This D.C. rent strike mirrors other efforts in gentrifying cities across the country

Nine residents of an apartment building in Brightwood Park are participating in an organized rent strike to protest what they say are unsafe conditions, including bedbugs, rats and roaches, crumbling structures, mold, faulty electricity, and unreliable heat and hot water.

The strike in Brightwood Park is being coordinated by the Latino Economic Development Center, the Washington Post reports, and the property owner, EADS LLC, denies the tenants’ allegations. The group joins other recent rent strikes in gentrifying cities across the country, including Los Angeles, and these once-rare organized strikes could be part of a larger trend in the face of rising rents and growing inequality, according to the Post.

“Tenants are becoming more willing to organize around the notion that they’re paying too much for too little and they could still lose their homes,” ­Michelle Wilde Anderson, a Stanford Law School professor who specializes in housing issues, told the Post. “That creates a kind of fearlessness because you have less to lose.”

• Rent strikes grow in popularity among tenants as gentrification drives up rents in cities like D.C. [WaPo]
• After a Fire and a Flood, Brightwood Park Tenants Navigate Their New Reality [WCP]
• More than 80 tenants launch multi-building rent strike in Westlake [Curbed LA]