Ep. 34: Housing Is a Human Right

**Since this recording Tacoma City Council UNANIMOUSLY voted to increase protections for renters!!

Read about it here!

Today’s EQ: What is a tenants’ union and why do cities need them?

Guest: Molly Nichols, recent transplant to Tacoma from Pittsburgh, where she organized transit riders. Now she works as  the Tacoma outreach coordinator with Futurewise and a member of the Tacoma Tenants Organizing Committee. Also have experience as a high school and college teacher.

Molly talks about her journey, including working in leadership development, taking on graduate school (with a focus on environmental issues in the Caribbean, including a community fighting an aluminum smelter), and her need for urgency in her work life, which led her to grassroots organizing. Molly discusses decentering herself as a white woman and recentering those most affected by environmental and social problems to create sustainable change. She shares her experiences in Tacoma, including working at Futurewise, a statewide non-profit that fights for equitable and sustainable urban growth and land use policies, where she helped organize tenants who have been displaced by recent growth in Tacoma.

Be Less Basic and Read Up on some of these topics:

About the Tiki Apartments & Tenants Union

• After Crisis At the Tiki, Tacoma Could See Vast New Protections for Renters

• Some Displaced Tiki Tenants Move Back in after landlord deal

• Tacoma Meaningful Tenant Protection Ordinance

• Tacoma’s Merkle Hotel

• How We Got Here: A Reckoning with the US and Tacoma History Documentary

Examples of What We Could be Doing

• Tenants Union of Washington State

• Northside Coalition for Fair Housing--Pitt

• Landlord Liason Project---Associated Ministry

Do Your Fudging Homework:

• Hope: listen to ACHH episode on homelessness

• Annie: if you’re a non-Tacoma resident, research housing issues in your community.

• Molly: The Color of Law, “Communities Over Commodities” report from Right to the City Alliance

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