New Ideas CityHello Museum

Tenants’ Rights Walking Tour: An Exploration of Current Housing Issues on the Lower East Side

Cover Image:

Community Educator Emily Gallagher and Cooper Square Committee Lead Organizer Brandon Kielbasa leading a tour, May 2014. Photo Credit: Josh Barndt

Part of the Street Program

This tour is designed to both highlight tenant-organizing victories and the present-day struggles tenants face on the Lower East Side. Speculative landlords, the backbone of gentrification, have been buying up buildings in this neighborhood at an alarming rate for over forty years now. Attendees will learn how to defend their homes if and when a speculative landlord buys their building. The tour will be a fun mix of presentation and interaction. The cases we feature on the tour will provide information about basic tenants’ rights, as well as more nuanced issues.

Cooper Square Committee tours will be leaving from the Shared Tour Hub in Sara D. Roosevelt Park at the corner of Stanton and Forsyth Streets at 1 p.m.