Welcome back to How We Won, a new newsletter about organizing victories and the people that made them happen. I’m Lindsay, a Chicago-based writer and editor, and the creator of the Beyond November resource guide. In the overwhelm of living through what some days feels like a neverending tidal wave of crises and cries of “we’re cooked,” once a month, this newsletter will highlight a big community win — be it related to housing justice, climate, education or any number of other issues — and interview the organizers behind it about what worked, what didn’t and what lessons you can apply to the fight in your own communities.

I hope this is a source for grounding, guidance and hope in a difficult time. Thank you for being here, and hope to see you again next month. Onward! 

If you had walked into Anna Heetmann’s apartment at Independence Tower at this time six months ago, you would have noticed the cardboard first. 

Water damage from a radiator above her unit caused the crumbling ceiling to cave in, leaving her with a hole that tape and cardboard could barely cover. And Heetmann wasn’t the only resident at this apartment building in Independence, an inner ring suburb of Kansas City, experiencing horrific conditions. Residents reported roaches, mice, mold, faulty stoves, broken windows, and when tenant organizing began in March of 2024, they had been without hot water for two weeks. On top of all that, management would harass and intimidate tenants who complained.

“It just came to a boiling point where people were like, ‘What are we paying for here?’” Heetmann says.

Instead of continuing to tolerate horrific conditions and treatment, Heetmann and her neighbors got organized, and began building a tenants union for the building in alignment with KC Tenants, the citywide tenants union advocating for safe, affordable housing. 

Shortly after they started, the owner of Independence Towers allowed the building to go into receivership, handing the courts control of the property because of the nascent tenant-led power. 

In June, the tenants union met with the temporary president of the property. But after that meeting, there was radio silence. Fed up with not being heard and not having their concerns addressed, in August, tenant organizers began moving to hold a rent strike in the building, with the goal of having at least 50 percent of tenants withhold their rent. 

“They have to submit all this paperwork to a judge, so there’s fewer places for them to hide,” Heetmann says. “And because we were so public about what the conditions were and they were so bad, we thought that was the biggest leverage we had.”

Organizing leadership in the building first helped lay the groundwork for the success of the rent strike, says Justin Stein, an organizer with KC Tenants. 

A rent strike is a risk, and with a risk, there’s naturally going to be fear and anxiety — neighbors expressed to Heetmann that they were worried about having nowhere else to go if they were evicted. One reminder that helped ground the group, she says, was that tenants have few protections under Missouri law, and in Independence, even fewer. “The law is not protecting us either way, so who is actually protecting us?” Heetmann says. “It’s us.”

Heetmann says organizers held individual one-on-one conversations with every member of the union to explain the process and all the possible outcomes, the union’s plans to respond, being transparent and explicit about the nature of this risk, and how the risk decreases the more people participate, a process known as “inoculation.” This included legal support and informing tenants that KC Tenants had a lawyer on retainer in the event that the landlords filed for eviction, Stein adds.

In the end, more than 60 percent of the tenants at Independence Tower moved together in a coordinated, highly publicized eight-month rent strike. 

The strikers at Independence Tower weren’t alone in their efforts, either — KC Tenants used the robust infrastructure they had built over time to help mobilize union members, generate press and social media buzz, host monthly actions at Independence Tower around the first of the month to generate awareness about the strike and even coordinate rides to the property. 

Organizing political allies was also key. Organizers brought members of Independence City Council to walk through the building, and KC Tenants utilized the situation to advocate for an updated rental ready policy, meaning more regulations and requirements around inspections for rental properties. Heetmann and her colleagues also brought U.S. Congressman Emanuel Cleaver III, who sits on the House Financial Services Committee, to Independence Tower to tour the building. 

“He saw just how egregious and dangerous the conditions were,” Stein says. “The tenants publicly asked him if he would support a rent strike, and with the press there and the cameras rolling, he said yes. That was a really critical point for leverage.” 

The relationships and infrastructure were helpful, but the organizers emphasize the most important element was the power the tenants built themselves. Stein notes that so much of the American financial system relies on tenants to pay their rent, and in numbers, they built enough leverage to threaten an economic crisis for management and bring them to the bargaining table. “What won the victory was the discipline, the unity and the tightness of the organization the tenants built,” he says. 

Among the victories the Independence Towers tenants secured through their strike, according to a report from the Kansas City Defender, were:

And, the icing on the cake — striking tenants did not have to pay the more than $300,000 in rent they withheld. 

“I don’t know if I’ve ever felt more powerful than getting to be in a room with my neighbors and say, ‘We don’t owe a single cent of rent,’” she says. 

When Stein began organizing with tenants at Independence Towers, he met a terminally ill woman who had lived there for 25 years. She filed a formal complaint about the living conditions in the building, and with no tenant protections in place through the city, the previous landlord evicted her instead. Two months before the rent strike began, a child fell out of a broken eighth-floor window and died. The child’s parents had requested the window be repaired multiple times, and instead police charged them with felony child neglect and endangerment. For both Heetmann and Stein, the word that comes to mind when they reflect on the win is “vindication.” 

“It can feel like these things that happen to us and our people every day are inevitable,” he says. “It feels like we just have to live in a world where we accept people will get evicted from their home, that people will live in conditions that kill them and then get blamed for it. Winning at Independence Towers proved that it does not have to be that way, and organizing is what ushers in a future where those things are no longer acceptable.” 

For both Stein and Heetmann, the lesson that they keep underscoring is simple — get organized, and build power through numbers. Heetmann advises starting by getting to know your neighbors. Stein advises tenants who are frustrated with the cost of living, conditions in their building or predatory gentrification and don’t know where to go to find a tenant union in their city or connect with the national Tenant Union Federation. “If there’s hope, that hope lies in the tenant union, because the only way to win anything is by building enough power to will it into existence, and you can only do that by building strength in numbers,” Stein says.

“I think people have this feeling of the standard way landlords want us to think about a lease,” Heetmann adds. “It’s something you have to sign. It’s their way or the highway; you agree or don’t have a place to live. Everything at Independence Tower turned that on its head for me. I had to contend with the fact that the tenants are the ones with the power. We are paying our rent in exchange for them to uphold their end of the lease. We should be involved in the process.” 

After the bargaining sessions, things have begun to change, Heetmann says. The new owner is clearing out vacant units, tearing out dirty carpets, installing new HVAC systems. The focus now is applying the strength of the tenant union in the building to ensure the landlord holds up their end of the agreement. 

Beyond the doors of Independence Tower, KC Tenants is looking to “pour gas on the fire as it spreads,” Stein says. The organizing there caught the eye of tenants at Bowen Tower in neighboring Raytown, and the story sounds very familiar — a distressed building in an inner ring suburb where residents have fled after being priced out of Kansas City. Tenants in that building have since organized a majority union, bargaining team and a set of demands, and here’s hoping that win will be detailed in a future edition.

Join us every second Friday for more stories of How We Won. Thank you for reading and sharing. Keep going!