The rent strikes of 1918–1920 were some of the most significant tenant mobilizations against landlords in New York City history. A housing shortage caused by World War I had exacerbated tenant conditions, with the construction industry being redirected to support the war effort. In addition, newly available defense jobs attracted thousands of new families to the city, further reducing property vacancy rates. As a result, overcrowding, poor conditions, frequent raising of rents, and speculation by landlords were common. These long-term circumstances, and a nationwide coal shortage that culminated in a dangerous heating crisis for tenants, catalyzed the subsequent organizing and wave of rent strikes across the city.

It is unclear exactly how many tenants were involved in the rent strikes during this period, but strikes were widespread, with poor, middle-working-class, and upper-class families across the city participating. Major newspapers largely covered only a few of the largest and most dramatic strikes. While some statements on the extent the strikes were contradictory, at least several tens of thousands, and likely hundreds of thousands of tenants, struck across the city over the two-year period. The strikes affected hundreds, potentially even thousands, of apartment buildings in New York City.

Overall, the wave of rent strikes had notable implications. It led to the passage of the NY April and Emergency Rent Laws, and caused a fundamental shift in tenant-landlord relations. Many strikes were successful in reversing rent increases and winning concessions for tenants. The strikes would lay the groundwork for the city's rent strikes during the Great Depression.

Background

Lease structure Very few tenants in New York City had written housing leases at this time. Instead, the vast majority of tenants depended on oral leases, a practice that existed under common law that had the same legal status as written leases. Importantly, an old statute reenacted in 1896, stated that leases of unspecified duration would expire on May 1 annually. For this reason, a tenant could legally challenge a landlord who asked for a rent increase on October 1 on the grounds they had oral agreements that fixed the price of the rent until April 30.

However, landlords would later use the lack of written agreements to justify not providing certain services, which would cause the period's first rent strikes. The protection of tenant lease lengths in unwritten agreements would also be removed during the very beginning of the rent strike wave in April 1918 with the Ottinger law, opening the floodgates for monthly rent increases.

'Lessees' system In New York, there existed two distinct forms of landlords: property owners and property leaseholders, or 'lessees'. The owners, rather than operate the building themselves, often left the work to lessee landlords through a system of subleasing. Lessees would pay a fixed yearly fee and then collect the rents, and keep a percentage of the rent collected. This often added a double burden on the renter in terms of costs. It also allowed property owners to distance themselves from the poor conditions of tenement housing. A full three-fourths of tenement housing was managed by lessees.

Lessees were often tenants without sufficient money to become a landlord themselves, typically living in the same building as those they collected rent from. They were largely hated and tenants saw them as traitors. Lessees commonly increased rents and cut services. The lessee system was often blamed as the cause of the crisis by landlord owners, and as an aggravating factor by tenants.

Earlier strikes and protests

In both 1904 and 1907, cross-building rent strikes occurred in New York City. The strikes were primarily concentrated within the Lower East Side and led by local Jewish immigrant women in response to rent increases in conjunction with harsh economic conditions. Between 1904 and 1916, a few other individual building strikes also occurred in the city.

In 1900, the Lower East Side was reportedly one of the most densely populated places on Earth, with over . Most buildings were shabbily built, fire trap, multifamily tenements that lacked proper sanitation. Both strikes were firmly rooted and facilitated by the local social networks created by the women who lived in the neighborhood.

For both strikes, the Socialist Party of America provided support and became involved after the strikes had begun. The party was primarily composed of men, although women were crucial to the movement and at forefront of grassroots organizing and local associations. Then, as more hierarchical, broader organizations joined, the movements became primarily composed of men in leadership positions, despite women working as the vast majority of organizers. The cause of this can be broadly attributed to structural sexism and persistent gender roles, which often blocked initial access to leadership roles. After a structure integrated with a movement, however, women would slowly fill its leadership positions.

The organizational capacity and experience gained from these strikes, such as the newly formed building organizations, neighborhoods organizations, and tenant leagues, helped support later NYC rent strikes.

1916 Harlem housing protest

In late 1916, facing rising rents and poor housing conditions, tenants in Harlem started organizing a community led campaign against extortion by landlords. The organizing was led by Black Women in the community, with a series of mass meetings of black & white tenants, the Urban League and other community organizations.

On October 2, 1916, Mrs.Winnie Jones and the tenants of 143rd street, between 7th & 8th Avenues, formed the Neighborhood Association (NA), intending to raise funds for a campaign against "extortionate rentals which are being forced upon them by both colored and white agents [landlords & real estate agents]".

