A Motley Crew: Grassroots Group Fights for Tenants

Last month, Harvard President Neil L. Rudenstine announced an unprecedented $21 million commitment to attack one of the region's major issues, affordable housing.

While Harvard's act was a one-time allocation, for more than a decade, on a side street behind City Hall, a group of grassroots activists has been consistently tackling the Cambridge housing shortage.

The Eviction Free Zone (EFZ) has spent the last 10 years advocating for tenant rights and representing the interests of working people.

"We want tenants to take a proactive approach to organizing with our support," says EFZ lead housing organizer Toy Lim.

With more than 450 members, EFZ has established itself as a force both on the streets and in City Hall.

"It's a holistic vision of activism," says State Rep. Jarrett T. Barrios '90 (D-Cambridge). "You have to be able to put on your suit and talk to politicians, and get your message on the street to inflame the issue."

With an arsenal of tactics including letter writing, negotiations, lawsuits, and rallies and marches, EFZ has emerged as local tenants' primary defenders against evictions and steep rent increases.

Over the past year, the group has led the drive to implement a living wage in Cambridge and has been fighting to secure voting rights for immigrants.

"Really, we're about organizing and advocating for people that happen to have less money than other people," says Bill Cavellini, a member of EFZ's Steering Committee since its founding. "We're not just helping one person at a time."

Heeding the Call

EFZ has been active in the community for more than 10 years. And their efforts--which have included rallies and governmental lobbying--often start with just a phone call.

Lim says she fields about 10 to 15 calls per day, the majority from tenants who have a specific question about their rights under the law.

But occasionally a tenant raises a question that could affect a number of tenants or an entire building.

"A little red flag goes off when we hear those calls, and we follow up to see if there's some organizing that we can do there," Lim says.

But Lim says dealing with one-time calls is not EFZ's goal.

"The primary focus is to see if there are any organizing efforts we can do for [tenants]," she says. "If we just give advice on the phone, that just ends the effort right there. There isn't any continued involvement."

Many tenants continue their involvement with EFZ by becoming members of the group after they have been helped.

Bill Marcotte, who has served as EFZ's lead housing organizer, became involved in 1995 after the organization supported him when he was being threatened with eviction.

"Because of their help I was able to stay in my home," he says.

Deconstructing EFZ

EFZ volunteers represent a range of socioeconomic levels and ethnicities.

With little formal structure, EFZ relies on its members to organize campaigns, run meetings and train new volunteers.

The members' day jobs vary. Marcotte, 51, has lived in Cambridge for 25 years and works as a housecleaner, and Cavellini, 56, is a cab driver.

The organization prints all literature, including pamphlets, newspapers and rally signs, in three languages--English, Spanish and Haitian/Creole.

"In everything we do we try to be inclusive," Cavellini says.

In addition to its volunteers, the organization has two part-time staff members--Lim, 26, the interim housing organizer, and Natalie J.J. Smith, 34, who heads EFZ's ongoing political campaigns.

A 14-member steering committee, composed of volunteers elected yearly, directs EFZ. The committee meets monthly and sets broad policies for the organization.

A Decade of Action

EFZ has been operating since 1989, when it was founded as part of the Cambridge Economic Opportunity Council (CEOC). Now independent, the group is extending the range of issues it covers.

CEOC provides a range of services to the Cambridge community, including family planning, food distribution, Head Start and housing advocacy.

But as the housing needs of Cambridge expanded, EFZ began to outgrow CEOC.

"EFZ is fairly different and its membership is fairly large, so it didn't properly fit in under CEOC," Lim says.

EFZ's confrontational tactics were also diverging from CEOC's mission. Organizers worried that EFZ's increasingly public presence, including rallies and marches directed against Cambridge's government and citizens, might lead to a loss of funding for CEOC, which gets some block grants from the government.

"EFZ did a lot of organizing, it tended to be a little more public... so [the CEOC alliance] wasn't good for EFZ," Lim says. "We didn't want to be restricted by funding from CEOC."

As a result, EFZ became financially independent in the summer of 1998.

To compensate for the loss of the CEOC funding, the majority of which went toward paying the salary of a full-time housing organizer, EFZ held a massive fundraising drive.

EFZ received support from a variety of sources, including Cambridge music clubs like the Middle East, T.T. the bear's and the Lizard Lounge, as well as private grants. The organization raised enough to fund its $50,000 budget for the year.

Though EFZ still retains its headquarters in CEOC's white-and-blue clapboard house on Inman Street in Central Square--right behind City Hall--the organization is looking for new office space to house its expanding committees and programs.

Keeping Rents Under Control

The end of rent control in 1994 aggravated the housing shortage in Cambridge and forced EFZ to change its tactics.

Rent control provided two important protections for tenants, according to Cavellini. It slowed rent increases, limiting landlord profit margins, and provided for a "just-cause" eviction process so tenants could not be evicted without reason.

Because of these protections, EFZ simply had to bring tenant complaints before a now-defunct rent control board.

