ABOUT

The mission of the Stop Bullying Coalition includes advocacy, research, and education to empower tenants of public and subsidized housing for the elderly and disabled. We seek to stop bullying, to understand the social factors that enable or inhibit bullying, and to discover ways to build healthy community life, and to overcome the cultural and social issues leading to prejudice that impacts on tenants of public/subsidized housing.

The Stop Bullying Coalition http://StopBullyingCoalition.org is a network of volunteers using education and advocacy to assure the rights of ~92,000 elderly and disabled persons living in public and subsidized housing in Massachusetts. By partnering with groups and legislative leaders, we helped to create the 2017 Commission on Bullying and engaged in research and policy development on the commission. We advocate to protect tenants from hostile environment harassment by establishing the office of the tenant advocate in the Office of the Attorney General that would provide oversight over landlords and their agents who are legally re

Starting in 2020, we address the safety and public health issues presented by the COVID-19 epidemic.

There are 92,000 residents in 1,400 public housing and subsidized developments in Massachusetts. Our goals are to empower residents of multifamily housing, including elderly and people living with disability; to assure protection from bullying and mobbing; to hold landlords accountable for assuring peaceful enjoyment; to educate the public, legislators, landlords, managers, and tenants; to undertake research and publications in support of those goals; and to advocate for legislative remedies.

We partner with individuals, organizations, agencies, and legislators to learn and work together towards our common goal of enhancing the lives of elderly and disabled persons. Partnership in our coalition is flexible and based on common goals in specific situations.

Two housing tenants, Jerry Halberstadt and Bonny Zeh, one elderly and one living with disability, learned by experience that there was no agency or legal remedy that would protect a tenant from bullying, and no way to get a provider of housing to intervene. That was the motivation for creating the Coalition in 2012.

Legislative advocacy

We decided to seek a legislative remedy. Therefore, Halberstadt drafted a bill to protect tenants from bullying and submitted it "by right" to Senator Joan Lovely.

We testified before the Joint Committee on Housing, but learned that the bill would not get out of committee. However, Representatives Brad Hill and the chairs of the Joint Committee, Representative Kevin Honan and Senator Jamie Eldridge, urged that Halberstadt should revise his bill as a petition to create a commission. However, that bill did not make it into law in that session.

To advance that legislation for creating a commission, Senator Lovely sponsored it in the next legislative session. We worked with two prominent tenants' rights groups, the Mass Union of Public Housing Tenants and the Mass Alliance of HUD Tenants; the Independent Living Center of the North Shore and Cape Ann, the Resident Advisory Board of the BHA, and numerous elderly and disabled tenants. We enjoyed support from the Citizens' Housing and Planning Association (CHAPA) and managers of housing programs. Together, we advocated and testified before the Joint Committee on Housing, and our bill to create the first Commission on Bullying in the nation was passed. Commission to Study Ways to Prevent Bullying of Tenants in Public and Subsidized Multi-Family Housing, pursuant to Chapter 2 of the Resolves of 2016.

Governor Baker appointed Jerry Halberstadt to represent the Stop Bullying Coalition as commissioner on the Commission on Bullying from 2016-2017. With extensive support from tenants and close collaboration with Susan Bonner, Legislative Chair of the Mass Union of Public Housing Tenants, Halberstadt led Commission efforts to design and administer a landmark survey of bullying in housing in the Commonwealth, as well as an extensive review of the realities and challenges facing victims of bullying who are unable to get any relief. Halberstadt contributed to and supported the official consensus report of the Commission, and also filed a minority report focused on actually addressing the needs of tenants; both reports were filed at the end of 2017.

In 2019 two bullying bills were filed on Beacon Hill; the consensus report led to identical bills supported by Senator Lovely and Representative Honan; and our bill to create an ombuds office was presented by a bipartisan group of sponsors, including Senator Joan Lovely and Representative Brad Hill.

Education & research

  • Provide information and support by email, newsletters, by articles and listings of resources compiled by Bonny Zeh, reaching an international audience.
  • Ongoing educational workshops, research, and support for organizational and advocacy work by tenants in Salem, Lowell, Boston Housing Authority (BHA), and other communities.
  • With Mikhail Kazachkov, a renowned human rights campaigner, producing a documentary film on bullying for Salem Access TV, including a transition in Salem public housing.
  • Continuing to seek information on the difference between toxic housing developments and healthy ones, and on ways to effect change; including by publishing reports on best practices.
  • Developing perspectives on a variety of conflict resolution and community building strategies.
  • We presented workshops for MAHT; Massachusetts Statewide Independent Living Council (2018---Halberstadt & MM Moore, Former Executive Director, ILCNSCA); National Workplace Bullying Coalition (2017).
  • Halberstadt did a guest presentation in February for law students of David C. Yamada, Professor of Law and Director, New Workplace Institute in his Law and Psychology Lab at Suffolk University Law School.
  • Supporting the efforts of Lynn Costello and Christin Shelton to establish the Lowell Anti-Bullying Coalition.
  • We participated in the annual Black Picnic in Salem
  • We are participating in the 2022 Negro Election Day Celebration on July 16, 2022.

Social activism

While we have made significant progress in creating awareness and in legislative advocacy, we have come to recognize that the economic, social, and cultural setting of people living in public/subsidized housing is linked to broader social issues.

We are therefore expanding our mission to include issues including health which impact our core customers, the 92,000 elderly and disabled tenants in 1,400 housing development in Massachusetts.

Public health and COVID-19

At this time, in 2022, the nation is still seeking to deal with the epidemic of COVID-19 which poses a significant threat to our people.

 

COVID Transmission in Essex County and Peabody, Massachusetts is updated weekly with information about transmission and ongoing current infections in Essex County and Peabody, Massachusetts. Links to data sources enable the reader to learn the situation in their locality. The sources used are the CDC data on transmission; levels of COVID found in wastewater; and % positivity in Essex County and Peabody. These are all leading indicators preceding cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. For detailed information about strategies for protecting yourself and your community, see The New "How to Avoid COVID."

 

We participate in online meetings of housing administrators in order to learn about current issues in housing under the COVID-19 threat, and in order to share a tenant perspective. CHAPA hosts a series. The weekly online meetings of Affordable Senior Housing and COVID19 are hosted by Leading Age Massachusetts, CEDAC, the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), Executive Office of Elder Affairs (EOEA), and MassHousing to discuss COVID19 areas of interest for those who manage affordable senior housing.  Recordings of meetings at Affordable Senior Housing and COVID-19. www.leadingagema.org/ashcalls We share the issues that are relevant to tenants online and in our newsletter.

Halberstadt researched the connections among Community Norms, Social Distancing, and Bullying in public housing. The issues in housing echo those reported daily on the national scene. The findings, based on several community cases, reveal the impact of strategies for developing trust and community norms to prevent bullying and enable compliance with public health protocols.

The Stop Bullying Coalition is advocated for legislation that will enable providers of housing, their staff, and tenants to work together on the basis of the best available information. 

The Coalition has taken a stand in support of collecting and publishing public health information at the level of the housing development in order to have transparency that can enable rapid and effective measures to limit infection. We have advocated for such actions.

We are participating in and supporting the work of the Dignity Alliance.

Dignity Alliance Massachusetts, a grass-roots coalition of aging and disability service and advocacy organizations and supporters, is dedicated to secure fundamental changes in the provision of long-term services, support, and care.  We are pursuing an array of efforts to secure new public policies and to expand access to essential service and care options and living alternatives emphasizing the dignity of those receiving the care as well as those providing it. 

We see a potential for expanding our scope to a national organization; we are in touch with activists in several other states facing similar challenges.