William McNichols of the Negro Civic Improvement League (NCIL) joined the NA, and collected rent receipts from and then compared the rents being charged between white and black tenants. Both white and black tenants opposed the actions of the landlords.One common tactic by landlords relied on existing residential segregation to increase rents. Because black tenants had fewer options, they could often be forced to pay higher rents then white tenants. Often landlords would increase the rents of white tenants hoping they would leave for cheaper housing, or evicted them to charge black tenants higher rents. One petition by white tenants in Harlem stated on this issue that it was, "unfair to be forced to move when they have no objection to living in adjacent houses to their colored neighbor... We understand that the whole scheme is to obtain more rents for the apartments, which, it is claimed, colored people are willing to pay."

A mass meeting was held in October, 1916 at Public School 89, at 135th St. & Lenox Avenue, where more than 1,500 people attended to protest the increasing rentals and confronted landlords and real estate agents of Harlem. The meeting was later seen as a success, with one black and one white landlord reducing their rents from $1 to $3 per apartment. The meeting also further empowered the tenants to challenge negligent landlords in court.

In November, when the Grohem Brother realty firm failed to provide heat to building tenants, they filled a complaint with the National Urban League, which then tenant organizer Mrs. C. DeSilva collected signatures to be presented to the owner Cassel Cohen. However, before the petition was submitted heat was turned on but, with a notice rent would be raised $1 to $3 an apartment. Tenants heavily protested against this and sent another petition. The Grohem Brothers realty firm attempted to intimidate tenants who signed the petition, targeting tenant organizer Mrs. C DeSilva in particular, serving her a eviction notice. In response the New York Age, a Black newspaper provided her immediately with legal counsel. Grohem attempted after court to offer DeSilva the option to remain in the apartment at $20/month if she paid the one dollar cost of the eviction warrant, in an attempt to stop her tenant organizing. She refused.

The tenants continued holding mass meetings, in total lasting for 3 months. At one of these meetings Black realtor John M. Royall, complained about the tenants organizing saying, “it was nothing but a socialist idea or grafting scheme.”, many tenants decried such statements as the complicity of black realtors in oppressing black Harlemites. While short-lived, the protests set up the political networks tenants would use later on.

1917 Crotona Park rent strike

In January 1917, tenants living near Crotona Park in the Bronx held a rent strike. The neighborhood mostly consisted of lower-class residents, with a large immigrant population of Russian Jewish families. Many of them had moved out from the Lower East Side in search of better tenement conditions and they often had trouble paying rent due to their precarious position. It became significantly more difficult to pay rent in 1917 after repeated rent increases, and landlords' failure to provide heat and hot water that year. Around 500 to 1,000 residents across 25 buildings organized in late December 1916 through the Socialist Women's Consumer League of the Bronx. The January rent increase would have been the third in four months.

Theresa Malkiel, a member of the Socialist Party and a suffragist, urged the tenants to reject the rent increase demand effective January 1, 1917, which they did, refusing to pay rent until heat and hot water returned. The Bronx Tenants Protective Association was formed by tenants during this time, and they collected a small strike fund and organized a picket force of women for the apartments. Leon Malkiel, a Socialist lawyer and husband of Theresa Malkiel, agreed to help defend them in court. Landlords responded with eviction notices. They also eventually reduced the rent hike from $2 to $1 per month, which some of the tenants accepted. The strike did not break until after the first cases had been ruled on in court.

On January 5, 1917, 296 tenants were ordered to pay the set rent for their flats, without heat, or leave. By January 11, most striking tenants had reportedly been ordered to pay their rents or leave the building. Despite this, members of the association continued their efforts and, on January 17, they held a meeting that formally established the Bronx Tenants League through the enrollment of 150 charter members, and announced plans to form affiliates in all the city's boroughs. However, it seems that no other major rent strikes occurred in New York City that year. The Bronx Tenant League and other associations often modeled themselves on the principles of trade unionism. Members carried union cards, walked picket lines, and spoke in terms describing class conflict, which also often gave them access to New York's union network. The Bronx Tenant League would become an important, central organizing body for striking tenants across the city during the early stages of the 1918–1920 rent strikes and remained prominent throughout.

Strikes 1918

The strike wave had roots in a heating crisis that occurred in the city in late 1917. The early winter months of 1918 especially were characterized by a particularly severe coal shortage across the country as a result of World War I fuel rationing. New York City was hit the hardest by the shortage because of its lack of long-term local coal stockpiles. This was worsened further by the abnormally cold winter in New York City that year. The lack of coal would become one of the main motives for the early rent strikes because landlords stopped providing heating.