Now, EFZ has to depend on direct legal action.

"Resolution of conflict was at the rent control board," Cavellini says. "Basically, that step was eliminated. Now it's in front of a courthouse, which is not a good place for tenants."

A recently founded EFZ program, though, is ensuring tenants still have a voice.

About 16,000 housing units in Cambridge lost their protection under rent control. To compensate for this loss, EFZ founded its Campaign to Save 2,000 Homes to forestall evictions and keep rents down.

The campaign encourages tenants to organize in order to wage a more effective fight.

"We know from experience that tenants working together in a group are much more stronger than an individual trying to deal with this problem alone," Marcotte says.

The campaign meets twice per month and often attracts 20 to 25 Cambridge tenants--some experienced activists, some just looking for advice.

"Basically, the campaign aims to be a meeting place where tenants can get support for their causes, meet other tenants and get advice," Cavellini says.

But that advice tends to have an activist edge.

In certain cases, EFZ will urge tenants to issue a series of increasingly public challenges to landlords, starting with a letter to the City Council.

If the landlord refuses to negotiate, tenants can appear before the City Council to discuss their case.

Such actions have won the respect of local politicians.

"They have tried to demonstrate that being a tenant is not a crime, and not being able to accommodate these exponential rent increases is not a deficiency," says City Councillor Kenneth E. Reeves '72.

If the City Council route fails, EFZ suggests that tenants use existing tenant and consumer laws to challenge landlords for not providing adequate housing.

Tenants can sue landlords for health code violations such as not providing window screens or adequate heat, or for misrepresentation, such as not providing an advertised parking spot.

"All these things are worth money," Cavellini says. "It's a combination of using tenant-protection laws that continue to exist on the state level and tenants working together to bargain for a better position."

Often the threat of a lawsuit will prompt landlords to grant concessions, he says.

Only as a last resort do the organizers use direct action tactics such as marches and rallies, they say.

"At times we have been confrontational," Cavellini says. "We know that to sustain a good direct action campaign takes a lot of time, effort and people, so we try to negotiate where possible."

But rallies do serve a purpose, Cavellini says--they establish a community presence and attract members.

"We like to have a public presence that has a little flavor of 'we can still get people out on the street,'" he says.

EFZ holds an annual Christmas rally and songfest at City Hall, and this year is planning a Millennium March.

Leaving the Old Neighborhood

The end of rent control also accelerated the process of gentrification that has overtaken Cambridge, and broadened EFZ's task.

Attracted by the area's booming economy, more and more professionals have been moving to Cambridge, creating a housing crunch.

"There's an unlimited demand for almost all housing on all levels," Cavellini says.

Landlords have taken advantage of the housing shortage by evicting older tenants and increasing rents up to 300 percent, an action that would have been impossible under rent control.

Because incoming professionals are usually wealthier and able to pay higher rents, they often displace long-term residents.

"We're losing presidents of PTAs, common garden coordinators--not just people who weren't rooted here," Cavellini says. "There are no more options left. They've tried every belt-tightening technique, so they're leaving now."

This rapid turnover creates instability that can lead to a rise in crime and the deterioration of close-knit neighborhoods, Lim says.

"People aren't watching out for each other because they don't know each other," she says.

According to Lim, rising gentrification also results in a loss of diversity, both economic and cultural.

"A lot of minorities are in the lower economic brackets," she says. "Elderly are often left out in the change."

Getting Political

Independent of CEOC, EFZ's political activism--and effectiveness--has surged over the past year.

The organization led the successful drive to implement a living wage of $10 per hour for all employees of the city of Cambridge. The City Council passed the ordinance in May, after 18 months of agitation.

"It was a brilliant campaign and it took a lot of work," says Smith, who works as a part-time campaign organizer.

EFZ members say they hope to apply the same successful techniques to pass a bill that would allow immigrants to vote in school committee elections.

Parents that are not citizens are currently unable to vote.

"Even if immigrants are not citizens, they still have children in the school system and should be able to influence the decisions," Lim says.

On Dec. 13, the City Council plans to hold a "vote in principle" on the issue. EFZ members expect the vote, not tied to a specific bill, to illustrate how much support the issue has in city government.

In addition, should the measure pass, the city's legal team will work to draft an actual ordinance, saving EFZ both money and effort.

The group used the same tactic in passing the living wage bill.

But immigrant voting rights have been a more controversial measure than the living wage, which attracted near-unanimous support.

The School Committee supported the measure by a five-to-two vote, which Lim says shows a degree of dissent.

And Reeves says he is not sure that the City Council will endorse the measure.

"The current proposal is very hazy," he says. "This idea may require more fleshing-out before success."

Smith says she has noticed a "knee-jerk reaction against immigrant issues," which might impair the measure's progress.

But she remains optimistic about the bill's eventual outcome.

"Voting rights would be so empowering," she says.

EFZ is also returning to its roots, building a campaign to reinstate rent control.

"We are in the early stages of a campaign to bring about statewide regulations for tenant rights against evictions," Marcotte said.