To stay in their homes, tenants are unionizing
For months, tenants and housing advocacy organizations have feared a “tsunami” of evictions coming to Boston.
Rumors circulated that the landlord wanted everyone out. But Giuliana Perez could not contemplate leaving her two-bedroom apartment, where light pours into the living room, in the middle of a pandemic. What would she do with her elderly mother? How would she pay first and last month’s rent at a new place when her hours as a caregiver had been slashed?
So in June of last year, she decided to act. She went door to door in her Hyde Park building, knocking at each of the eight other units. The neighbors talked about the raging virus, the cluttered basement. Perez learned about a leaking ceiling in one apartment and a broken dishwasher in another. The residents wrote a letter to the landlord, asking to meet as a group to “figure out how we can stay in our homes.”
That was how the 15 Dana Ave. tenant association was born. The group joined a host of newly created tenants unions across the city, a local response to massive unemployment caused by COVID and widespread fear of eviction.
“I hadn’t done anything like that in my life,” Perez, 43, said. “I was never in a position to fight back.”
Read the complete story at BostonGlobe.com.
Don’t have a Globe subscription? Boston.com readers get a 2-week free trial.
To comment, please create a screen name in your profile
To comment, please verify your email address
Conversation
This discussion has ended. Please join elsewhere on Boston.com