Since his retirement in 2013, Spencer volunteers as the Community Manager of the Rental Housing Information Network in Ohio. RHINO is an on line community of activists (service providers, public policy/program managers, tenant leaders and rental housing advocates) working on rental housing issues in Ohio. During his professional career, Spencer was a VISTA volunteer, a community worker at Garden Valley Neighborhood House, lead organizer and executive director of the Cleveland Tenants Organization, and tenant outreach director of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio (COHHIO). Spencer served as a volunteer on several successful political campaigns in Ohio and on many non profit Boards of Trustees. In addition to managing RHINO network, Spencer has a big garden and small woodlot where he lives with his wife Janet and two spoiled cats.
An old real estate strategy called “rent to own,” wherein the responsibilities of home ownership are placed on the renter without the benefits, is making a resurgence.
While tenant politics must evolve new strategies, grassroots tenants engagement in the form of a rent strike can provide the fuel needed to build a national movement.
This story suggests that ordinary people had a skeptical relationship with electronic media long before the Facebook fiasco. What kind of conscious resistance will it take to foster honest democratic dialogue?
The Daily Yonder reminds us that rural Americans seem to be the last minority that can be impugned with impunity.
In Oregon, state law forbids rent control. To protect tenants in Portland’s hot real estate market, last year the City Council passed a law that compels landlords to provide thousands in moving assistance if rent increases above 10 percent force tenants to move. This law is now being expanded to cover single-unit rentals.
January 26, 2018; NextCity
NextCity’s “How New Rules for Section 8 Voucher Payments Mean More Mobility for Voucher Holders” is one of many articles celebrating the recent victory of fair housing advocates over the Trump administration. The revived Small Areas Fair Market Rent (SAFMR) rule will permit 24 Public Housing Authorities to increase subsidies under the Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) program. With increased subsidies (pegged to the median rent for a particular ZIP code instead of the median of an entire metropolitan area), HCV households can afford to move into areas of opportunity where rents are higher. SAFMR holds the promise for greater geographic mobility. But the victory is small potatoes compared to the scope of the problem of expanding choice for Housing Choice Voucher tenants.
When the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette attempted to defend President Trump by charging that the president’s critics were engaging in “new McCarthyism,” the Pittsburgh Foundation and The Heinz Endowments loudly voiced their dissent. This unusual step by the foundations unleashed other public statements.
A disturbing number of local health departments are failing to adequately protect children from lead poisoning. In Cleveland and other cities, legal aid attorneys are intervening in housing courts to compel landlords to remedy unsafe conditions.
The presumption that older workers can’t compete is a violation, but so is the belief among older workers that just being old makes their insights worthwhile.
Mayor Bill Peduto’s call for elite nonprofits in Pittsburgh to combat inequality will require more than social work or education or technological innovation. The “eds and meds” can’t think their way out of the dilemma of two societies, separate and unequal.
