by DSA led a broad union-backed coalition in Tacoma linked to a vision of building working-class power.
In Tacoma, Washington, DSA built a large coalition behind a successful ballot initiative campaign to win the strongest protections for renters in the state. Organized as Tacoma For All, the campaign faced a corporate opposition that shattered all spending records for Tacoma elections. Voters narrowly approved Initiative 1 in November, establishing a “Tenant Bill of Rights” for over 100,000 renters.
This article was first published in magazine, Reform & Revolution #13. Subscribe to support our work.
Ramy Khalil talked with Jennifer Barfield and Ty Moore about how Tacoma for All pulled off this impressive “David vs. Goliath” victory. Jennifer is a member of Tacoma for All’s Steering Committee and the Tacoma Education Association. Ty is the Campaign Manager of Tacoma for All. Jennifer and Ty are also members of the Tacoma DSA Steering Committee. Ramy served as the Tacoma for All Campaign Co-Manager. All three (Jenn, Ty, Ramy) are members of DSA and its Reform & Revolution caucus.
What would you say are this election’s main achievements?
Ty: Apart from winning the strongest tenant protections in the state, this campaign has transformed Tacoma DSA. Initiative #1 was the dominant debate in this election, and our grassroots labor-community coalition defeated the combined strength of the Mayor, City Council, the Chamber of Commerce, two powerful statewide landlord associations, and $200,000 from the National Association of Realtors.
DSA is now a major player in local politics. By uniting most of the labor movement and progressives into this sharp fight with the political establishment, we opened a new political space for independent working-class politics to develop. Our alliance with the grocery workers in United Food and Commercial Workers Local 367 was the central pillar of this fight; the victory has only brought DSA and UFCW 367 closer.
Less visible but equally important, within DSA we’ve developed a politically experienced and audacious leadership team that has earned the credibility to initiate even bigger fights in the years ahead.
Can you describe Tacoma’s housing crisis?
Jenn: People are finding it harder to afford to live in Tacoma and are being squeezed from all sides by the ever-increasing costs of housing, food, healthcare, you name it. When we talked to tenants, we kept hearing landlords are increasing rent by 30, 40, even 60% with no upgrades or fixes to existing problems with their units.
I work with some amazing counselors and staff at my public school. Our families get access to food, clothing, school supplies, books, toys, etc., but even with this assistance, it feels like every week we hear from another family that is being evicted, moving into a shelter, or otherwise struggling to make rent.
It’s painful to watch people try so hard only to be told they don’t make enough to qualify for an apartment, or to find out that a family spent the summer living in a tent because they were evicted and now they can’t get into an apartment. I’ve seen students who were thriving forced to move away from their friends and school community, a place where they felt a sense of safety and belonging, to move into shelter in other counties because Pierce County didn’t have adequate space.
Families should be protected from the trauma of being unhoused, which has lasting impacts. The Tenant Bill of Rights will help keep students housed during the school year, providing some stability and security for families.
What are the main policies in the Tenant Bill of Rights?
Jenn: Initiative 1 requires landlords to give 6 months’ notice of a rent increase, limits move-in fees to no more than one-months’ rent, and caps late-fees at $10 per month. Before a landlord can raise the rent, their building must now be in compliance with health and safety laws.
But, I think the most significant protections are the rental relocation assistance and eviction defense provisions. When a landlord raises rent by 5 percent or more and a tenant can no longer afford the unit, landlords will have to pay rental relocation assistance equal to two months’ rent, and it goes up to three months’ rent if the increase is 10 percent or more. If a family with school-age kids falls behind on rent, they can’t be evicted during the school year, and no one can be evicted for late rent during deadly cold-weather months from November through March.
Could you say more about the coalition, Tacoma For All? And what roles did DSA and United Food and Commercial Workers Local 367 play?
Ty: This campaign began more than two years ago. Within DSA, we understood that the only path to housing justice was by building a broad coalition, with labor at its core, that is prepared to take on the big landlords and political establishment. At the same time, we knew that socialist leadership was needed to break through the hesitant consensus culture that dominates progressive political circles.
In this context, UFCW 367 emerged as a critical ally. Several DSA members were rank-and-file leaders in the union, and over time the entire leadership came to embrace the campaign. Despite decent wage hikes in their last contract, UFCW members were hit hard by 43% rent hikes over the last five years. They were pissed off at the inaction in City Hall, and felt betrayed by labor-endorsed Democrats on the City Council who’d refused to support hazard pay for grocery workers during Covid. So Local 367 was fed up with polite lobbying efforts and ready for a big public fight. Their early support helped swing the labor council and other unions behind us, and UFCW threw $17,000 and lots of staff time into the campaign.
In a press release, the Rental Housing Association of Washington “put the call out to its 5,000 members” (mostly wealthy landlords across the state) to “help organize and defeat the Democratic Socialist Party’s proposed housing regulation ballot measure.” The statement declared, “The Socialist Party of Seattle is taking to Tacoma their failed public policies.” Why did voters in Tacoma – a blue-collar military town next to the military Joint Base Lewis McChord – approve the strongest protections for renters in the state rather than more liberal cities like Seattle or Olympia?
