When Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis, two of the founders of the Los Angeles Tenants Union, organized tenants in rent strikes such as the mariachis in Boyle Heights, they saw tenants could refuse to pay rent, win better conditions and still keep their homes. To tenants’ surprise, “their keys still open the locks” and “their home, though they have not paid for it, persists,” they write in Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis.
Rosenthal and Vilchis said they saw, after years of activism, that fighting to reform the private housing system seemed only to produce laws that were not enforceable and low-income housing developments that were not affordable.
