CAHC 2025 - 5.3 Tenant Power for A Green Future скачать в хорошем качестве

CAHC 2025 - 5.3 Tenant Power for A Green Future

This session examined the power of tenant organizing in the fight for affordable, safe, healthy, and dignified housing and how these struggles can lay the groundwork for broader, long-term demands, such as sustainable, permanently affordable, community-controlled green social housing. Tenants—particularly in immigrant and working-class communities—face serious threats to their health and stability due to mold, pests, structural decay, extreme temperatures, and landlord neglect. Yet these same tenants are organizing, building power, and demanding not only repairs and accountability but transformation. Through the lens of tenant-led campaigns, this session centered the experiences of immigrant renters organizing for immediate improvements in habitability and housing conditions while also connecting those efforts to deeper structural changes. These include campaigns to win proactive code enforcement, hold negligent landlords accountable, secure public funding for repairs, and promote democratic control over buildings and land. Panelists discussed how tenant organizing leads not only to safer homes but also to long-term strategies that build community resilience and shift control of housing away from private landlords and speculative investors and toward tenants themselves. The session also explored how demands for affordable, healthy, and habitable housing often intersect with concerns about climate and environmental justice—particularly in buildings that are energy-inefficient, rely on fossil fuels, or are located in urban heat islands. As tenant unions expand their capacity, many are beginning to develop visions for green social housing that prioritizes sustainability without displacing those most vulnerable. The session discussed how grassroots organizing around basic repairs and safety can evolve into campaigns for community land trusts, collective ownership, and green retrofits. It will also highlight how many contemporary green housing principles have roots in Indigenous land stewardship and communal housing practices, offering a deeper historical grounding to today’s housing justice work. This session affirmed that safe and healthy housing is not a luxury—it is a human right—and that immigrant tenants are not only fighting to survive but also to build thriving, resilient, and just communities for the long term.