Justice for Tenants
Perspective on housing
Housing today is an ongoing public health disaster; the system that is supposed to offer shelter and safety—instead inflicts trauma.
The problems of random people with a variety of cultures and experiences having to share common spaces in housing can manifest as a divided, fragmented local society. In the absence of agreed rules for conduct and for the resolution of differences, conflict arises over power and aggressive behavior emerges leading to bullying, mobbing, and harassment. Where there is mobbing or hostile environment harassment in the community, it is dangerous for an individual to fight it alone.
The landlord is legally responsible to protect the peaceful/quiet enjoyment of all residents by preventing harassment. When the landlord allows harassment and/or harasses tenants, tenants are in pain and distress, but they have no way to get relief—for us, there is no justice. The landlord who seeks to prevent harassment in their organization, will also select and supervise housing managers who diligently seek to prevent harassment and as needed, will bring in experts who can educate and train everyone, staff and tenants, on ways to avoid harassment and to enable cooperation among all.
The governance structure in public and subsidized housing tends to lead either to a rigid authoritarian model or to an avoidance of landlord responsibility by claiming that housing is for independent living with no landlord responsibility for tenant disputes. Some efforts have been made to enable tenants to have a role in governance. Local tenant organizations (LTO) can negotiate and collaborate with management, but LTOs sometimes are riven by rivalry and may employ mobbing and harassing of each other and of other tenants as a means to control. In public housing, tenants serve as commissioners of the housing board, however they sometimes experience deep frustration when the manager and/or other board members dismiss their concerns.
The fundamental issue that leads to conflict among tenants or between tenants and management is a struggle over power and control. The lack of a commonly accepted understanding of how to resolve conflict within the community and the lack of a fair method for resolving disputes explains the lack of justice. Underlying that are the social systems and cultural beliefs that determine that people who live in public or subsidized housing do not deserve full equality.
Other models of governance have proven better at enabling people to live together in relative peace and harmony, such as subsidized housing where tenants have almost complete responsibility and control in a cooperative structure. We have seen happy elderly tenants who live in subsidized housing that they themselves manage, but such rare cooperative opportunities were created under a long-past HUD program. We have found a few housing developments where landlord, manager, staff, and residents have developed respectful relationships. Another success is the ibasho community concept that was developed by Dr. Emi Kiyota.
Ibasho means “a place where you can feel like yourself” in Japanese. At Ibasho we believe this is what every person should have as they age – a place to live in safety, comfort and dignity, where he or she is valued as a person full of history and experience.—Dr. Emi Kiyota
The first Ibasho community was created in Japan after a tsunami, where elderly people were able to create a happy, creative community that engaged people of all ages. The essential nature of creating an Ibasho concept is similar to the skills of a good social worker or community organizer—listening and empowering people to reach their own decisions, goals, and consensus. Could such an idea, or some of the elements, be adapted to our situation? Or is the core of public housing the antithesis of the Ibasho concept?
The challenges include the need to overcome and prevent harassment, bullying, and mobbing, because these activities destroy trust and prevent the emergence of community. Another challenge is the cultural imperative to constantly disparage others and glorify our own group. Perhaps the most difficult challenge, at least in the United States, is how to reconcile our tendency to expand the desire for “a place where you can feel like yourself” into an attempt to impose our own values on everyone else—the essential problem of the tension between the individual and the community. Each of these challenges, with rare exceptions, seems to be an inherent part of traditional public and subsidized housing.
Humans need a supportive community. Our job as the Coalition is to empower people to create and have community, either by having the landlord prevent the toxic environment, and/or by creating community despite the challenges. We must bring people together to recognize the pain and trauma we all experience and begin the healing process. We can begin to have the strength to meet challenges together, including the threat of retaliation. Advocacy can be healing by restoring our sense of agency. When we work together on systemic change for our rights and begin to create a supportive community, we gain agency and a path to healing from trauma. Perhaps we might address other public health and environmental issues that impact young and old alike, such as pollution and airborne infectious disease, or life-cycle celebrations, or a sewing circle, or gardening: each as a way to enable tenants to develop trust and to solve common problems that don’t involve the risk of challenging housing staff.
Our complex society harbors many cultures and customs about how people should relate to each other. In the simplest terms, we can choose between a culture of mutual hate and a culture of tolerance and love. We see the winds of economic and political change affecting such choices. Community life in a housing community is but a microcosm of the surrounding area, influenced by local, regional, and national politics. We must choose between division and cooperation, hate and love. We will work to overcome the barriers of culture and prejudice and to eliminate the use of aggressive behavior to gain power.
We will not condone harassment. Our goal is to transform housing into safe, peaceful, and joyful community for all.
Transforming housing into safe, peaceful, and joyful community.
