Tenants at the Northern Village complex in north St. Louis County have voted to unionize — the first tenants’ union in county history, organizers say — and they’re using their new collective voice to press the county and their landlord for action on living conditions that have drawn sharp criticism from County Executive Sam Page.
The complex has struggled with problems for years, county officials say, but Page’s office has recently stepped up its focus, in the words of acting county director of human services Kevin McKenna, to a “full court press.” The push intensified around a looming deadline to pay an overdue Spire gas bill earlier this month. That bill was partially paid, avoiding a shutoff. A county official said Wednesday that the property’s lender paid the bill, while Nicholas Meador, an attorney for Mazal in St. Louis LLC, which owns the complex, said the owners had also contributed.
Residents’ concerns about habitability were laid out again before the St. Louis County Council Committee on Wednesday. Staff from the county Department of Transportation and Public Works described outdoor manholes leaking sewage and a collapsed underground sewer that flooded a boiler room with wastewater — to the point, they said, that frogs have moved in.
Now organized as the Northern Village Tenants Union, the tenants are asking the county for $450,000 in emergency funds to help with relocation. Page has pushed for that money, but the council vetoed it. They also want an impacted tenants fund similar to the one assisting residents displaced by the tornado in the City of St. Louis. And they’re demanding that Northern Village owner Mendel Fischer meet with tenants, recognize the union as a collective bargaining unit, and explain how he will compensate them for what they describe as harms suffered because of negligence and neglect.
“Today, the tenants of Northern Village launched the first tenants’ union in St. Louis County,” said Rachel Hurtado, a tenant organizing lead with ArchCity Defenders. She said a supermajority of tenants have joined the union and signed a petition backing three demands, centered on Fischer coming to the table to negotiate fair compensation and agreements for residents’ lives and homes.
Unlike labor unions, tenant unions don’t have legal backing that forces a landlord to negotiate. The idea, organizers say, is the same: strength in numbers gives renters collective bargaining power.
“My hope is that we can all stand together, be united and win, and get what we deserve,” said Brenda Flagg, a Northern Village resident since last summer and a member of the union. Relocation assistance is her biggest need, she said — she works hard for her money and doesn’t have $2,000 to hand over without a guarantee of a place to live.
Toward the end of Wednesday’s meeting, Councilwoman Shalonda Webb called Meador up to respond to some of Flagg’s concerns, also bringing in a member of the county’s problem property division to get everyone, as she put it, “all on one accord.” Meador said the firm pledged to stop evicting people until things stabilized. When Flagg said she’d received an order to vacate, Webb brought an inspector up to clarify that it happened because the county condemned her unit, not because of an action by the landlord. Webb made sure Flagg understood the company was pledging to move her to another habitable unit at Northern Village, one of many Meador said the firm was working to update and bring online.
Meador did not deny the long list of complaints from residents and building officials. “We’re not here to argue,” he told the council. “We’re here to listen. I agree that every family should have heat, hot water, working plumbing, and a home free of pests. That’s the standard. It’s our job to meet that standard.” He agreed that some photos shown by the county in an earlier slideshow, depicting sewage and mold, reflected prior management, but pushed back on the portrayal of a lack of work: “I would disagree with the lack of work that has been painted before this council. I would agree that there are conditions that we have to do better at. We have to be better as landlords. We have to hold ourselves to a higher standard and fix those defects. … Do I think Northern Village is an abysmal place to live? No, I do not.”
The tenant union concept gained steam across the country during the pandemic years. One of the standard-bearers is KC Tenants in Kansas City, which has used the power of collective rent strikes to get so-called “junk” fees removed and stabilize rents, among other concessions, and has helped turn long-term tenant protections into Kansas City law. Organizers struggled to replicate that success in St. Louis — until now.
Kristian Blackmon, executive director of Tenants Transforming Greater St. Louis, sees the energy at Northern Village as replicable and hopes a region-wide organization could come next, giving St. Louis renters broader leverage. “This is amazing. It’s powerful,” Blackmon said Wednesday. “It shows the power of tenants, the power of tenant organizing, the power of us coming together as community.”
Blackmon co-authored a chapter on tenant organizing in a recently released study of older housing deterioration, The Other Housing Crisis, co-edited by UMSL professor Todd Swanstrom. The chapter credits tenant advocacy since Tenants Transforming Greater St. Louis came together in 2018 with policy gains including a law requiring landlords to address mold and the city’s impacted tenants fund — and argues that organizing was essential not just in surfacing problems, but in pushing solutions into action, with the people most affected central to every step: identifying the problems, shaping the responses, and holding systems accountable.
