Tenants organizing with Housing Justice Now in Winston-Salem are calling on the city’s public housing authority to ramp down hostility toward organized tenants who have held them accountable. Amidst discussion of a possible sale of public housing, tenants have had some productive discussion with the landlord, but still need answers about halting retaliation, including threats of eviction for a tenant leader.
Union members at Crystal Towers and Healy Towers, properties managed by ASPIRE (formerly the Housing Authority of Winston Salem), have spent the past few years confronting a system that has left residents living in substandard conditions. The collective action of organized tenants has led to many wins, including needed changes in the housing authority’s leadership.
ASPIRE, however, has a long history of retaliating against residents with a pattern of intimidation that has severely ramped up in the last month. This coincides with two developments: Healy Towers tenants escalating their campaign to demand the removal of an abusive maintenance supervisor and ASPIRE announcing that they are exploring selling Crystal Towers.
In the last month alone, ASPIRE has prevented residents from meeting in common areas, threatened invited external organizers with bans from the property, dissolved the Crystal Towers Resident Council, and initiated eviction proceedings that are clearly retaliatory against Ms. Edith Chisholm, a core leader at Healy Towers. These actions are transparently illegal and violate residents’ civil rights. In particular, the dissolution of the Crystal Towers Resident Council seems strategically timed and is leading to fears that ASPIRE plans to hand-pick residents for that Council who will not stand in the way of ASPIRE’s plans to sell the building.
In response, the North Carolina Tenants Union has sent a legal request for actions remediating the intimidation tactics. Housing Justice Now, NCTU’s local in Winston-Salem, is demanding that ASPIRE retract the eviction notice delivered to Edith Chisholm, delay the process of electing a new Crystal Towers Resident Council until a third-party observer can be brought in to evaluate current conditions and ensure that an election is conducted without interference, and take additional steps to protect residents’ rights to organize.
Discussions with ASPIRE leadership have resulted in some assurances. The housing authority says residents should still have access to their common spaces for the purposes of organizing with their neighbors, as well as allowing guests into the building for the purposes of supporting union activity. ASPIRE Executive Director Ted Ortiviz says he wants it to be “abundantly clear that ASPIRE will not ever, under any circumstances, retaliate against residents or organizers for engaging in protected activity.”
HJN is still waiting for a commitment to retract the eviction threat sent to Ms. Edith, although there has been a promise to review the case. Dropping the retaliatory eviction against Ms. Edith is non-negotiable. Tenants cannot be forced to live in fear of speaking up for themselves and their neighbors. While reviewing the eviction filing is a step in the right direction, Winston-Salem tenants will continue to hold ASPIRE accountable and fight to ensure that Ms. Edith and every tenant of ASPIRE can freely exercise their rights
Following weeks of attempts to chill union activity, tenants are responding with a show of solidarity. At Healy Towers, residents are placing Healy Towers United stickers on their doors to show they cannot be silenced or pushed out without a fight. On Thursday, Crystal Towers United leaders covered every floor of their building in flyers aimed at educating residents about their rights to organize.