East Side Tenants Council Records
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Abstract
The East Side Tenants Council was a community organization founded to advocate for tenants' rights on the Lower East Side of New York City in the mid-20th century. A local affiliate of the Metropolitan Council on Housing, its roots could be traced to 1930s tenant activism and 1950s-1960s neighborhood opposition to Robert Moses' reimagining of New York City. The council fought to hold or lower rent rates and improve the physical condition of buildings. This meant both building-level organization of tenants and navigating the bureaucratic paperwork of government agencies on behalf of individuals. The majority of the collection's documents were generated by the advocacy of tenants' representative Francesca Amato. Most these materials are filings, supporting work product, and correspondence with landlords and government housing agencies. As a part of her process, Amato took extensive notes on buildings' residents and the physical condition of their apartments, which document housing conditions in the Lower East Side during the 1950s-1970s. The collections also contains housing-related publications from government entities and other tenants' groups and one folder of photographs of buildings.
Historical/Biographical Note
The East Side Tenants Council was a community organization founded to advocate for tenants rights on the Lower East Side of New York City during the mid-20th century. It was a local affiliate of the Metropolitan Council on Housing.
The council's roots could be traced to the 1930s tenant activism of members of Communist Party and American Labor Party and neighborhood-based opposition to Robert Moses' reimagining of New York City. Tenants were organized at the building level for actions to stabilize or lower rent and to improve the physical condition of the often-dilapidated housing stock. Because the tenant-landlord relationship in New York City was strictly regulated, much of the advocacy took the form of navigating the paperwork of the city's bureaucracy on tenants' behalf. The council also provided assistance to individual tenants and ran housing clinics.
Arrangement
The collection is arranged alphabetically.
Scope and Content Note
The collection documents the activities of the East Side Tenants Council and housing conditions in the Lower East Side of New York City in the 1950s-1970s. The majority of the documents were generated by the advocacy of tenants' representative Francesca Amato.
Actions represented in the collection are centered around a handful of buildings: 528 East 11th Street, 176-180 Avenue A, 122-128 Norfolk Street, and 252 East 7th Street. Most these materials are filings, supporting work product, and correspondence with landlords and government housing agencies. As a part of her process, Amato took extensive notes on buildings' residents and the physical condition of their apartments. These can be found in notebooks and in the files for actions, and they give insight into life on the Lower East Side. The East Side Tenants Council advocated for lower rents and improved building conditions, and the collection includes documents from actions pursued through the City of New York Department of Housing and Buildings, the State of New York Temporary State Housing Rent Commission, and the New York City Rent and Rehabilitation Administration, among others. The collections also contains housing-related publications from government entities and other tenants' groups and one folder of photographs of buildings.
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Conditions Governing Access
Materials are open without restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
Copyright (and related rights to publicity and privacy) to materials in this collection created by the East Side Tenants Council was not transferred to New York University. Permission to use materials must be secured from the copyright holder.
Preferred Citation
Identification of item, date; East Side Tenants Council Records; TAM 253; box number; folder number; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
Materials found in repository; provenance is unknown. The accession number 1950.185 is associated with this collection.
About this Guide
Processing Information
Collection was processed in 2013. While there was no collection-wide order, most materials were grouped in envelopes and labeled by action or subject matter. These titles were transcribed when the collection was rehoused. Loose materials and those in envelopes without titles were placed in files with archivist-devised titles, and all files were arranged alphabetically.
