WASHINGTON -- Angry tenant activists, mad about skyrocketing rents and congressional efforts to ban federal funds to cities with rent control, are taking their case to the halls and offices of Congress.
'Tenant consciousness is growing,' said Carol Norris, head of the California Housing and Information Network, a statewide tenants organization.
'With rents rising and no place to move, tenants have a greater stake in their apartments,' she said. 'They now realize that they are not 'temporary' tenants any longer, but that they may be renting for the rest of their lives.'
Some 300 tenant activists are expected in Washington beginning today for the weekend meeting of the National Tenants Union and what leaders hope is a showdown with Congress on the rent control issue.
Congress is considering legislation that would withhold federal housing subsidies to cities with rent control laws. There are about 200 such cities, including New York, Boston, Washington and Los Angeles.
'This legislation is an attempt to stem the tide of the growing tenants movement,' said David Sullivan, a city councilor and tenant leader in Cambridge, Mass.
Sullivan said Cambridge, which also has rent control laws, would be severely affected if the proposed legislation is passed and 'we're here to see that it doesn't happen.'
Sullivan said he will meet today with House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill to discuss strategy to defeat the proposed legislation. O'Neill is publicly opposed to the proposal.
The anti-rent control legislation, sponsored by Sen. Alfonse D'Amato, R-N.Y., and Rep. Chalmers Wylie, R-Ohio, was passed by the Senate Banking Committee but defeated in the House Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee.
D'Amato and Wylie hope to attach it to a reconciliation bill.
Tenant activists are concerned about the bill because similar legislation passed the House a year ago.
'If Congress passes this bill, they will have declared war on the nation's more than 60 million tenants,' said John Atlas, a spokesman for the National Tenants Union and a leader of the New Jersey Tenants Organization.
'Not only is it a violation of the president's promise to return decision-making back to the cities and towns, but it is also unfair punishment of communities that think rent control is the way to control skyrocketing inflation for hard-pressed tenants,' Atlas said.
