The 1931–33 New York City rent strikes were a series of tenant mobilizations against evictions and for housing relief by tenants of Harlem, Bronx and Brooklyn, sparked in large part by the crisis of the Great Depression alongside the expiration of the Emergency Rent Laws in 1929. Organizing was led primarily by the Communist Party USA Unemployed Councils, with tenants of the United Workers Cooperative playing an important supporting role for strikers.

The strikes led to open conflict between tenants and police attempting eviction. Eviction resistance also developed at this time as a strategy separate from rent strikes. This conflict became more prevalent in 1932, which was followed by a widespread crackdown. To which the Communist Party would change their tactics, focusing on organizing sit-in's of Home Relief Bureaus to demand rent relief but also having greater coordination of affiliated organization to support the rent strikes, and employing neighborhood marches of striking tenants, which furthered their scope and effectiveness.

This was then met with an even greater crackdown with the implementation of criminal conspiracy charges against strikers, that eventually broke any expansion of rent strikes. However, the sit-in's of Home Relief Bureau's continued and proved effective at ameliorating the rent crisis for tenants, while the roll out of New Deal projects began addressing the immediate unemployment crisis. In addition the eviction resistance tactics also continued and still proved effective. The strikes would also establish a broader base of legislative organizing around housing issues.

Background

Harlem tenants league The very beginning roots of the rent strikes would have their base among black NYC tenants. On February, 1928 Richard B. Moore with other Harlem and Washington Heights residents would form the Harlem Tenants League (HTL). Moore had held an impassioned speech at a meeting of the Washington Heights Tenants League, formed during the 1918–1920 NYC rent strikes, where he talked of the specific discrimination Black tenants faced, and then was elected as the president of the newly formed HTL.

Moore heavily criticized how segregation made black tenants especially vulnerable to exploitation by landlords, and criticized the complicity of white and black landlords:Black NYC tenants did not face the same relief from housing prices that their white counterparts received after the 1918–1920 NYC rent strikes due to the increase of housing construction in the city. The residential segregation black residents were subject to limited their housing supply, and black neighborhoods on par did not experience this same uptick in housing construction. Harlem for example had no buildings built between 1920–24 and only a few after 1924. In Manhattan from 1919 to 1926, black tenants’ rents increased from $21.64 to $41.77/month, according to the Commission of Housing and Regional Planning. On the situation in the Fall of 1928 Moore stated, As the June 1, 1929 expiration of the Emergency Rent Laws approached Moore, Grace Campbell and other members of the HTL began organizing tenants in preparation. Hours after the Emergency Rent Laws' expiration, the league held a parade protest throughout Harlem alongside the Communist Party, the United Council of Working Class Housewives, the American Negro Labor Congress, and the Longshoremen's Union.

The HTL tried to persuade tenants to strike when negotiations failed; And claimed they did take place on an intermittent basis, however non-communist sources do not provide evidence for this.

The HTL also publicized specific demands to address the housing problem,

James S. Allen of the Communist Party would criticize the often uselessness of the Tenement law, which required Old law tenement buildings to be updated, not condemned. Claiming they were unenforced as they were “passed by a capitalist legislature controlled by the landlords, real estate men and others of that kind... so you see that segregation in housing is a matter of dollars for the landlords, just as it is for the bosses of factories, and a barbed-wire fence for the Negro workers, catching and tearing the flesh."

The HTL and other Harlemite groups lead a 'vote black' campaign on the basis it was necessary for Black Harlemites to have their issues represented. This campaign lead to the election of Harlem Assemblymen Lamar Perkins and Francis E. Rivers; Who passed the Perkins Bill which gave tenants the ability to apply for a stay of eviction up to six months if the tenant was unable to find comparable housing, when faced with a raise of rent. While River's Bill allowed the court to stay a summary proceeding for nonpayment, if the tenant could show evidence of the Multiple Dwelling Law or Health Department Code. Both giving a small amount of extra protection.

Another way that Black residents of dealt with the rent burden in Harlem, and later the double burden of the Great Depression, were rent parties; Where a resident held a house party with music and festivities to raise money to pay their rent. In one example in 1929, guest would be expected pay 25¢ () to attend. These parties played a major role in the development of jazz and blues music, alongside forms of swing dancing, deeply intertwining with the Harlem Renaissance.

During the Fall of 1929, factional conflicts in the Communist Party USA and the Comintern would end disrupting the Harlem Tenants League. A group of US Communist Party members, notably Jay Lovestone and Harlem activist Edward Welsh, were expelled from the Comintern for resisting their method of dissolving factions in the US party. The members then attempted to rally the US Party to appeal to the Comintern party to reverse this decision. In response the Comintern ordered the US Party to drive them out of all organizations the party had influence in, a decision which ended up wreaking havoc in the HTL.

