Brad Hirn is an organizer who believes in building unions at work and at home. Since December 2016, he has served as a lead organizer at Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, a long-standing tenants’ rights organization in San Francisco. Through his work at HRCSF, Brad has created a model for using disciplined structure-based organizing methods when organizing renting-class people.
Much of Brad’s work focuses on organizing with tenants living under large, corporate landlords, including the Veritas Tenants Association (VTA), the statewide tenant union for renters living in buildings operated by one of California’s largest landlords, Veritas Investments. Together with VTA members, Brad helped pass the landmark Union-At-Home ordinance in San Francisco, the country’s first legal framework for extending collective-bargaining rights to private-market tenants.
Brad’s work at the Labor Center will focus on putting together his years of organizing experience into a collection of insights, arguments, and methods for building majority-based, strike-ready tenant unions that are uniquely positioned to address the affordability crisis impacting poor and working-class people across the country.
Brad Hirn said because rent prices increased at record rates before and during the pandemic, softening rents should not be viewed as a move toward affordability.
Brad Hirn, who is not a resident of the Village, said that UAW 4811 is “overall concerned about reducing rent burden for students and workers due to these new fees,” and that he is “supporting the residents in their efforts” with his background in tenant and labor union organizing.
Brad Hirn said, “The ordinance doesn’t automatically bestow upon tenants a victory: it provides a framework for tenants to think about how to organize a majority of their neighbors, and it imposes the obligation on the landlord to bargain in good faith.”
Veritas, the largest landlord in San Francisco, has defaulted on another loan and is losing 23 apartment buildings. Our practitioner in residence Brad Hirn discusses Veritas, the Union-At-Home ordinance, and ongoing tenant organizing.
A small group of residents in San Francisco apartments are on a rent strike. Can a union model work for residents the same way it does for laborers?