Jenn: Tacoma has a nickname, “Grit City” – an ownership and celebration of its blue-collar, working-class roots. In recent years, Tacomans have seen costs for everything increase while wages stagnated. So, when something as basic as the right to a roof over your head is threatened, people feel motivated to act. Billionaire investors have swooped in, gobbling up housing stock in Tacoma, raising rents, and forcing out working-class families who have called Tacoma home for generations. People are fed up and open to a different way of doing things that doesn’t prioritize the right of landlords to make a profit, but one that prioritizes the rights of everyday people.
We connected with folks’ frustrations and combined our electoral campaign with activities to build movements of ordinary workers who usually get ignored. For example, when a billionaire landlord threatened to evict a substitute teacher named Cathy Pick, we organized a petition, a fundraiser, and a protest. We got the media to highlight how Initiative 1 would stop evictions of educators like Cathy, and we succeeded in stopping the eviction of her family!
How did the Tacoma City Council try to co-opt the efforts of Tacoma For All?
Ty: Before we began gathering signatures to qualify Initiative 1 for the ballot, the mayor wouldn’t even respond to us, and we found no traction on the city council for our demands. But last April, as the strength of our signature gathering campaign became clear, Mayor Woodards invited Tacoma for All in to negotiate. Over the course of five meetings with the mayor, four council members, and multiple city attorneys and staff, they pushed us to accept a compromise instead of taking our full initiative to the ballot.
Hanging over it all was the threat of a competing watered-down ballot measure backed by the landlord lobby. From the first meeting, we made clear we would publicly report everything that was said in the meetings. We also called a June conference, scheduled a week before signatures were due, inviting coalition partners to democratically debate and vote on whether to accept the compromise offer, or turn in the signatures.
In the end, seeing we weren’t going to be sweet-talked into a rotten compromise, city leaders took a harder line and offered us barely more than they’d begun with weeks earlier. Over 100 supporters voted to go forward with the initiative, and the City Council voted 7-2 to put their watered-down policy on the ballot as a competing initiative.
Luckily, under the impact of our public pressure and internal dissent, they made a legal blunder in how they put their competing initiative forward. It cost $16,000, but we successfully sued to remove their alternative from the ballot – a humiliating high profile defeat for city leaders. Their months-long attempt to co-opt us backfired, and we ended up gaining far more public sympathy.
The big corporate landlords, city council, and media spread fear among small landlords that Initiative 1 would make it impossible to evict what they called “problem tenants” engaged in illegal activities. How did Tacoma For All overcome all the dark money and the mobilization of small landlords with racist undertones?
Jenn: I think our opposition underestimated Tacoma’s working-class voters. When almost half the city rents and the other half are former renters, some folks were skeptical of the No campaign. We started exposing the landlord lobby’s lies as soon as we found they were sending out text surveys testing potential messaging against Initiative 1. This messaging referred to tenants who experienced economic hardship as “squatters.” They appealed to fears around community safety. These arguments were predicated on the idea that renters were untrustworthy scammers and criminals. I think this backfired to some extent, although it did turn a significant minority of voters against Initiative 1.
Based on money alone, they might have won; but we built a grassroots movement that won over a narrow majority of the working class. We collected over 7,200 signatures to qualify the initiative for the ballot. We knocked over 20,000 doors, made nearly 22,000 calls, and sent 141,000 text messages. We raised $122,400, with over 470 individual donors – 85% of whom are from here in Tacoma and Pierce County, whereas over 90% of the opposition’s $371,000 was from outside Tacoma.
What are your main take-aways? How could other DSA chapters and organizations replicate your success?
Ty: I’d say two strategies proved decisive.
First, DSA built a broad diverse coalition, while also providing the necessary political leadership, especially in moments that required defying the political establishment, who were all Democrats. This sometimes caused tensions with coalition partners, but proved vital to our victory.
This is essentially what Marxists call a “united front.” DSA encouraged a wide coalition of progressive forces moving into a common struggle, while advocating for class-struggle strategy and tactics.
I think even within DSA this approach is too rare, since there are often big pressures from allies to avoid necessary clashes with Democratic Party elected leaders and others. On the other hand, to avoid these pressures, some socialists adopt a sectarian approach and refuse to do what it takes to build an effective coalition with powerful labor and progressive leaders we disagree with.
Second, we combined a bold vision of building toward the socialist transformation of society with a tactical assessment of where we can mobilize people to make a breakthrough today. In the Marxist tradition, this is part of what we call the “transitional method.” We met working-class folks where they were at, encouraged their self-confidence and self-organization, and together we all took a big step in the direction of working-class political power and democratic socialism.
I’d encourage other DSA chapters and organizations to use these strategies to achieve similar victories, whether you are in a big “blue” city, a small “red” town, or a medium-sized city like Tacoma.
What’s next for Tacoma For All and DSA?
Ty: This fight isn’t over. We expect a legal challenge from landlord groups, and some landlords have openly threatened to retaliate or just refuse to implement the new tenant protections. So we’re gearing up for fights on both these fronts.
More broadly, DSA is considering running candidates for upcoming local seats and, potentially, a big 2025 ballot initiative campaign to create a social housing developer, similar to what Seattle voters passed in February 2023.
(This interview was edited for length and clarity.)