The Stop Bullying Coalition (the Coalition) is a peer-driven grassroots coalition of tenants, citizens, and organizations. We advocate for the rights of all tenants, especially the poor, the elderly, and the disabled; and for the universal right to shelter. Tenants in public and subsidized housing (housing) do not enjoy emotional and physical safety. We lack freedom from retaliation and eviction. Since no one is coming to help us, we must help ourselves.
The foundation of health—personal, family, community—begins with a home that is free from physical or emotional harm, and secure from harassment or eviction. This is especially true for the residents of public and subsidized housing—poor, elderly, disabled individuals, couples, and families—because we have no other options for housing.
Tenants in housing experience bullying, mobbing (group bullying), and harassment from staff as well as other tenants. The impact of mobbing and harassment can be severe, affecting the health and well-being of everyone in an affected community, and creating hostile environment harassment—unwelcome conduct creating a situation that makes it difficult or impossible for victims to have the peaceful enjoyment of their residency.
Bullying is any mode of communication to hurt and demean the target or victim. It is aggression and an effort to control that is used to make the target or victim do, or not do, the bidding of the perpetrator.
Mobbing is bullying by a group; it is much more harmful than bullying and when it impacts the whole community it creates hostile environment harassment, a situation that is very challenging to overcome.
Hostile environment harassment is unwelcome conduct creating a situation that makes it difficult or impossible for victims to have the peaceful enjoyment of their residency.
Bullying, mobbing, and/or hostile environment harassment create an environment that is harmful and is dangerous to anyone who protests and seeks their rights.
“[Mobbing] affects our sense of belonging, our self-esteem or sense of self worth, our sense of control over our lives, and our sense of having a meaningful existence.”—Janice Harper, PhD, Bullying and Mobbing in Group Settings, statement presented to the Massachusetts Commission on Bullying, 7 August 2017.
“Mobbing is a much more sophisticated way of doing someone in than murder...”—Maureen Duffy and Len Sperry
Although the landlord is legally responsible to assure the quiet or peaceful enjoyment of each resident, many fail to intervene and worse—some actively use, encourage, or condone bullying. The presence of hostile environment harassment is a symptom of the failure of the landlord. Only an overarching external authority could do oversight and assure accountability. There is no agency that is responsive to tenants that can investigate, intervene, and hold the landlord to account. Today, tenants have no remedy or assured access to justice.
Intervention can help
When an agency does intervene, significant changes in the governance of a housing authority can lead to improvements for tenants. Despite years of efforts by tenants to have the board of commissioners (the board) oversee aspects of the management of the Northampton Housing Authority (NHA), the board supported the executive director. Only when employees of the NHA under the protection of whistle-blower status complained to the Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities (EOHLC), was an investigation required, and the executive director placed on administrative leave. A temporary director was appointed, and there were resignations and new appointments to the board. Tenants were then able to develop new events and activities and the board of commissioners has become more responsive to tenant input.
Nevertheless, in one section of the NHA, there are reports of continuing examples of mobbing and even assaults.
In response to a procedural challenge, the Mayor has withdrawn pending commissioner nominations. Regulations require that some appointments must be chosen from persons nominated by the local tenant organizations(s).
Our history of advocacy
We have advocated for a decade to create oversight and accountability for landlords but have not succeeded. We have partnered with several key organizations and legislators. We initiated legislation, organized a broad coalition, and led the creation of the Commission on Bullying that met in 2017. While the mandate of the Commission was to seek ways to protect tenants, when our Coordinator tried to file a minority report explaining the research findings on the sources of mobbing in housing, he was blocked by the Commission Chair, who said, “We don’t want you to advocate for tenants.”
We have proposed legislation to establish an agency responsive to tenants—the office of the tenant advocate in the Office of the Attorney General. Despite the testimony of many tenants and the support of legislators including Senator Joan B. Lovely and Representatives Sally Kerans and Tom Walsh and many others over the course of several years, we haven’t yet passed a remedial bill.
Next steps
We are now preparing for a new phase of advocacy that will expand our base of constituents, expand and strengthen our leadership, and develop new strategies.
Our focus had been on the ~94,000 tenants of elderly and disabled housing. Advocacy is more effective when more people join together to overcome challenges and secure their rights. In order to empower the elderly and disabled as part of a stronger advocacy effort, we now expand our scope to include all tenants in public and subsidized housing, estimated at about 340,000 persons in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Indeed, the issues are relevant to all tenants, even in affordable and market rate housing.
We will complement and wherever possible work with, rather than compete with, two organizations that directly overlap with our constituents; we have worked closely with them in legislative advocacy: The Mass Union of Public Housing Tenants and the Mass Alliance of HUD Tenants. We will partner with several other organizations on shared concerns.
