In January, tenants at Bowen Tower Apartments in Raytown, Missouri ended a four-month-long rent strike in victory. After withholding more than 110,000 in rent payments, their California-based landlord Alta/ CGHS Real Estate Investments buckled to the organized tenants’ demands. Their resulting agreement includes rent reductions, the cancellation of all outstanding eviction cases and retaliatory nonrenewals, the forgiveness of 65% of the rent withheld during the strike, and a committed schedule of long-neglected repairs.
Residents began organizing with the help of KC Tenants in May 2025 in response to unaddressed flooding in their apartments, water shut offs, insufficient heating and cooling, bed bugs, and general refusal to complete maintenance. When initial attempts to negotiate failed, union members voted to go on strike in October. When Alta/CGHS retaliated by filing 27 evictions and additional non-renewals, the tenants stood strong. Four months after the start of their strike, tenants proved that their collective economic power out-leveraged the weak threats of their landlord.
On May Day in Bozeman, Montana the residents of two mobile home parks – King Arthur Park and Mountain Meadows Park – united under Bozeman Tenants United and initiated Montana’s first rent strike in over 50 years. Altogether, the two parks represent roughly 30% of all Bozeman’s mobile home residents. They began withholding more than 52,000 in rent in response to 11% rent increases that went into effect just before selling the properties to a new owner. Debi Rooks, one of the union’s elected bargaining members, identified that rent had gone up 70% since she first moved there in 2021
They sent a message to the parks’ buyer: “You just bought a tenant union. You just bought a rent strike. We won’t pay the 11% rent hike, and we won’t pay at all until you meet with the union. We will only negotiate together, not as individuals”
Just a few weeks later, the strike has forced the parks’ new owner, Steve Martini of the California-based Cabrillo Management Corporation, to immediately begin conducting maintenance and making improvements to delapidated infrastructure. In light of the landlord’s engagement with repairs, the union voted to voluntarily suspend the strike ahead of negotiating new lease terms. The decision to suspend the strike was not unanimous. Some residents simply cannot afford the higher rent price at all, and wished to continue the strike until new rent prices are agreed upon. The union states that they remain commited to re-continue the strike if Martini fails to negotiate over the price of rent.
Everywhere that tenants live they are taking up struggle. Collectively organized rent strikes are winning, and will continue to do so. We stand with the tenants in Raytown, in Bozeman, and everywhere they dare to exercise collective power!
