DETROIT—Across Detroit, tenants are organizing to demand safer living conditions, fair treatment from landlords, and stronger legal protections. Currently at the heart of their efforts is a push for a “Right to Renew with Good Cause” ordinance, which would give renters the power to extend their leases and gain some protection from sudden evictions or rent hikes.
At the Detroit City Council meeting this week, tenant organizers and their allies showed up to demand members stop dragging their feet and finally pass the Right to Renew with Good Cause ordinance—which has been demanded by renters and housing organizers for nearly two years.
Steven Rimmer, a tenant organizer and co-founder of the Detroit Tenants Association, has been a fixture at City Council meetings over the years. The DTA has made the Right to Renew with Good Cause ordinance a central focus of its work.
“We are here to demand Council pass the ordinance as written by us,” Rimmer said. “We represent the tenants in this city” through the DTA “and we’ve been pushing for this ordinance since 2023.
“We need to fundamentally change city policy to give renters more rights,” Rimmer said. “Right now, tenants are at the mercy of landlords, who can raise rents or refuse to renew leases with little notice. The Right to Renew would give us the security we deserve.”
Kea Mathis, the Housing and Family Engagement organizer for Detroit People’s Platform, urged council members to create more secure tenant protections—such as fully funded right to counsel, right to renew, just cause eviction policies, and rent control.
“We also believe in the right of tenants to become property owners when landlords forfeit their properties due to neglect and foreclosure,” she said. “We are for stabilizing our neighborhoods, protecting our city from bad actors, and protecting tenants from unjust practices and harm.”
Just last week, two children tragically died from hypothermia in a casino parking lot due to a lack of available housing. Tateona Williams and her five children were forced to sleep at the parking garage at Hollywood Casino Hotel at Greektown in an attempt to avoid the frigid winter weather.
Williams, who has been homeless for three months, was set to start a new job this week. “I asked everybody for help. I called out of state, I called cities I didn’t know, I called cities people asked me to call. I even asked Detroit—I’ve been on CAM list for the longest,” Williams said. “Everybody now wants to help after I lost two kids? I’ve been asked for help.”
CAM, or the Coordinated Assessment Model, refers to the process homeless persons go through to be evaluated for housing service eligibility in the Detroit metro area.
Rimmer explained to People’s World that the DTA has been organizing tenants unions in the city to address tragic situations like this, regardless of whether the units are public or private rentals. He criticized the city for prioritizing billionaires like Dan Gilbert, the Illitch family, and Tom Gores over enforcing housing regulations and funding for social services and good union jobs.
Detroit’s housing landscape has shifted dramatically over the past decade-plus, largely due to the subprime mortgage crisis and the city’s bankruptcy, with renters now making up nearly half of the city’s population. Many of these renters are “rent-burdened,” spending more than 30% of their income on housing, and an estimated 90,000 Detroiters live in substandard conditions.
The need for the Right to Renew is evident in the struggles of tenants across Detroit, Rimmer told People’s World. At Sherwood Heights Apartments, a 300-unit complex, residents formed the Sherwood Heights Tenants Association in 2022 to address persistent issues like sewage backups, electrical surges, and a lack of hot water. Despite their efforts, the new property management company, Beztak, failed to make major repairs while steadily increasing rents and forcing renters out.
The DTA, which formed in August 2023, has already gained momentum, with its very first general assembly meeting in January 2024 drawing 70 attendees. The organization is working to build a coalition of renters and housing justice organizers to push for the ordinance and other renter protections. Getting the Detroit City Council to pass their proposed Right to Renew ordinance is the main policy struggle right now, Rimmer said.
A similar ordinance, passed in Ann Arbor in 2022, requires landlords to offer tenants a lease renewal at least 180 days before their current lease ends. The ordinance provides renters there with greater stability and prevents landlords from displacing long-term residents to make way for higher-paying tenants.
Katie O’Donnell, a member of the DTA and the Barbara Tenants Union, said that the building she currently lives in is owned by a corporate landlord who runs properties in Arizona, California, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Washington, D.C., in addition to those in Michigan.
Passing the ordinance would ensure that renters across the city have some level of housing security in the face of the ever-worsening consolidation and commodification of housing supply, she said.
“As it stands, the company that manages my current place of residence could refuse to renew my lease and the leases of my neighbors for no reason but to raise their rents and increase profit,” she said.
Recently, at City Club Apartments in Lafayette Park, tenants have been facing eviction for legally withholding rent in escrow due to unsafe living conditions. Their building lacks a certificate of compliance, which means landlords are prohibited from collecting rent or evicting tenants under Detroit’s city code. Yet, Friedman Management, the property’s management company, has filed eviction notices against as many as 20 residents, including seniors.
The DTA is mobilizing to inform tenants of their rights through events, door-to-door canvassing, public demonstrations, and monthly meetings. Their efforts are part of a larger wave of tenant organizing across the country, as working-class renters demand safer, more affordable, and more stable housing.
“Filing individual complaints wasn’t going very far,” said Deborah Patrick of the Sherwood Heights Tenants Association. “But if we all band together, we can be heard.”
Tenant associations organized in the DTA, like those at Sherwood Heights, Barbara, City Club Apartments, and New Center Plaza, are not only fighting for repairs and fair treatment in their own buildings but also advocating for systemic change to the way renting as a whole is handled in Detroit.
The DTA was a founding member organization of the statewide Rent Is Too Damn High Coalition, which came together a few years ago to address Michigan’s ban on rent control, social housing policy solutions to the housing crisis, and a renter’s bill of rights. The coalition aims to level the playing field for working-class renters.
Last November, the coalition rallied in Lansing after over 100 organizations demanded the Michigan legislature to pass the Fair Chance Housing Act, which would bar landlords from using criminal records to deny tenants.
Alongside this, they pushed for reforms like banning income-based housing discrimination, allowing eviction record expungement, protecting tenants’ rights to organize and access legal counsel, enabling renters to deduct repair costs from rent, and eliminating junk fees.
“We have more power than people realize,” said Rimmer. “But we need to build something bigger to make real change. The Right to Renew with Good Cause in Detroit is just the beginning.”
While the Detroit ordinance won’t solve the basic contradiction between the necessity of housing and the profit motive, it is a good first step toward creating a fairer housing system in the city. If passed, the ordinance would help stabilize neighborhoods, protect vulnerable renters, and help ensure that Detroit’s housing works for everyone—not just landlords and corporate property investors.
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