The Stop Bullying Coalition was founded by Bonny Zeh, a tenant in public housing, and Jerry Halberstadt, a tenant in subsidized housing. Jerry Halberstadt serves as Coordinator with the support of many tenants. We are now in the process of recruiting and forming a tenants leadership/coordinator team. We are engaging several individuals as advisors and supporters. We are be reaching out to a number of groups and organizations to establish a broad tenants rights coalition. We need to establish a non-profit organization.
Our goal is justice for all tenants, and a home for everyone.
Advocacy is the art of creating new possibilities.
Action is the antidote to despair.
“They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid.”
Resources
About the Stop Bullying Coalition: http://stopbullyingcoalition.org/about
A draft plan of action: http://stopbullyingcoalition.org/act
Justice for Tenants: http://stopbullyingcoalition.org/justice00
Halberstadt, Jerry, testimony: in support of a bill to create the office of the tenant advocate. http://stopbullyingcoalition.org/oversight
Harper, Janice, PhD, Bullying and Mobbing In Group Settings: https://stopbullyingcoalition.org/harper-mobbing
Halberstadt, Jerry, Introducing Ourselves to Dignity Alliance http://stopbullyingcoalition.org/dignity
FR–5248–F–02 Quid Pro Quo and Hostile Environment Harassment and Liability for Discriminatory Housing Practices Under the Fair Housing Act, Final Rule published in the Federal Register on September 14, 2016, CFR Citation: 24 CFR 100, p. 63075
Commission on Bullying, Report of the Commission to Study Ways to Prevent Bullying of Tenants in Public and Subsidized Multi-Family Housing; Chapter 2 of the Resolves of 2016
Halberstadt, Jerry, Minority Report of the Commission on Bullying (copy on request); includes the Survey of Bullying
Halberstadt, Jerry and Marvin So, Statewide Survey on Bullying of Tenants in Public and Subsidized Multifamily Housing: Report of the Committee for Research on Conditions and Prevalence of the Commission on Bullying, (Boston: Mass Commission on Bullying, 2017).
Desmond, Matthew, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Crown: New York, 2016
Rockett, Molly, Private Property Managers, Unchecked: The Failures of Federal Compliance Oversight in Project-Based Section 8 Housing, 134 Harv. L. Rev. F. 286, Mar 20, 2021
Vale, Lawrence, From the Pilgrims to the Projects, Harvard University Press, 2000
Vale, Lawrence, Reclaiming Public Housing, Harvard University Press, 2002
Northampton Housing
Halberstadt, Jerry, Sticks, Stones, Gossip & Governance Part 2 A Very Similar Housing Authority ("before")
Halberstadt, Jerry, Creating Community in Northampton
Tarbutton-Springfield, Jo Ella (Jada),
MacDougal, Alexander, Still Glowing After The Third Clean-Up Salvo Event Daily Hampshire Gazette, October 9, 2025
MacDougal, Alexander, "Cara Leiper resigns as Northampton Housing Authority director," Daily Hampshire Gazette, December 23, 2025
Borneo, Paul, for tenant organizations at Northampton Housing Authority, “Call for Transparency, Accountability, and Tenant Safety at the Northampton Housing Authority,” letter to Northampton Mayor, October 17, 2025.
Tarbutton-Springfield, Jo Ella, Martin Luther King, Jr. Day at Northampton Housing
Definitions
“Peaceful or Quiet Enjoyment” —every tenant has the right to enjoy the use of their home and common spaces without interference. The landlord (=housing authority) is legally responsible for assuring the peaceful enjoyment of all tenants.
“Bullying”—Bullying uses any mode of communication to hurt and demean the target or victim. It is aggression and an effort to control that is used to make the target do, or not do, the bidding of the perpetrator. Bullying harms and controls the victim and takes away their rights: dignity; their self-respect; their health; and their well-being. Bullying takes away the right to peaceful enjoyment.
“Mobbing”—consists of a group or community harassing and bullying a victim, in order to get rid of them. In housing, mobbing consists of the landlord and their agents who initiate, condone, or support bullying. The concept of "mobbing" developed in the study of birds and other animals, and describes cooperative and aggressive behavior against a real or perceived threat. Thus, a murder of crows will attack and harass a hawk, forcing it away.
“Hostile environment harassment”—is unwelcome conduct creating a situation that makes it difficult or impossible for victims to have the peaceful enjoyment of their residency. May include bullying and mobbing.
“Commission on Bullying”—The Commission to Study Ways to Prevent Bullying of Tenants in Public and Subsidized Multi-Family Housing; Chapter 2 of the Resolves of 2016
“EOHLC or HLC”—The Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities
“Landlord”—In subsidized housing, the owner of the property and their agents, often a separate management company. In public housing, the board of commissioners of the local housing authority.
Published on 03/13/2026; revised 4/21/2026