It's time for the US to let renters unionize like FDR did for workers 87 years ago, a public policy professor says

• A new law in San Francisco means landlords have to engage with renters who want to organize.
• Peter Dreier, a politics professor, says this reflects a growing tenants' rights movement in the US.

San Francisco recently passed a law that Peter Dreier, a politics professor and urban policy scholar at Occidental College in Los Angeles, has been advocating for over the past 40 years.

The law, which went into effect last week, requires landlords to recognize tenant associations within their properties. Called the "Right to Organize" ordinance, it also makes it compulsory for landlords to attend tenant meetings at least four times per year, and bargain with tenant unions "in good faith." If landlords fail to comply with the ordinance, renters can apply for a rent reduction as a penalty. The law is the first of its kind in the country.

"My view is that if enough cities pass some version of this, it would bubble up to the state-level in more liberal parts of the country," Dreier told Insider. "And after a number of states do this, the federal government might adopt it."

Aaron Peskin, a member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, drafted the ordinance after overseeing negotiations between Veritas Investments, the largest landlord in San Francisco, and its tenants who were clamoring for the company to cancel rent debt accumulated during the pandemic.

Dreier said that the law represents a major resurgence of tenant activism in the United States, one that hasn't been seen since the late 1980s. He says that it's time for Congress to consider passing a law nationally to recognize and protect renters' unions in the same way it passed the Wagner Act under former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, which gave most workers the right to unionize.

"During the 2008 housing crash, families lost their homes and had to rent from big Wall Street companies — companies like BlackRock started buying up a lot of single family homes," he said. "And more recently during the pandemic, people were at risk of eviction and fought for eviction moratoria. There's been a recent revival of tenant activism, and makes me hopeful that there can be new laws that encourage tenants to bargain, organize, and recognize their right to organize."

'Tenants are a political constituency'

Dreier sees a parallel between this time and history and the 1930s. He said that workers then were a growing force, with many unions striking, putting the pressure on Congress and Roosevelt to pass the Wagner Act. Now, Dreier says, a growing number of people are becoming renters.

"Tenants are now about a third of residents in some places and about half of all residents in others," he said. "There's a growing understanding that tenants are a political constituency."

Dreier calls tenants the "sleeping giant of American politics" in the 1970s and 1980s, and said that they were influential in getting renter protection laws passed, a movement that largely slowed down as more people became homeowners. But that's starting to change, Dreier said, as the pandemic and the 2008 housing crisis bear a ripple effect on the economy — both in terms of housing and the workforce.

"We're seeing this big surge of union organizing, with Starbucks and all these other companies fueling a recognition that our labor laws are way out of date," he said, adding that companies might be "violating workers' rights during the pandemic in the same way landlords have been for years."

In addition to seeking the right to organize like in San Francisco, Dreier said that tenants might also pursue the right to counsel, for instance, which currently only exists in 13 cities throughout the US.

"The idea is that tenants deserve a lawyer," he said. "And tenants deserve some rights."