Justice for Tenants
Perspective
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 sharing common spaces in housing can manifest as a divided, fragmented local society. When the landlord harasses tenants or allows harassment, tenants are in pain and distress, but they have no way to get relief—for us, there is no justice.
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, as a way to help tenants solve 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.
Where there is mobbing or hostile environment harassment in the community, it is dangerous for an individual to fight it. Together we will not condone the landlords who support harassment.
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. Since no one is coming to help us, we 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 public and subsidized housing (housing) do not enjoy emotional and physical safety. We lack freedom from retaliation and eviction.
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.
“[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
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 and/or hostile environment harassment create an environment that is dangerous to anyone who protests and seeks their rights.
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 such agency that is responsive to tenants.
Today, tenants have no remedy or assured access to justice.
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 whistleblower 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 seemed more responsive to input. Nevertheless, in one part of the NHA, there are reports of continuing examples of mobbing and even an assault. There are some tenants and management who are more concerned with the reputation of the NHA than substance.
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 the legislation, organized the 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.
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 help 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 council. We are engaging several individuals as advisors and supporters. We are will 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 the homeless.
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.”