The Democratic Socialists of America is training members to form “militant tenant unions” to organize renters against landlords, with the stated goal of “mass organization.”
The DSA’s Housing Justice Commission is asking members to apply for its program to train “tenant organizers” and support the formation of “militant tenant unions” rather than mere building-level tenant associations.
Supporters describe tenant unions as a way for renters to unite in negotiations with property owners. Critics, however, warn that the DSA’s effort is an attempt to build a permanent political power base.
Left-leaning foundations have generously funded efforts to organize tenant unions. In June, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation gave the National Housing Law Project $3,550,000 “to provide core support to the Tenant Union Federation in countering authoritarianism by building the collective capacity of poor and working-class people to practice noncooperation and civil resistance.”
“Political influence is the goal,” said Nicole Huyer, a senior research associate at The Heritage Foundation. Socialists “will use these tenant unions to create sustained constituencies for rent regulation, eviction restrictions, right-to-counsel programs, social housing, collective bargaining with landlords, and similar policies,” she said.
Such organizing could transform “a contractual relationship into permanent class warfare between ‘tenant’ and ‘landlord,’” Huyer said.
The final session of the 2026 Fall Emergency Tenant Organizing Committee is titled “From Organizing Committee to Mass Organization.” Participants in the program will learn how to build new tenant unions on a citywide or regional scale.
Neither the DSA nor the Tenant Union Federation nor the National Housing Law Project responded to the Daily Signal’s request for comment by publication time.
“Tenant organizing is both housing advocacy and movement-building infrastructure,” Michael Watson, research director at the Capital Research Center, told the Daily Signal.
“It’s dual-use technology, much as a labor union is dual-use technology: You can use the organized group both to campaign for the specific demands against a specific employer or property owner, and you can use the ‘union’ as a political moving force,” he added.
Huyer drew a distinction between “tenants voluntarily associating to resolve problems with a landlord” and “an ideological organization using tenants as the basis for a broader political movement.”
She noted that the DSA’s Housing Justice Commission adopted four “principles of social housing,” which include “redistribution of land from landowners to the landless”; prioritizing tenants over “developers, investors, or city councilors”; and “universal access,” “free of segregation by income or race.”
Huyer acknowledged that renters face serious affordability hurdles, but she emphasized that DSA-style policies will not alleviate their struggles.
“We can absolutely empathize with the economic hardship of young Americans and renters who feel priced out,” she told the Daily Signal. Yet she warned that “the DSA’s plan aims to use those real frustrations to make the case for greater government control of housing rather than fixing the policies that restrict housing supply (and put upward pressure on price) in the first place.”
The DSA is also attempting to infiltrate existing labor union infrastructure.
Watson noted that labor unions have had “over 100 years of experience and perpetual recruiting machines (longstanding unionized workplaces) that tenant unions don’t have,” but he warned that “politicians interested in strengthening tenants’ organizations could model tenancy policies on monopoly unionization, collective bargaining, and compulsory dues arrangements.”
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