This week marks a year of our tenant union organizing work and just over six months since our first union launch. We’re celebrating with an overhauled website and social media presence, an update on our work to date, and major escalations with our unions and organizing drives.

Read on for details. And, if you can, help us celebrate by becoming a monthly donor, and encouraging your family, friends and neighbors to join our newsletter.

New Website is Live

We’re excited to share that tacomatenants.org has a new look! The new site has been months in the making, and we’re grateful to Felt Left Co. for their creativity, generosity, and thoughtful partnership.

The new site makes it easier to connect with tenant union organizers, follow campaigns throughout the city, and access organizing and legal resources through our intake form. Whether you’re facing an issue with your landlord, interested in joining a tenant union, or just looking for ways to get involved, our website is for you!

Please take a look around the new site — then share the link with your neighbors, colleagues, family, and friends. We hope this new website makes it easier for people to find each other and organize for the housing justice we all deserve.

Not sure where to start? Check out some key pages with the buttons below:

WE’RE A YEAR IN!

LOTS TO SHOW AND MORE TO GO!

Our organizing formally started on July 1st last year, when our partner organization Tacoma For All brought on Devin Rydel Kelly to direct tenant organizing, amidst a nationwide wave of tenant union victories.

But it was New York Apartments that sparked the movement

The supermajority NYATU launched in December of 2025. Since then, we’ve organized unions covering the portfolio of their wealthy, California-based landlords Rob Hoover, Candace Hoover and Ann Limbourne. The New York, Newcastle and North Slope Tenant Unions represent over 70 percent of the landlord’s residents, controlling over $50,000 in monthly rent. They are passionate, serious, and ready to escalate.

Just like the Hoover Portfolio, they are powerful leaders with a deep commitment to fighting for their members and Tacoma’s working class.

We now have close to 125 union card signers and active or emerging campaigns in 12 buildings. Many member leaders are running organizing committees, knocking doors, and escalating. Two leaders are now on our (recently renamed) Tacoma Tenant Organizing and Outreach (TTOO) Board of Directors, and one is on the Tacoma For All Steering Committee. Many more will surely develop soon. There is power in the union.

We have big plans for the coming year! We’ve already beat back illegal rent increases, blocked evictions, and forced landlords to provide long overdue maintenance, but we still have to win big around our members’ core demands, which is the most important thing we can do for them and the broader movement.  We’re also launching another supermajority tenant union soon, and we’ll host a founding convention for a citywide tenant union in late 2026 or early 2027.

Tacoma Tenants will win if our majority working class knows and acts on their power. So please, support the movement today. Get your family, friends and neighbors on our newsletter list. Fill out our intake form if you are serious about organizing your building. And, if you’re able, please make a monthly contribution to the movement. There is power in the union!

Building a citywide tenant union movement in 2026.

Tacoma tenants know enforcing their rights, creating community, and shifting power starts at home. 

That’s why renters are forming democratic, member-driven unions throughout the city… and taking the fight right to the slumlords.

Get organized with TTOO today and help build the citywide movement of tomorrow.

Today, your building! Tomorrow, the city!

Renters represent almost half of Tacoma’s 220,000 residents, yet have limited voice in  our own homes, city politics or the local economy. We’re here to change that –building by building, block by block, portfolio by portfolio.

This starts with creating building-level, supermajority unions, like the recently-launched New York Apartments Tenant Union ans several more launching this Spring.

But we must go further. We know that when organized, tenants will be a force to be reckoned with in Tacoma and throughout the region. That’s why we’re building portfolio-wide tenant unions and laying the foundations for a citywide tenant union.

Our goal is to launch several supermajority unions in 2026, develop member leaders throughout the city, and use our power to win major contracts and concessions. All of this will lead up to a founding citywide tenant union convention.

The role of TTOO

Tacoma Tenant Organizing and Outreach (TTOO) is the 501(c)3 nonprofit supporting Tacoma’s emerging tenant union movement. Our Executive Director and small team connect tenant leaders with organizing, legal aid, and other resources to build majority unions and power throughout Tacoma and beyond.

Our community is disproportionately out of work, with a stay at home order, panicking about looming rent/mortgages. We need Emergency Housing Protections NOW.  

