Spiders, mold and broken air conditioning. These are some of the complaints that the newly formed union of tenants living in Maple Grove apartments in Brandenburg delivered to their leasing office this month.
It’s a union the property owners have so far refused to recognize. Meanwhile, tenants say they’ve faced retaliation for organizing with their neighbors.
“Me and Carol have lived here 13 years, we've seen this place run right,” said union member Anita Durbin. “They used to get somebody in immediately to fix your air, your heat, or your toilet or whatever plumbing. We've seen it run right, and now we're seeing it run into the ground.”
Tenants at Maple Grove and other properties managed by the same company are organizing under the Louisville Tenants Union — even though Brandenburg is about an hour downriver.
The Louisville Tenants Union is expanding into more Kentucky communities, branching out into rural areas across the state that often have fewer protections for renters. They’re galvanized by the current political environment in Kentucky and the lack of protections, according to Josh Poe, field organizing director with the Tenants Union.
“Landlords own buildings across state borders and across city borders, and so we have to organize there,” Poe said.
Definitions of a tenants union vary — there isn’t the same kind of federal oversight and regulations that labor unions have — but usually they are building, neighborhood or city-based organizations consisting of renters to fight for their collective interests.
Earlier this month, a Jefferson County judge ordered the out-of-state property management company OSPM LLC to cease any “retaliatory conduct” aimed at stopping tenants from organizing at properties in Fairdale, Brandenburg and Flemingsburg. The properties in question make use of federally-subsidized Section 8 vouchers, which mean they must also follow federal rules that prohibit landlords from retaliating against organizing tenants.
Legal Aid Society lawyer Andrew Chandler says the judge’s temporary restraining order recognizes the effect of retaliation on a statewide network — landlord attacks on unionizing power in one community has ripple effects on tenants renting from the same property owner in other communities. And when landlords refuse to recognize a union at one of their buildings, Chandler said connecting the dots across their properties can force landlords to listen to tenant demands.
“If they're collectively organizing against one particular landlord at multiple properties, their leverage is greater,” Chandler said. “If they take collective action, if they go on rent strike, if they go to the media, it has an amplified effect because it's all against the same landlord at these same properties.”
The Lexington law firm representing the property management company did not respond to requests for comment, but in court filings lawyers wrote that they do not recognize the tenant unions and denied any retaliatory behavior.
Brandenburg unionizing
Standing in front of their apartments in Brandenburg, Kimberly Barr and other union members gathered around a small trash can where they burned their lease violations last week. Many were for failing to let in an inspector — union members said they were given multi-hour windows and left notes on their doors for the brief periods they were unavailable.
“Since we started organizing the union, a lot of us have gotten lease violations, which we're gonna burn today,” Barr said. “They had what they called inspections, but they were just coming to be nosy and look through our apartments.”
Barr said she wasn’t home when an inspector came by, and she said they tried to enter the apartment while her 14-year-old son was home alone. When Barr came to complain to the leasing office for attempting to enter her apartment, she said she was slapped with another lease violation. All this after the tenants began unionizing.
“I went in the office to complain, and I was like, ‘You can't come in if I'm not home, like my kids might be in there,’” Barr said. “And so I got a lease violation for not letting them in and for disturbing business operations.”
Barr said when organizers with the Louisville Tenants Union first started knocking on doors in Maple Grove, she didn’t know if her neighbors were having the same problems.
“I could tell you 20 things right now that are wrong in this apartment that they just won't fix,” Barr said. “Then we started meeting, and I was listening to everybody else's stories, and like, Oh, you have mold too. So do I. Your air conditioner doesn't work? Mine doesn't either.”
Now, as a co-vice president of their building union, Barr said the union has built her sense of community and has boosted her confidence that she can create change in the complex.
“It's felt really good to band together,” Barr said. “We all have this problem, so if we all come to them maybe it'll get fixed.”
