Click on the topic title to find training resources that have been cultivated over the past 30 years by tenant leaders, tenant organizers, and housing experts across the country.
Intro to Federally Assisted Multifamily Housing:
More than 1.3 million families live in housing where Project Based Section 8 contracts are expiring. Learn about expiring Section 8 contracts and mortgages, basics of “Mark Up to Market”, Enhanced vs. Project Based Vouchers, Low Income Housing Tax Credits, risks and opportunities for tenants.
How to Start a Tenant group:
Tips on how to organize a tenant group in your building, for beginners. Learn how to set up and convene a meeting, recruit members, deal with management harassment.
Enforcing the Right to Organize:
Tenants have won strong regulations from HUD which affirm the right of tenants and organizers in HUD Multifamily Housing to form independent tenant associations free of management control. HUD has notified owners that they can be fined and sanctioned for violating tenants’ rights, but has yet to penalize any owner, despite widespread violations.
How to Sustain a Tenant Group:
Once you have organized your tenant group it is important to keep the energy up so tenants will stay engaged!
Intro to Rental Assistance Demonstration:
In 2011, Congress passed HUD’s Rental Assistance Demonstration program (RAD), to invite private investors to renovate Public Housing. Learn more about RAD here!
Coping with Recertification and HUD's Enterprise Income Verification System:
In recent years, HUD tenants have been subjected to new, often intrusive “recertification” and cross checking of government databases by the EIV system mandated by HUD. Under COVID, HUD has streamlined and relaxed rules on Interim and Annual Recertifications to make it easier for Section 8 and Public Housing tenants who have lost their jobs to get a reduced rent. Learn about why Congress and HUD have instituted the EIV, how it is supposed to work, what tenants’ rights are to access their files and appeal and correct the record, and how you can get a rent reduction if you’ve lost your job.
Strategies to Preserve At-Risk Federally Assisted Housing:
Tenants in subsidized housing are challenged as long term contracts in federal and state subsidized housing expire and rent controls and subsidies end. More than 460,000 low rent HUD apartments have been lost since 1996 due to owner decisions to prepay or opt-out of HUD programs, or through HUD foreclosure and resale. Tenants have organized to save our homes in response. Learn how tenants have used HUD programs such as Mark Up to Market, Enhanced or Project-Based Vouchers, and Tax Credits to save and improve our homes from market rate conversions.
How to Use HUD REAC Inspections to Save and Improve Your Homes:
HUD’s aging housing stock presents many challenges to tenants’ health and safety. Life-threatening gas and water leaks, toxic mold, drafty windows, poor ventilation, and lead paint are widespread. HUD’s Real Estate Assessment Center (REAC) inspection system has failed to address these threats. Learn more about the HUD REAC Inspection Process here!
How to Remove An Abusive Site Manager:
Across the country, tenant groups have struggled with how to get rid of incompetent, corrupt and/or downright nasty on-site managers. Some groups have succeeded in changing on-site management or even removing management companies, in buildings that are not owned by tenants. Find out how they did it!
How Tenants Can Combat Discrimination:
Discrimination against people of color, women, the disabled and other groups protected under the Fair Housing Act is widespread in HUD assisted housing. Learn how tenants can use new federal protections to fight for their rights and combat discrimination, harassment and segregation in HUD housing.
Keeping Senior High Rise Buildings Safe
COVID-19 was a international emergency that presented unique challenges for senior high rise building tenants. Learn how tenants worked to stay safe during this emergency!
Low Income Housing Tax Credits: Challenges to Tenants:
Since the 1990’s, the principal housing production program for lower income families, has been the Low Income Housing Tax Credit Program (LIHTC). Administered by the Internal Revenue Service (not HUD), LIHTC today serves more than 2.3 million families, mostly people below 60% of the Area Median Income. About 400,000 LIHTC apartments also receive Section 8 for low income families. LIHTC presents unique challenges for tenants and organizers. There is no federally-recognized Right to Organize in LIHTC buildings (unless they have Section 8). Most LIHTC buildings do not receive REAC inspections, making it harder for tenants who need repairs.
How HUD Tenants Can Fight Urban Displacement, Racism, and Gentrification:
Reflecting worldwide trends, US cities are undergoing profound changes as global investors reconstruct central cities for the 1% and displace and isolate lower income groups, particularly people of color. HUD tenants are fighting back!