Rent Striking to Save the South Bronx
Manny Pardilla: If we're dealing with the Coronavirus outside, then for many of us, we're dealing with mold, with leaks, with rats with pests, indoors. And all these things, they trigger asthma, they trigger respiratory illnesses, they trigger all these health issues that impact our community and landlords have purposely kept conditions this way.
JG: That was Manny Pardilla.
He’s the main tenant organizer for the South Bronx Tenants Movement. I interviewed Manny back on April 4th a few days after the first call for a rent strike began. A month later, the rent strikes are growing:
Media Clip: “All across the country, from Los Angeles to Philadelphia to New York tens of thousands of tenants banded together for the biggest rent strikes in decades”
But let’s go back to early April, and to Manny’s South Bronx neighborhood of Mott Haven, where he organizes tenants.
Manny spent four years at the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition, where he learned the ropes of tenant organizing at this housing focused non-profit.
After he left the position, Manny focused on organizing tenants on his own. He realized that many South Bronx tenants live in smaller 8-12 unit buildings owned by private landlords who have generally left them in consistent disrepair. Even though recent housing reforms have provided tenants with more legal assistance and resulted in lower eviction rates across the city, the Bronx is the only borough where eviction rates have risen every year since 2010.
Each year, evictions have ravaged the Bronx where overcrowding, terrible conditions, and aggressive landlords purge thousands of tenants and their families out of their homes.