The Tacoma Tenants Organizing Committee along with the Washington State Tenants Union demand our representatives enact these policies now:

• 90-day Moratorium on Evictions, Foreclosures & Utility Shut-offs; Close the Loop-hole on Pay or Vacate Notices;
• Three year Moratorium on Rent Increases;
• Moratorium on Accumulation of Late Fees;
• 90-day Rent & Mortgage Freeze;
• Protect the Safety of the Most Vulnerable, the Unhoused;
• Push for statewide measures to uphold permanent protections of all tenants across Washington State:
  • Lifting the Constitutional Ban on Rent Control Enact statewide;
  • Rent Control similar to Oregon and California’s recent meas ;
  • Just Cause Protections.

Will you join us? Click here to sign our letter or create your own to city and county council members: https://actionnetwork.org/letters/emergency-housing-protections?source=email&referrer=group-tiki-tenants-organizing-committee

Hello!! Tacoma Tenants Organizing Committee and the Tenants Union of WA are continuing our series of tenant rights workshops for this summer and fall. This is an opportunity for tenants to learn about our rights, including the new protections we fought for in Tacoma and across the state.

The workshop is:
Thursday November 14th, 6-8 pm,

Calvary Baptist Church
6511 South C Street
Tacoma, WA 98444, 

Please spread the word among your friends and neighbors!

If you have accessibility or language interpretation needs, email tacoma@tenantsunion.org

Childcare and food will be provided.

The meeting is made possible through the support of the City of Tacoma.
Can’t make this one? The future workshop dates will be announced soon!
Thank you!

Donna Seay, Tenant Outreach and Education Coordinator, 
Tacoma Tenants Organizing Committee 
tacoma@tenantsunion.org 253-678-3476

In the wake of an inhumane ban on camping in public parks, the Tacoma Police swept an encampment at 11th St. and J St. on the Hilltop.

Tacoma, WA  — Today, in the cold and rain, the Tacoma Police Department swept an encampment of approximately 30 people at 11th St. and J. St. in the Hilltop Neighborhood. The police verbally claimed they posted 72 hour’s notice, but the residents of the encampment said they received no notice. The only notice they received, in fact, was their homes coming down upon them as the police dismantled their tents, taking their valuable belongings into white vans to be picked up at the Stability Site and leaving everything else to be picked up later as trash. Police told a TTOC Organizer that Councilmember Keith Blocker had authorized the sweep.

Why today? It was a choice to carry out this sweep today on one of the coldest, rainiest days that we’ve had this season. Instead of choosing a dry day, this caused additional chaos for our unhoused community members to find a new place to stay tonight and also completely soaked all of their personal belongings.

This inhumane action comes in the wake of the City Council’s vote to ban camping in public parks, due to go into effect on December 1, 2019. The city has mismanaged the homelessness crisis for decades, choosing to criminalize poverty and homelessness and enact band-aid emergency measures instead of long-term solutions to house all residents. 

One clear example of this was in 2017 when the City of Tacoma declared a State of Public Health Emergency over Homelessness. The City of Tacoma responded with a Three-Phased Emergency Temporary Aid and Shelter Plan, which included the Stability Site that we see today. What is often left out of the story is the “Unlawful Camping” law (TMC.8.12.180) first approved in July 2017 saying that, “It is unlawful for any person to camp upon any public property in the City of Tacoma.” This criminalization of homelessness violates the civil and human rights of our unsheltered neighbors, costs taxpayers money, and is ultimately an ineffective method of addressing underlying causes of homelessness, as written in the 2019 report “No Safe Place” by the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty. The sweep today on J Street could not have happened without this unjust camping ban in place. 

During the 2019 Point in Time Count in Pierce County, 629 people were counted as unsheltered and 857 people were counted in either shelters or transitional housing. Our current shelter capacity in Pierce County is completely insufficient. We also know that the Point in Time survey may under-represent the true number of people experiencing homelessness.

Are we going to continue to criminalize homelessness and cause life-altering, traumatic sweeps, rather than working to truly solve the housing and public health crisis in our region? Winter is coming. Where are people going to go?

We call on the City of Tacoma to:

1. Delay the implementation of the Metro Parks tent ban only until the city has adequate designated day and night shelter.

