ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the part women have played within the tenant movement—the crusade for the recognition of tenants’ rights to security within well-maintained housing at reasonable rents—in New York City from the first major rent strikes in 1904 until the present. The first major episode of tenant activism in New York City dates from the spring of 1904. In 1919 more conservative “tenant associations,” with ties to the Democratic and Republican parties, emerged as rivals to the tenant “leagues” led by socialists. Neighborhood tenant organizations reemerged in numbers in the wake of the depression, with a new focus on the decay of housing following a period of high vacancy rates and landlord neglect. Women’s numerical predominance in tenants’ efforts to alleviate problems at the building level and their involvement in neighborhood friendship networks lead them to be drawn into efforts to deal with housing problems in other buildings—that is, into neighborhood organizations and, eventually, coalitions.
