“How Tenants Got the Building Back”: Brooklyn Neighbors Share Real Strategies to Reclaim Housing
Left to Right: Chelsea Diaz, Lynette, Amadi Ozier, Arielle Hersh, Joel Feingold, Shantanu Dew
By: Amadi Ozier
Brooklyn, NY — On a warm evening at 1100 Bergen Street Community Garden, around 80 neighbors gathered for “How Tenants Got the Building Back,” an outdoor storytelling and strategy session hosted by Crown Heights Tenant Union (CHTU). The event brought together tenant leaders from across Brooklyn to share how they organized—and won—control of their buildings through foreclosures, 7A takeovers, community land trusts, occupations, and more.
Tenants described how they transformed neglect and debt into organizing leverage. They shared how years of door knocking built the foundation for deals with developers and community land trusts (CLTs), ultimately bringing their homes into permanent, democratically controlled ownership.
WATCH THE VIDEO: “How Tenants Got the Building Back” on YouTube
READ THE NOTES: event summary on Google Docs
SPEAKERS:
Chelsea Diaz, New Economy Project
Lynette, East NY Community Land Trust
Amadi Ozier, Crown Heights Tenant Union (moderator)
Arielle Hersh, UHAB
Joel Feingold, Crown Heights Tenant Union
Shantanu Dew, East NY Community Land Trust
Attendees heard firsthand:
How tenants disrupted foreclosure auctions and forced banks to negotiate with residents instead of selling to speculators
How campaigns used TOPA/COPA-style organizing, rent strikes, and city programs to buy time and build pressure
The role of invisible labor: submitting ERAP together, organizing Section 8 skill-sharing sessions
Why tenant control isn’t enough without long-term governance, deep affordability, and democratic tenant unions
Speakers also acknowledged the limitations of each model— discriminatory lending practices that burden CLTs with debt, the slow pace of legal takeovers—and emphasized the need for consistent, longterm, generational organizing as well as inter-building strategy to remove land from the speculative market.
One tenant organizer summed it up: “It’s hard, but it’s worth it.”
The event closed with a call to action: to grow Brooklyn’s tenant movement, deepen our organizing ties, and fight for a future where housing is not for profit, but for people.
For more information or to get involved, contact info@crownheightstenantunion.org or DM @crownheightstenantunion.