2. Decline to renew TMC 8.12.180 (ie “Unlawful Camping) set to expire December 31, 2019.

3. Follow in the footsteps of the City of Austin, TX to overturn the public camping ban, allowing police to only sweep campsites (i.e., unhoused people’s homes) if they present a public health or safety hazard or are blocking a walkway.

4. Invest in more creative emergency shelters; utilizing public land for safe and sanitary encampments and creating facilities, like Urban Rest Stop, where people experiencing homelessness have access to restrooms, showers and laundry services.

5. Immediately pass tenant protections to keep more people in their homes, as recommended by the City’s Affordable Housing Action Strategy, with an ordinance for Just Cause protections to prevent arbitrary terminations of tenancy, and supporting the statewide fight for Rent Control.  

6. Stop giving luxury developers tax breaks and focus on building more public housing for low-income and working people.

MORE ABOUT TACOMA TENANTS ORGANIZING COMMITTEE (TTOC)

Tacoma Tenants Organizing Committee (TTOC) was formed in the wake of the mass eviction at the Tiki Apartments last year. Our struggle began at the Tiki Apartments when over 100 low-income tenants were given 20 day notices to leave the premises by an out of town developer. Since that eviction, many of the former Tiki residents have become homeless and three have died. TTOC has won significant victories for tenants’ rights, but the fight continues. Many people are one lost paycheck or medical emergency away from homelessness. Housing is a human right and we are all in the fight together.

In Tacoma’s classic style of putting the horse before the cart, the city council enacted a camping ban for Tacoma parks before investing in resources and homes for the homeless.  Mayor Woodards is confident that the city will find places for these people within the next 60 days although under the current administration, housing scarcity and expense has steadily increased. 

Read more at the Tacoma News Tribune. https://www.thenewstribune.com/news/local/article235712597.html

[ycd_countdown id=878] 

Mayor Woodards explaining the tent ban is OK because the city will find housing in the next 60 days.

Hello!! Tacoma Tenants Organizing Committee and the Tenants Union of WA are continuing our series of tenant rights workshops for this summer and fall. This is an opportunity for tenants to learn about our rights, including the new protections we fought for in Tacoma and across the state.

The workshop is:
Thursday September 26th, 6-8 pm,
Urban Grace Church, 902 Market Street, Tacoma

Please spread the word among your friends and neighbors!

If you have accessibility or language interpretation needs, email tacoma@tenantsunion.org

Childcare and food will be provided.

The meeting is made possible through the support of the City of Tacoma.
Can’t make this one? The future workshop dates will be announced soon!
Thank you!

Donna Seay, Tenant Outreach and Education Coordinator, 
Tacoma Tenants Organizing Committee 
tacoma@tenantsunion.org 253-678-3476

Are you a renter? Are you concerned with private property developers inflating and setting the rental market pricing according to their needs, while simultaneously receiving tax exemptions from the city? Tomorrow Tacoma City Council is going to potentially pass 2 resolutions relating to Multi-Family Tax Exemptions (MFTE). One 8-yr MFTE application is located next to Wright Park & the 12-yr application is located near the Tacoma Mall. The 12-yr application must provide 30% affordable housing units (=4), but the 8-yr MFTE application requires ZERO AFFORDABLE UNITS, yet they are requesting tax exemption status through the MFTE program! I hope that this is alarming to you & that you’re available at 5pm tomorrow.

Set pricing for the potential 133 unit Wright Park project:

(52) Studio:   $2623/month

(55) 1 bdrm: $3687/month

(26) 2 bdrm: $4867/month

Tacoma Citizens Forum takes place on the 2^nd Tuesday of every month. 5pm at 733 Market St. in Council Chambers (aka the bottom level at the base of the marble steps). You can sign in to speak before city council to directly express your opinion/concerns for 3 minutes. Literally 3 minutes of your day could shift city council’s decision-making tomorrow.

OR leave your comments for Tacoma City Council Mayor Victoria Woodards at:

(253) 594-7848 or rmeyers@cityoftacoma.org (Constituent Services: Rhosheida Meyers)

TACOMA TENANTS ORGANIZING COMMITTEE NEEDS YOU!!!

#TTOC #HousingJusticeNow #JusticeNow