding that Capital Realty come to the bargaining table. 

Donna Jackson, a 25-year resident of Paraclete Manor, says that before Capital Realty bought the property in 2015, the complex had more maintenance staff on site and tenants had access to services like a bus to take them shopping, as well as a tenants association that worked effectively to address issues at the building. 

So when an organizer from KC Tenants, another TUF affiliate, knocked on her door this summer to talk about forming a union, ​“I was eager to join and get started,” Jackson says. The union launched publicly in September. But on Nov. 5, Jackson, who has become a leader in the effort, received a notice informing her that her lease was being terminated due to ​“material noncompliance,” and that she would have to move out within a month. 

The incidents cited in the notice include exiting through an emergency door; refusing to cooperate with pest control, which Jackson denies; and a November dispute with a security guard. In Jackson’s account of the incident, a security guard approached her as she was getting into the car of a tenant organizer, shouting profanities and accusing the organizer of trespassing. Maya Neal, the organizer, says she had in fact parked off premises following previous threats from the property manager; Neal was subsequently arrested but released without charges. 

In the property manager’s account, Jackson, who is 84, intentionally slammed the security guard’s head in the car door. Tenant organizers are now working to prevent her eviction. 

Anthony Hines, another Paraclete Manor tenant and union leader, faces both eviction and assault charges — a measure organizers say is intended to smear Hines and the union. It’s not uncommon for employers to threaten pro-union workers with trumped-up legal threats, as in a 2022 incident in which a Starbucks manager filed kidnapping and assault charges against baristas who confronted him with a list of demands in their store.

According to Hines, the charges stem from an August incident that took place when he was served eviction papers after refusing to allow a maintenance man and armed security guard to enter his apartment without previous notice. When he went to the office to speak to the property manager, Hines says she began to close the door in his face, causing him to stop the door from closing with his hands — an action she cast as assault, according to Hines. He has another court date in December, after the property manager failed to attend an initial court date. 

In Louisville, where another Capital Realty building unionized in August, the community room where the union was holding weekly meetings was suddenly padlocked shut in October, according to photos shared with In These Times.

Back in New Haven, Sunset Ridge tenants who organized the CTTU-backed union are hopeful that their group will be recognized, allowing them to bring collective complaints to the city’s Fair Rent Commission, which has the power to block rent increases that landlords can’t prove are financially necessary. After purchasing Sunset Ridge in 2023, Capital Realty hit residents with rent hikes of up to $400 a month, but some tenants successfully contested the increase. Other tenants didn’t know how to navigate the process and are still paying the higher rent today. 

Cynthia Vega, one of the tenants who disputed her rent increase last year, believes a tenant union would give residents one voice when demanding action from both regulators and their landlord. 

Vega is unnerved by the developments at Sunset Ridge in the last month, she says, but the company’s resistance also tells her tenants are on the right track. 

“At the end of the day,” Vega says, ​“they should be more afraid than us.”