‘Pure retaliation’
The lawyers for OPSM LLC have since asked Judge Kaelin to vacate her order blocking any retaliation attempts.
Just days later, Chandler, who is representing the Fairdale tenant, asked Kaelin to find the property managers in contempt, listing in detail several alleged examples of retaliation he says tenants living in OSPM-managed properties have faced since the judge’s initial order.
Union leaders at the Flemingsburg property allege harassment and threats of violence from the property manager and her family members. At their Louisville property in Fairdale, the named plaintiff on the lawsuit, Marcie Stotko, said the management company has newly issued code enforcement violations that include leaking sinks and windows and accompanying mold and water damage.
In Brandenburg, tenants allege they watched as air conditioning units in empty units and non-union units were repaired while theirs went unfixed. Amber Goldsborough described it as “pure retaliation.”
“They scheduled the spider treatment and air conditioning to be fixed on the same day,” Goldsborough said. “They made us sit out here for six hours while we were waiting for the pest control to dilute, and they forced us to watch them fix non-union members' air conditioners that haven't even been out for a week when we've been out for two and three years.”
In an order ahead of an upcoming August hearing, Judge Kaelin reminded the property owners that her order still stands and “strongly cautioned” them to maintain services.
“Failure to do so will be viewed as bad faith,” she wrote.
Chandler said they decided to turn to state courts in part because the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development was not moving quickly on complaints they filed also alleging retaliation. Louisville, where Stotko lives, has opted into a state law called the Uniform Residential Landlord Tenant Act, or URLTA, which explicitly protects tenants from retaliation for forming a tenant’s union.
As Louisville has adopted URLTA, in a temporary restraining order, Kaelin ruled that the same management company isn’t allowed to retaliate against their other building unions connected by the Louisville Tenant’s Union outside of Jefferson County either because it hurts Stotko’s ability to organize in her own building.
“It recognized that there is such a thing as a collective right, that Ms. Stotko’s right to organize is bound up in those of her fellow tenants, and that's not only why it should extend to her, but the people in her building and the people in the state,” Chandler said.
OSPM LLC also has apparent ties to other rental properties in Kentucky, including properties in Russellville and Glasgow, all of which share the same principal office and registered agent, according to the Secretary of State. All of the LLCs are in bad standing as well, meaning they are behind on their annual filings with the Secretary of State’s office. Union leaders at their other properties say they hope to bring those properties into the fold as well.
Statewide organizing
Poe with the Louisville Tenants Union said that their efforts to expand outwards into rural areas is a reflection of the needs across the state. He said that tenants are frustrated by a lack of action on the state level.
While the lawsuit is based in Louisville, Poe said the organization connects all the properties. If the landlord retaliates in Maple Grove, it affects the ability of a tenant like Stotko in Fairdale from unionizing her own building with the threats hanging over other members in the union network.
“An injury to one tenant out here at Maple Grove, preventing them from organizing, would affect Louisville tenants, so they applied it to all their buildings all over the state,” Poe said.
In recent years, state lawmakers have passed or threatened to pass laws that would pre-empt local laws designed to hem in landlords. Last year, the Republican-controlled General Assembly passed a law that stops local governments from banning source-of-income discrimination — meaning Louisville and Lexington could no longer prohibit landlords from barring a tenant solely because they are using a government voucher to pay for rent.
This year, lawmakers threatened to pass a bill blocking all attempts at landlord registries unless Louisville significantly weakened its lead hazard rental registry. Not long after, Louisville’s Metro Council acquiesced.
Poe said the efforts to expand statewide will also help them in effecting state policies and gaining political momentum. He said concerns that any local policies would just be preempted by the General Assembly pushed them to create statewide networks.
“We're hoping that tenant organizing can build an actual political base in Kentucky to push for those types of policies,” Poe said. “Right now, we're working on a local policy that would require landlords to provide air conditioning. If we have a base of tenants all over the state, we can leverage that at the state level.
State government and politics reporting is supported in part by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
