DETROIT—Rents keep climbing, up nearly 15% since 2020 in the city of Detroit, with two-bedroom apartments now averaging over $1,000/month for the first time. Meanwhile, landlords continue to neglect repairs, whether in rental apartments or houses.
They are buying up entire neighborhoods to generate massive amounts of wealth and taking abatements from the city for luxury apartment developments.
Tenants in Detroit, however, are refusing to take it anymore. The newly established Detroit Tenants Union (DTU), a citywide, tenant-led movement, is banding together as a newly minted organization that fights for safe, affordable housing, fair laws, and basic dignity for the working class in Detroit.
“We don’t come to complain,” said Steven Rimmer, a lead organizer with the DTU. “We organize to take power—starting in our own buildings.”
Movement built on struggle
The DTU began in 2022 as the Detroit Tenants Association. Tenants in a Seward Avenue building in New Center had enough with broken elevators, roach infestations, and the threats from landlords who raised their rents and bullied residents.
They eventually came together, fought back, and won rent decreases and credits for everyone in their building, the New Center Plaza, and Marlenor. It was their first organized action against their landlord, Raymond Debates, and inspired others to join the growing movement.
Take Kristi Thomas, who paid rent on time but lived without critical repairs being addressed. When she spoke up, management retaliated with a note on her door—pushing her to join the fight. “I got no help with my broken A/C unit during the summer heat waves while the landlords flexed their yachts and money,” she said.
Takiela Fields, a nine-year Seward Avenue resident, said she got involved in the movement “to fight for dignity, fair housing, and change.” Shamica Joseph, displaced after a fire last year on Seward Ave., sees tenant organizing as a fight for economic and political justice, not just a roof over her head.
These stories aren’t isolated cases. After the 2008 economic crash, corporate landlords and private capitalists scooped up whole neighborhoods in Detroit. Now, 40% of renters spend more than 30% of their income on rent, while 15% face severe cost burdens (paying over 50% of income). In a city where uneven urban development and a lack of affordable housing and sustainable jobs are the norm, the housing crisis here is acute and harsh.
Early on, as the DTA, volunteers ran ragged handling individual cases—leaks, illegal evictions, management neglect. The work burned people out. They had to pivot to something else, Rimmer said.
“We got tired of begging the city council for years with nothing to show,” Rimmer told People’s World. Now, the DTU plans to build organization and unity, block by block, for systemic change and political power, not just “putting out the fires.”
The DTU plans to push for rent control legislation, which has been banned statewide since 1988. And they continue to demand their Right to Renew ordinance with “just cause” eviction laws to stop retaliatory displacements. But they are going even further, too—they are planning to organize collective bargaining contracts with landlords modeled after Kansas City’s Tenant Union, a chapter of the Tenant Union Federation (TUF).
At the meeting, the DTU organizers made plans to grow and organize block by block and develop chapters in buildings across Detroit. This summer, they’ll pressure mayoral and city council candidates on housing policy. They hope to make common cause with the trade unions, whose members are also majority renters in the city, and civil rights groups, to make housing a central issue in the upcoming city elections.
They’re also pushing to enact, and give teeth to, Detroit’s new rental ordinance, which has been in pilot since March 2025. The ordinance cuts inspection fees from over $1,000 to just $195 for single-family homes. It expands rent escrow rights for tenants in unsafe conditions. And it targets negligent landlords with liens for unpaid violations.
“The power we build together can’t be matched,” Rimmer said to a group of 35 tenants ready to struggle. The National Tenant Union Federation, the DTU said, frames their vision: “In the richest country on earth, everyone deserves a safe, stable, affordable home.”
“When we organize our people and our ideas, we can win.”
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