TENANTS COUNCIL forming at 100 State Street
On April 12, the residents of 100 State Street will gather to form a Tenants Council. They will:
- ADOPT Bylaws
- ELECT Officers
Interested in getting involved? …volunteers are needed! …this is a real tenants council which will address real issues and get real results! Residents are needed for many vital functions, including:
- drafting bylaws
- running for officer – President, Vice-President, Secretary, Treasurer
- serving on board of directors
- running / serving on committees
- running / serving on tenant documentation team
- MORE!
…just email: onehundredstatestreet@yahoo.com
Currently, there is no tenants council.
HOWEVER, there is a State Street Tenant Activities Committee … CLICK here for its bylaws…
Per HUD regulations, neither management nor owners may interfere with tenant organizing.
HUD will punish management and owners by making them ineligible to receive HUD subsidies.
Some companies learn the hard way that they can lose the major element of their business model by treating tenants badly, destroying morale, and denying basic rights and human dignity.
In this case, the Management is Hall-Keen Management and the ownership is the Portland Housing Authority. Both of these entities full-well know better. However, in large organizations, Site Managers often are able to keep tenants down and make everything real pretty on paper for their higher-ups in Regional Management, at company headquarters, and ownership.
Tenant Organizers do not need permission to organize tenants.
Tenant Organizers must be given access to the building to organize tenants.
However, the silent majority of tenants have the right to receive information about opportunities to organize together to protect their rights and their safety.
Often, tenants will be hesitant about putting themselves out there for fear of becoming targets for management, owners, and the other residents who seek to gain the favor of management & owners by cracking down on tenants who attempt to organize.
It’s a classic story across the city, across the country, and, tragically, across history.
The good news is that we are all Americans! And as Americans:
- we have Constitutionally guaranteed rights!
- we have human rights!
- we have rights to Fair Housing!
- we have the right to organize with each other!
Now, the more flamboyant and melodramatic among the tenants might straighten their tri-corner hat and produce from their vestment a piece of parchment and cite a quote from the US Declaration of Independence:
…But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. …
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/index.htm
Like this:
This entry was posted on March 9, 2010 at 7:48 am and is filed under 100 State Street, Portland Housing Authority, Tenants Network. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.
