On the Home Front

This article is adapted from an interview with Dean Preston, founder of Tenants Together and member of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Supervisor Dean Preston began his career in the early 2000s as a tenant attorney in San Francisco’s Tenderloin neighborhood. Preston frequently defended tenants who were at risk of eviction because of state laws limiting the strength of local rent stabilization ordinances. Preston was surprised to learn that there was not a coordinated network of tenant leaders focused on influencing state-level policy. Landlords, by contrast, were highly organized and placed a constitutional amendment on the ballot in 2008 that would have abolished rent stabilization in California altogether. Preston left his job to work on statewide organizing and immediately joined the opposition campaign against the landlords’ measure, which was defeated by a 22-point margin. Harnessing the momentum of this victory and new connections across the state, Preston established Tenants Together, the first California statewide tenants’ organization since a short-lived effort in the 1980s.

Tenants Together launched to support new tenants’ unions in cities with large numbers of tenants, but little history of tenant organizing. Within a few years, this strategy paid off. Before Tenants Together, no municipality in California had passed a rent stabilization ordinance in three decades. Tenants Together “broke the ice” and catalyzed a wave of local victories that continue to this day. During the foreclosure crisis, tenants organized to pass an anti-eviction law in the city of Merced in 2011 – the first of its kind in the Central Valley. In 2016, Mountain View and Richmond won the nation’s first new rent stabilization laws in 30 years. Since then, more than a dozen California municipalities have enacted their first-ever anti-eviction and rent stabilization laws.

Reflecting on the evolution of the tenant movement, Preston noted that “it felt like you couldn’t even get the media to cover an eviction” when he first started in his career. Today, Preston “see[s] a very different landscape of awareness and attention around housing issues” and widespread recognition “that the market is failing people.” That attention, however, is largely because the housing crisis has gotten more severe: “It’s very exciting to see the level of activism and the strength of local tenants’ unions, but it’s sad that a lot of that comes out of how bad the housing situation in this country is.”

Frustrated with elected officials’ indifference, Preston decided to run for office. He was first elected to the Board of Supervisors in 2019. Months later, as the pandemic swept San Francisco, Preston leveraged his expertise as a tenants’ rights attorney to craft an exceptionally strong local eviction ban. His other policy priorities – including rent relief, full funding for the city’s right to counsel, and dedicated resources for community land trusts – also reflect Preston’s commitment to tenants’ rights.

When asked what advice he would give to a tenant organizer who is just getting started in the movement, Preston emphasized the importance of resident self-determination. The most effective tenant leaders “have early meetings with tenants” and “empower folks to envision where they want to take the organizing.” Preston also encouraged tenant organizers to persist and “not let all the noise, money, and corporate interests throw you off track.” In the face of attacks from well-funded opposition groups, tenant leaders should feel confident in their mission: “At the end of the day, what tenant organizers are pushing for is usually not only the right thing, but also the popular thing among voters.”

Supervisor Preston finds inspiration in the solidarity and community of local tenants’ unions, made up of “individual folks” who “carve out some time to organize, to impact their own housing situation and their neighbors […] and then become real advocates way beyond their own housing situations.” Through his career in public service and tenant leadership, he continues to find himself “inspired by how individual tenants linking up with their neighbors can make an enormous difference.”