Photo Posted online by Landon Apartment’s resident

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In apartment complexes in working-class areas all over the city, rising rents, burst pipes, black mold, roaches, and failing appliances are the norm. Landlords both corporate and private take advantage of everyone’s basic need for housing to rake in a profit for themselves. 

Unsatisfied by collecting rent alone, they take shortcuts wherever possible to bring in a few extra dollars. Neighbors at the Landon Apartments in South Charlotte have taken it upon themselves to fight back with collective action.

In late November, a burst pipe at the complex forced residents to go without water for 24 hours. This was just one recent incident amongst countless others in the past few years. Residents at Landon have reported rapidly rising rents and being forced to pay for services they don’t use whilst repair requests go unanswered and basic amenities, such as the pool and community washing machines, have been closed for over a year. 

This has forced residents to take matters into their own hands. Last winter, they formed the Landon Tenants Union. Recently, residents and volunteers have knocked on doors at the complex to get signatures for a petition aimed at pressuring the complex to resolve many of these issues. Demands included a 20% reduction in rent, regular pest control visits, and the option to opt out of fees for things like off-site package storage (which many residents do not use), amongst others.  

Property management has been blatantly avoidant to meet with tenants. At first, residents expressed their dissatisfaction to a property manager onsite, only to be informed that they were a “temporary property manager.” After two weeks of waiting for the permanent manager to return, leasing agents closed the office early and snuck out the back door. Managers also refused to show up to the rain-checked meeting. 

“[The landlord] views the tenants as passive income,” one resident told us. “One-third to one-half of my neighbors are Spanish-speaking, and ninety percent of them are working class. They have no social capital. Lots of them don’t have connections or money to pursue legal action if the owners choose to be negligent about running a safe, healthy home.”

Finding a lawyer and sitting through a legal battle costs an arm and a leg and is a months-long process, the resident explained. “A tenant union is the only way to get recourse.”

If a large portion of the complex were to go to the office in person and demand answers, or withhold their rent, it would give them leverage to make the landlord listen.

“We have to look after each other. We can’t rely on the people at City Hall,” One resident said. He referenced that workers at large corporations, like Amazon and Starbucks, have also taken the initiative for collective bargaining.

The resident we spoke with has since been served an eviction notice for his diligence in holding his manager accountable. This is further evidence that landlords will do anything, even leave someone houseless, if it means protecting their profits. 

“They’re terrified that we can meet them at the table as workers.”

While rising rents and poor housing conditions may seem outside of the sphere of workplace issues, they are linked. The working class has a basic need for housing, just like they do food and clothing. The capitalist takes advantage of this, using their ownership of workers’ daily necessities and vast amounts of capital to exploit the working class throughout the entirety of society. Even when wages technically nominally increase, there is almost always a downward trend in the purchasing power that wage really has. The ruling class uses inflation, price increases, and rent hikes to increase the gap between the nominal and the real wage to further exploit the workering class. Regardless of if their  a landlord, a banker, or CEO, the capitalist gets richer as that much more of the working class’s wages go back towards their neverending accumulation of capital.