Tenants Demand Landlords Sign ‘Cancel Rent’ Contracts As Evictions Loom

OAKLAND, CA — The Tenant and Neighborhood Councils (TANC), an autonomous Bay Area tenant union, has created a template Cancel Rent Contract (attached), bringing tenant councils or associations one signature away from canceling rent debt as the COVID-19 pandemic rages.

TANC has also demanded the East Bay Rental Housing Association, a local landlord political institution, replace the predatory rent-debt repayment forms it misleadingly provides as a “COVID-19 resource” with this Cancel Rent Contract (see attached demand letter).

Legal forms such as leases and pay-or-quit notices show one way EBRHA and its landlord members exert power: Limiting the types of landlord-tenant agreements available to favor landlords. The Cancel Rent Contract favors tenants and councils, making it easy for landlords to accede to their reasonable demands for rent relief during this devastating recession.

Hundreds of tenants affected by the pandemic have formed councils or associations around individual landlords across the Bay Area, collectively withholding rent and pressuring landlords to negotiate concessions such as rent reductions and better building conditions.

Now that the patchwork of local and state eviction moratoria are beginning to expire, these tenants are vulnerable to displacement, litigation and the kind of rent debt repayment schemes promoted by EBRHA and other landlord organizations eager to seize on the economic crisis.

The Cancel Rent Contract, designed in collaboration with attorneys, is already in use as one tool for tenant councils to advance their demands for rent cancellation and other concessions.

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The Tenant and Neighborhood Councils (TANC) is an autonomous tenant union with hundreds of members, dozens of affiliated councils and several neighborhood-based locals. The member-run organization stands against the capitalist housing system and aims to stop landlords, developers and police from continuing to loot and exploit our communities.