Tenant unions have been resurging in cities across the U.S. and Michigan in recent years — but whether that model can take hold in rural communities remains an open question.
In Michigan, renters in urban areas like Detroit, Ann Arbor and Lansing have organized to demand better living conditions and stronger protections from landlords. Now, organizers are attempting to bring similar efforts to smaller, rural cities.
What: Cadillac Housing Justice Team Meeting
When: 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m., Saturday
Where: Cadillac Library
In Cadillac, that work is being led in part by Amanda Siggins, an organizer with the We The People Action Fund — a grassroots organization focused on housing, education and justice policy across the state.
On a recent afternoon, Siggins walked the halls of Harbor View, a senior apartment complex in Cadillac, knocking on doors and talking with residents about their living conditions.
“I just miss the old days,” one tenant told her. “How this place used to be OK.”
IPR previously reported that residents at Harbor View have raised concerns in the past about inconsistent heat, years-long struggles with bed bugs and what they describe as unresponsive management.
While Siggins is at Harbor View on this particular day, she is hoping to organize renters from all across Cadillac.
Siggins used to clean rental homes in Cadillac — a work experience that pushed her to work in tenant organizing.
“Half of them were just painted over — crap on the walls, fleas in the carpets,” Siggins said. “I was cleaning for one of these landlords for $10 an hour. So that was my experience, seeing that side of it."
Tenant organizing itself isn’t new. Greg Baltz, an assistant professor of law at Rutgers University, says modern tenant unions trace their roots back to the 1960s and 1970s.
“In the 1970s there were groups in New Jersey, New York City, Massachusetts and California that were actively organizing tenants in buildings,” Baltz said. “[They were] also now fighting for an expansion of tenants rights."
Before that period, Baltz says renters often lacked basic protections — including the right to renew a lease, withhold rent for unresolved repairs or receive meaningful safeguards around security deposits.
Critics of tenant unions and tenant-rights regulations say well-meaning policies can end up can backfiring.
A study released this year by MetroSight — funded by rental housing industry groups including the National Multifamily Housing Council and the National Apartment Association — found that tenant-rights regulations were associated with higher rents, particularly for the lowest-income renters.
One estimate in the study suggested eviction regulations corresponded with an average annual rent increase of $1,224.
An adjacent meta-analysis published last year in the Journal of Housing Economics, which reviewed studies on rent control from 1967 to 2023, found that while “rent control appears to be very effective in achieving lower rents for families in controlled units,” it also led to a number of unintended effects similar to those identified in the MetroSight study.
Because of this, the study says, "the overall impact of rent control policy on the welfare of society is not clear."
The effects of rent control are difficult to isolate because it is often adopted alongside other housing, banking, climate, and fiscal policies that also influence rental markets.
"In Cadillac, we have maybe 10 landlords that own big chunks of the housing in the area. I know individual landlords that own 50 plus units in Cadillac. We're a little spread apart."AMANDA SIGGINS | tenant organizer
Despite some opposition, tenant organizing expanded nationally in the 1970s, with groups coordinating across cities and states to push for stronger legal protections.
“Tenant groups fought both over conditions, rents and evictions in individual buildings,” Baltz said. “But also brought together tenants across localities and even states to win these much broader legal protections that they could then use and leverage in their organizations."
That momentum slowed in the 1980s, as many rent regulations were rolled back and new preemption laws limited the ability of local governments to pass their own tenant protections.
Interest in tenant rights didn’t reemerge in a major way until the 2010s — spurred by movements like Occupy Wall Street and the presidential campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
“That model proliferated enough in the 2010s that there really started being lots of groups communicating with each other online, learning from one another and different ideologies of what is the right way to organize tenants.,” Baltz said.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, rising rents have fueled another wave of tenant organizing nationwide — from Bozeman to Los Angeles and Minneapolis to Louisville.
Whether that model translates to rural communities like Cadillac remains uncertain.
"Individual tenants who are in rural areas are more spread apart," said Siggins. "In the cities, there's apartment complexes where it's easier to organize because you're just knocking doors in the building."
A tenant union in Bozeman, Montana (population 50,000), is the most recent closest example to rural Cadillac (population 10,000) although it is five times its size. In Bozenman, advocates organized a mobile home park in a bid to purchase the park from the current property owner.
"In Cadillac," said Siggins, "we have maybe 10 landlords that own big chunks of the housing in the area. I know individual landlords that own 50 plus units in Cadillac. We're a little spread apart."
Part of the challenge of rural organizing will be finding tenants of the same landlord, said Siggins.
"What other units does that landlord own?" said Siggins. "Sometimes it's harder to find out that information, because it's not just one person. You're finding out multiple addresses."
Siggins says success still hinges on the same basic principle that has driven tenant movements for decades: collective action.
"Without that cooperation amongst the tenants, the management companies and the investment companies have no other choice but to listen," said Siggins. "Individually, they don't have to listen to you, because you don't have the power."
