Alliance for Tenant Power

ATP broadly curtailed its operations after many of its policy priories were signed into law by then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D) in 2019, and it is now apparently defunct, with no posts on its social media channels since 2022. ^{6 1 7}

Background

Alliance for Tenant Power was led by New York Communities for Change (NYCC) and New York Communities Organizing Fund Inc. (NYCOFI). ^{8 9} The two organizations are generally considered to be the successors to the now-defunct ACORN network of left-of-center community organizing groups in New York City, with NYCC being founded by former New York ACORN staffers and working initially out of ACORN’s former Brooklyn offices. ^{2 3 4 5}

Advocacy

Alliance for Tenant Power was deeply critical of then-New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (D). ^{1 7} During debates in 2016 and 2017 over the renewal of the state’s Section 421-a tax abatement for real estate developers and the planned sunset of the state’s rent control laws in 2019, ATP activists created “Cuomoville” encampments modeled on Great Depression-era “Hooverville” tent cities to place public pressure on Cuomo. ^{10 11}

ATP and its coalition members such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) used the social media hashtag “#CuomosHousingCrisis” to put public pressure on Cuomo to support rent control and policies that would make it harder for landlords to evict tenants who had not paid their rent or otherwise had violated the terms of their leases. In January 2018, a reported 25 ATP activists were arrested for blocking the entrance to the New York State Capitol in advance of Cuomo’s State of the State address. ¹²

In June 2019, Cuomo signed the Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act of 2019, which contained many of the ATP coalition’s policy priorities, including an indefinite extension of rent control, new limits on increases in controlled rents, new barriers to eviction, and other measures that favored tenants over property owners. ⁶