Richard Moore would follow the orders to drive Welsh out of the HTL, an action which upset many in the League including Grace Campbell. By the end of October 1929 the group had split into two both calling themselves the HTL, and their tenant base was largely destroyed with them becoming inactive.

Up through the spring of 1930, the HTLs and Daily Worker maintained a strong presence in the housing campaign, however the HTLs failed to build a sustained movement in Harlem.

The Great Depression

The Great Depression would be the catalyst that sparked the 1931-33 NYC rent strikes. As unemployment rapidly spread tenants in New York City, and elsewhere, struggled to pay rent on a wide scale. In addition it caused the private construction industry to be instantly unprofitable even for luxury buildings. Tenant-landlord relations became incredibly strained overnight, with disposes notices by landlords skyrocketing. Many tenants moved in with family or became the homeless that lived in Hoovervilles. During the first three years of the great depression, the city's vacancy rose to over 9% in the Bronx and parts of Brooklyn, and over 15% in certain low-income neighborhoods.

The tenant organizations formed during the 1920s had since become more conservative in their strategies over time, as such they had no strategy to organize tenants in this crisis. Instead the Communist Party would take the mantle of tenant activism in the city. To their advantage was a group of experienced organizers and a willingness to break the law for strategic reasons.

The Communist Party led Unemployed Councils would begin its campaign in the Fall of 1930 with eviction resistance and rent strikes.

Strikes and resistance Eviction resistance

Starting in the Fall of 1930 the Communist Party led unemployed councils would begin their activities. Eviction resistance showed to be their most effective tool, with organizers moving furniture back into an apartment after a tenant had been forcibly evicted and then appeal to neighbors and passersby to resist any further attempts by marshals or police to repeat the eviction.

This tactic worked as police & marshals already had a level of reluctance to evict, having marginal sympathy in the context of the great depression and already on overextended schedules in the context of the mass evictions occurring. In this context, even a relatively small number of party members could meaningful and significantly gum-up the eviction process. In addition landlords had to pay marshals for the evictions, so eviction resistance meaningfully added to their costs. It bought tenants time and led to a newfound respect for the communist party by the community.

The core of these activities were within the poorest communities of New York City, hit hardest by the depression. Hundreds, maybe even thousands of these actions happened in the city during this period, most without active police confrontations.

Rent strikes

In the winter of 1931, the Unemployed Councils began their efforts to organize tenant leagues across the cities neighborhoods, with the goal to demand rent reductions proportional to tenant losses in income through rent strikes. This tactic did not spread as quickly as eviction resistance, with seven rent strikes mentions between March 1931 & January 1932 in the Daily Worker, four of which were in the historically impoverished Lower East Side and which was a party stronghold.

Rent strikes meaningfully require far greater organizational capacity and risks on part of the tenants, as such it was slower to develop, but also posed a greater more meaningful economic threat to landlords.

The NYC Rent Strike War of 1932 In early January 1932, rent strikes would begin in the Bronx. The Upper Bronx Unemployed Council announced rent strikes at three large apartment buildings in Bronx Park East: 1890 Union Port Road, 2302 Olinville Avenue, and 665 Allerton Avenue. With the majority of tenants in the buildings withholding their rent and picketing their buildings to demand a 15% reduction in rent, an end to evictions, repair in apartments and recognition of the tenants committee as an official bargaining agent.

All three of these building were closely situated by the United Workers Cooperative (UWC), know obliquely as the 'Commie Coops'. A tenant owned housing cooperative, consisting primarily of Communist Textile United Workers Association members. These member were often militantly radical in their organizing, 'the Coops' consisted primarily of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, most who had originally lived in the slum-like conditions Lower East Side earlier in their life until they had managed to scrap enough to move out into these better housing conditions. While better off then some in the Great Depression, their upbringing and experience with economic oppression informed residents radical beliefs in both trade unionism and socialism in bettering theirs and others lives. They were determined to not simple quietly sink back into poverty after being hit with serious loses of income & employment during the great depression, with only a tenuous grasp on middle class status.

The UWC residents played a crucial supporting role during these strikes, picketing with the striking tenants and sometimes fighting cops who attempted evictions of the tenants.

In response to all three declared rent strikes, landlords quickly moved to evict leaders of the rent strikes, which judges readily granted. The first of these attempted evictions would occur at 2302 Olinville Avenue, setting off a "rent riot" of which 4,000 people participated.