By Ruth Finch

Daniela Harvey is an organizer with the Sacramento Valley Tenants Union. Through collective action, the union helps organize and educate the tenants of Sacramento on a variety of housing issues such as eviction, food insecurity and rental assistance, to name a few. 

Formed in January of 2024, the union is a completely volunteer-run organization, whose only funds come from union dues from about 50 paying members. Membership is free for unhoused members and a sliding scale membership is available for unemployed and student members.

Harvey joined the union as an organizer in September, and helps educate tenants on their rights, hosts Tenant Power Study Groups and canvass neighborhoods where tenants have recently experienced evictions or threats of eviction.

We spoke with Harvey about their work, the importance of knowing one’s rights and the power of collective action for fair housing practices. 

Tell me about the Sacramento Valley Tenants Union and how it relates to the affordable housing crisis.

The Sacramento Valley Tenants Union got started in early 2024, and we’re not modeled after any local nonprofit or any sort of service provider or legal agency. If you wanted to find somebody that we’re modeled after, I would say the LA Tenants Union. Our purpose in Sacramento and the surrounding areas is to be able to connect tenants to each other, and to have tenants understand that their power comes from collective action. 

The tenants’ workshops are one thing that we consistently do, and the point of the tenants’ workshops is to have people in that area have one consistent place to go to with their questions.

We do tenants’ workshops twice a month and since we’re still getting started, we only have one in the Arden area. (The union recently hosted workshops in the Arden, Land Park and Florin neighborhoods.) Our goal is to have one in hopefully every neighborhood. South Sac is next on our radar, as well as Del Paso Heights. 

Another thing we try to prioritize [are] people who really need the help and really don’t have any connections to understand their rights. We also take a language-justice centered approach. If we go to a building where people don’t speak English, or a lot of people don’t speak English, we break our backs to try to get interpreters. We also publish all of our information in multiple languages. We try to get tenants to form tenant associations, and those are formed around common fights.

For example, some apartment complex that has really shoddy maintenance, or it could be you’re organizing around one landlord across Sacramento and people are coming together to fight against that landlord’s practices. 

So that’s our other goal, and currently we have the Palms Apartments Tenants Association and we are in the process of starting our second tenants association in the Arden area as well. 

What do you see as the most promising solutions to addressing the issue of housing affordability?

From the tenants union’s perspective, what we’re trying to do to solve those problems is not take the road of the nonprofits, not take the road of the local politics. We don’t endorse candidates. We don’t work with nonprofits for the most part. The solution that we see is getting tenants to know their rights, getting tenants to be comfortable talking to each other, talking to their neighbors and working through collective action to make changes in their apartment complex, in their home, etc. We’ve seen it be very effective. If we take the example of the LA Tenants Union and other tenants’ unions across the country, we are making an effort for it to be solutions that come from the tenants themselves. 

What about the Sacramento Valley Tenants Union makes it an approach that you see more fit than a nonprofit solution?

I think the reason why it’s more effective is because it gives tenants their own voice and [in] the through line from problem to solution, the tenants are there every step of the way. We want to give tenants the opportunity to fight directly against the people who are controlling their housing. 

In our opinion, [this approach] is more effective because it gives them the ability to learn their rights and to learn communication strategies not only with other tenants but also with these people who are raising their rent every year, who are forcing them to move time and time again, who are neglecting the properties that they live in and who are creating renoviction schemes.  

Can you explain what a renoviction is? 

A renoviction is basically a loophole that some landlords use to evict tenants from old buildings. You can have a building that’s been around for decades and you have long-term tenants there who have been dealing with the fact that the maintenance isn’t ever up to par like broken plumbing, broken appliances, everything under the sun, including pests and security issues at the building.

Instead of the owners of the building going ahead and fixing the issues for the tenants … 

they renovate the building and then they have wealthier tenants move in. That’s a scheme we’ve seen across California. … It’s very clear to tenant advocates that what they’re doing is trying to get more money. The issue with the Palms Tenants association is along those lines. 

When working with Sacramento tenants, how have you seen these solutions work? 

In the case of the Palms Apartments Tenants Association, we’ve helped them not [get] evicted yet. Before our involvement, these tenants were being bullied and coerced into moving. They were offered cash for keys. … They would have one of the employees of the property management company come and ask, ‘Hey, do you want to move out literally tomorrow or next week?’ 

When we got involved with them, we got all of the neighbors to talk to each other and decide on not moving individually anymore … but rather to reject those low-cash offers and instead to work together to try to fight the renoviction and stay where they deserve to live, which is where they’ve lived in some cases, for many years. 

In that apartment complex, [there’s] a tenant who is blind, who has lived there for over five years and it would be incredibly difficult for him to start over in a different place. Where he lives right now, he can go around the neighborhood without assistance. He knows where he’s at. 

The ramifications of them being pushed out like the property management wishes could be dire. Our intervention has helped to slow down that process and hopefully fight for them to not be evicted. 

This Q&A has been edited for length, clarity and flow. 

This story is part of the Solving Sacramento journalism collaborative. Our partners include California Groundbreakers, Capital Public Radio, Hmong Daily News, Outword, Russian America Media, Sacramento Business Journal, Sacramento News & Review and Sacramento Observer. Support stories like these here, and sign up for our monthly newsletter.