After a decades-long pause in organizing efforts, the Ann Arbor Tenants Union is resuming its operations. The AATU was active for nearly four decades in Ann Arbor, before going dormant in 2004. The newly revived organization held its first meeting on March 3 in the Inter-Cooperative Council Education Center.
The AATU was formed in 1969 after more than a thousand renters led a strike which lasted over two years. For decades after, members and volunteers continued striking against landlords over building code violations, established a tenants’ rights hotline and set up an office in the Michigan Union. The AATU received a majority of its funding at the time from the University of Michigan Student Assembly. In 2003, however, the Assembly did not implement a $1 student fee increase approved by the student body that would have continued to fund the AATU. Without a funding source, the organization lost traction in 2004.
Ann Arbor resident Julia Goode worked with the AATU in the 1980s, and after her recent return to Ann Arbor, started to work with the revived AATU. Goode said she has been disappointed by the lack of progress in policy since her work with the AATU in the 1980s.
“Ann Arbor used to be a leader in having tenants’ rights legislation,” said Goode. “But there really hasn’t been any new legislation besides the early leasing ordinance, which to the rest of the country looks like a regressive law.”
U-M alum Zackariah Farah participated in the initial push to revive the AATU. Farah said he became inspired to recreate a tenants’ union after coming across a 2018 op-ed calling for its return.
“I agreed with all the points in it and I thought, ‘Okay, I’m going to start suggesting this to people,’ then I realized nobody’s doing anything,” Farah said. “So unless somebody just calls a meeting and gets this thing going, it’s not going to happen. I ended up sending out an invitation to lots of people I knew, a lot of student tenants, local activists and just asked them to come together.”
Farah’s attempts to gather interested community members eventually led to the formation of the AATU Reboot Task Force in 2023. Members of the task force worked to learn more about local renting issues, research AATU history and understand potential solutions. Now, Farah says they feel ready to start engaging with the community to take action.
“When tenants are told your rent is going up by 20% next year or sometimes even more, there’s almost no pushback,” Farah said. “They don’t even attempt to negotiate and that’s understandable because a one-on-one negotiation rarely ends in the tenants favor. … The conditions where tenants win are when they work together and they organize together and that’s exactly what we’re trying to do.”
Rackham student and AATU task force member Nathan Kim said he felt inspired by the first meeting’s turnout and energy.
“I was blown away by the kind of energy, the attendance and the variety of people that were able to be there,” Kim said. “I think there were maybe 20 to 25 people there in total. It was much more than just students that were there.”
According to Farah, the organization has many short and long-term policy goals, including passing a renter’s bill of rights on the city or state level, which advocates are also calling for nationally. Farah said visions for this policy vary, but he would like to see protections against rent increases, greater regulation of landlord contracts and a ban on junk fees.
Housing companies in Ann Arbor have long been criticized for the cost of waitlist fees and other fees imposed on renters. Farah said that eliminating junk fees is a top priority for the union’s local policy efforts.
“Landlords have a lot of names for (them),” Farah said. “They call them holding fees, option fees, reservation fees … but essentially all they are is a fee to join a waitlist to maybe get a lease for a particular unit. That’s a junk fee. For some reason in Ann Arbor, landlords feel that they can charge $7,000 for one of these waitlist fees. That’s absurd.”
The AATU posted scans of an option agreement from Prime Student Housing Inc. on X, which shows a waitlist fee of $6,887.50. A document from Campus Management Inc. also contained a similar waitlist fee of $6,745.
LSA junior Terra Lafreniere, Central Student Government presidential candidate, said she is optimistic about the impact the AATU can have on the student body.
“I think that there are a lot of students who are scared right now about renting and talking to their landlords and attempting to negotiate,” Lafreniere said. “I think that the tenants union can work really well to help connect students with one another, help them share experiences and their grievances … to hopefully help everyone benefit.”
Daily Staff Reporter Amanda Venclovaite-Pirani can be reached at amandavp@umich.edu.