ABSTRACT
In private housing, it has proved difficult to keep tenant organizations going after the first excitement of combat is over. The source of the impetus for tenant union organization was probably Harlem in the fall of 1963. The Harlem rent strikes of 1963 and the Chicago tenants' unions of 1966 were the direct progenitors of the National Tenants Organization. In fact, at the height of the 1963 Harlem strikes more than 500 buildings were involved, and 15,000 tenants were not paying their rents to their landlords. "Outside" groups were as active as tenants in initiating the successful campaigns to organize around landlord-tenant issues in Chicago. In July 1966, a pioneering contract was signed calling for repairs, setting up grievance machinery, preventing evictions except for cause, and spelling out the rights and obligations of the landlord to the tenant organization as well as to the individual tenants. Public housing held the hope for solid, permanent accomplishment for tenant organizers.
