From the Biden Administration to the city of Omaha, so-called representatives are insisting on returning to normal despite scientists’ recommendations. As tenant organizers, we are unsurprised by this push to re-open. When it comes to evictions, elected officials at all levels of government in Omaha have been pretending that we were back to normal since last May when Governor Ricketts’ bare-bones executive order postponing evictions ended. Evictions never stopped in Douglas County. Eviction court remained open, even when all other courts closed this past winter due to high numbers of COVID-19 cases. Apparently it was too dangerous to hold jury trials, but not too dangerous to cram renters into Courtroom 20 as landlords and their lawyers argued in favor of kicking people out of their homes during a pandemic.

Image courtesy of Omahatenantsunited.org

We have several vaccines available now, this pandemic could get much worse before most people get their vaccine. Instead of helping tenants pay rent and stay in their homes, the County spent last fall paying a consulting firm millions of dollars to tell them all the ways they should restrict the distribution of federal CARES Act funding. Instead of putting money directly into tenants’ hands, tenants were forced to fill out mountains of paperwork so that, if their application was even accepted, the money could be deposited directly into their landlord’s bank account. And after all that, landlords still got to decide whether to accept the money or not. “Why would they refuse the money?” you might ask. Because if landlords accept it, they have to guarantee not to evict that tenant. Omaha landlords will sacrifice their own profits in the name of their private property rights.

The CARES Act funding is not rental assistance; it is a landlord bailout. With the glacial vaccination rates, we have to ask why assistance is capped at 12 months? Why does the funding have so many restrictions on it that it couldn’t even be distributed? Money sat in county coffers while our neighbors were thrown out on the street.

None of the measures proposed by the ruling class are evidence-based. Their rationale is found in a balance sheet, not in any journal article or intergovernmental body. That means giving as little away as possible to maintain the ruling class’ profits, and taking advantage of the crisis to undercut the political power of organizations that hurt their bottom line, such as teacher’s unions.

This is incredibly short-sighted. But history shows that pointing out bad ideas won’t stop anyone. We need to be building power of our own, tenant power. It may not be this crisis specifically, but eventually this deterioration will be the death of us. For the tenant’s union, this means being first and foremost on the streets and in the courthouse with tenants. And doing what we can to make sure as many stay in their homes as possible.

The CDC eviction moratorium was not enough to prevent an inordinate amount of suffering, but without it tenants are much worse off. Now that any meagre protections are withering away, we need to understand where we go from here. In court, we’ve witnessed judges grant evictions in situations where tenants didn’t understand what they were served with, were trying to get away from abusive partners who controlled their finances, and were fighting trumped-up charges from racist property managers who wanted them gone. But this isn’t the exception. It isn’t that the pandemic has caused an eviction crisis. The problem is that too little has changed since a pandemic was declared, including in eviction court.

If the city is to craft a sensible, humane housing policy, it needs to put tenants first. Until then, you and I and everyone else who doesn’t control their housing needs to stand together if we are to survive now and into the future. Your landlord may not need you. They may not need your neighbor. But they do need all of us to keep accepting less. That is where our power lies. We can start to make a different demand. Today our homes, tomorrow the world!

Building Tenant Power

An Editorial By Taylor Reed and Talia Smith on behalf of Omaha Tenants United