New statewide tenant group hopes to counter real estate lobby

Tenant organizers and advocates and a coalition of organizations affiliated with Housing Justice for All are launching the New York State Tenant Bloc, a 501(c)(4) organization that plans to exert influence in New York elections and support candidates who back tenant-friendly policies. Beginning with the 2025 New York City Democratic mayoral primary, Tenant Bloc hopes to show that organized tenants can be a powerful electoral force that can turn the tide of elections. 

Tenant Bloc will operate as a sister organization of sorts to Housing Justice for All, a 501(c)(3) organization that is not permitted to advocate for or against specific candidates. It will initially be powered by funding from small donors, similar to other advocacy groups, though it hopes to eventually switch to a dues-based membership model similar to the Democratic Socialists of America or labor unions.

Cea Weaver, the coalition director for Housing Justice for All and director of Tenant Bloc, said that one motivation for the latter group’s creation was the outcome of last year’s state legislative session. “Reflecting on the state budget process and what we were able to win, and also what we weren't able to win, really is what made us decide to pull the trigger,” Weaver told City and State. 

Last year, Gov. Kathy Hochul and state lawmakers struck a housing deal that left seemingly everyone unhappy – including tenants, who were upset to find that landmark housing regulations they’d organized around for years were watered down significantly in the final deal. Meanwhile, attempts by organizers to get municipalities outside of New York City to opt in to rent stabilization have been stymied by a wave of lawsuits, and the New York City Rent Guidelines Board has resisted calls from tenant advocates to freeze rents.

While this year’s electoral calendar is headlined by the contest for Gracie Mansion – and the group does plan to support mayoral candidates who back pro-tenant policies like a rent freeze on rent-stabilized apartments – Weaver said that the group is hoping to organize tenants across the state.  

“We are trying to build a block of 20,000 rent-stabilized tenants who go to the polls agreeing to vote like a renter,” she said. “We're going to try to measure that during the election and see how we do and see how they vote. We intend to tell this block of renters who are the candidates who are standing with us, who are standing with our platform.”

Her hope is that eventually, a state-wide network of tenant organizations will be politically activated to the tune of 250,000 voters. She and others think that the overlooking of tenants as a political force has contributed to a rightward shift among the state’s electorate, since tenants generally lean more progressive. 

According to Russell Weaver (no relation to Cea), the director of research at the Cornell Industrial and Labor Relations Buffalo Co-Lab, homeowners generally turn out to vote more often than tenants do, but when tenant issues like “good cause” eviction or rent stabilization have on the ballot in New York races, renters have shown up to vote in significant numbers. 

“If you're a candidate, you tend to campaign to the voters who are most likely to vote,” Russell Weaver said, “and so I don't think that there's been an eagerness or grand strategy from party leaders to get out and to activate new voters. There's been a lot of just catering to existing voters. But what we try to show in this research is that tenants are this sleeping giant.”

Assembly Member Sarahana Shrestha, a democratic socialist now in her second term representing an upper Hudson Valley district, knows firsthand the impact tenants can have in an election. Shrestha credited her 2022 Democratic primary win over longtime Assembly Member Kevin Cahill in 2022 in part to activating an entire base of tenant voters who felt ignored and cynical towards politics.

“In the Hudson Valley, if you’re a tenant, it’s really the least economically empowered population, and the expectations that they have for what they can fight for are very low,” Shrestha said. “But when I tell them about things like the Green Social Housing bill, for example, to build permanently affordable housing capped at 25% of income and the fact that when you get into this type of housing that is high quality, that is green, that you won’t be kicked out if you start making more, you would still just pay your own share – they were suddenly very excited to learn about it, to be interested in politics and to use their agency as a tenant.”

State Senate Deputy Majority Leader Michael Gianaris said that tenants can be a difficult constituency to pin down politically, and there’s a potential for things to change dramatically if Tenant Bloc can succeed in organizing them.

“There’s millions of tenants who are struggling to afford their homes throughout New York, and it has proven a challenge to get them to organize and vote their interests on the issue,” Gianaris said. “Just a very large and unwieldy group of people, so if this group is able to put them together and turn them into a group that votes their interest on this issue first and foremost it would be incredibly impactful.” 

Real estate interests are well known for their political power in New York, spending big and wielding influence in both state and local campaigns and government. Though they were hardly the biggest cheerleaders for the 2024 housing deal, their influence was felt via tweaks to proposed tenant protections. The New York Working Families Party, which plans to serve in an advisory role for the Tenant Bloc, thinks the group can serve as a significant counterweight to industry forces. 

“We know real estate has money, but we have people power,” WFP Co-Director Jasmine Gripper said. Gripper said that 2026 could be a vital test for the political power of tenants between congressional midterm elections, state and local races and what is expected to be a heated gubernatorial primary and general election. 

“I think we hope that elected leaders who are incumbents now hear that tenants are getting organized, and they start taking action to show that they are ready to represent the interests of tenants and renters and not just the interests of the wealthy and the developers and the real estate lobby,” Gripper said. “If they aren’t ready to make that change, there could be challenges.”