By David Rovics
April 1st, 2020
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Randall,
Just to let you know, since we’ve never met, I’m one of your many
residential tenants. I imagine that between you and your corporation,
the Randall Group, and then between that and its subsidiary, CTL
Management, Inc., there are several degrees of disconnect, so you may or
may not be aware that your corporate representatives have just sent me
and presumably your thousands of other tenants up and down the west
coast notifications of yet another annual increase in our monthly rent
— dated March 25th, 2020.
The letter, excerpted here, is a very slight variation of the same one
we have received every year since I moved in to one of the many
buildings you own, in Portland, Oregon, in 2007. You, or the management
company you own, has more than doubled our rent since that time. You
have never once provided any explanation in your annual letters for why
the rent has to increase so much more than most people’s wages, which
have remained stagnant in this country for decades, as our life
expectancy has as well.
The thing is, stagnant wages are only leading to a life expectancy that
is not rising because expenses are not stagnant. Expenses are always
rising. Chief among those expenses? Rent charged by people like you,
and corporations like yours.
It admittedly does really irk me that in 2011, you donated $10 million
to a hospital here in Portland, so that they named the children’s wing
of the hospital after you. Every time I pass that hospital, it upsets
me, to think that the reason my three children have to live in the same
small apartment I moved into when I only had one child, is because you
keep raising our rent by such an unconscionable, unmanageable amount,
every year. How many children in this city with parents less fortunate
than we are are now homeless because of your unfettered greed, because
your wealth is more important than the lives of your tenants? While you
donate money to a hospital that cares for children. The irony is what
upsets me — not the donation itself. It’s the narcissism involved with
such BS philanthropy, the fake philanthropy of someone who wants their
name on a sign, but doesn’t care about the children who suffer in order
to put that name on the sign.
Of course, I’m just making assumptions about your motives. Maybe you
really do care about regular people. If so, you can start to show that
by, for example, declaring a suspension of rent for the duration of the
crisis, and then lowering the rent you charge post-crisis to something
more compatible with the actual living situations of actual people —
not just your preferred people, imports from even more expensive cities
who keep moving in to your apartments, and displacing people who grew up
around here, or have lived here a long time. This may just be the way
capitalism works, and you’re just another commercial and residential
real estate company that is going along with the capitalist program, but
the thing is, you and the lobbying group that you support actually
lobbies in state capitals to make sure there is no regulation passed
that interferes with your ever-increasing profits. So you’re not just
part of a bad system — you are the bad system.
People like you, and corporations that people like you own, need to be
resisted, if there is any hope for this horrendously divided and
literally very sick society.
I, like many of your current and especially former tenants here in
Portland, am an artist. I’m a touring songwriter. I make a living
largely from traveling around the world and performing. Now, I can’t
even travel and perform in Oregon, let alone in Europe, where I spend
much of my professional life. Oh, and the reason I tour Europe so much
in the first place, instead of more locally, and the reason I usually
spend so many more months away from home than I used to, touring there
in Europe, is largely because of you, and your rent increases. But now,
I can’t tour. But you not only want the rent as usual, as if there
weren’t a massive global catastrophe going on, as if the entire society
weren’t under some form of quarantine, but you have the audacity to
actually raise it.
Landlords like you are a big part of this society’s problem. Not
landlords like some of my friends, who are struggling to pay their
mortgages, struggling to find a way to let their tenants slide on rent,
but landlords specifically like you, who own so many buildings. Even
your corporate clients are announcing they’re not going to pay their
rent for April. We lowly residential tenants would be idiots not to do
the same, really.
Especially since so many of us actually can’t. I can, for now. I just
toured Australia, before the world closed its borders, so although the
rest of my spring tour in North America and Europe was canceled, and
although I’m drowning in credit card debt I was planning to pay off with
that tour, I’ve got a little money, no thanks to you. But it seems to
us that there are better things to hold on to that money to do,
especially while there is a statewide ban on evictions and power
shutoffs.
Everything is moving very fast, as you know. We’ll see what new laws
get passed, and how much government aid there is for people like me.
I’m sure there will be lots of government aid for corporations like
yours. Plus, you don’t need any more money. You’re very rich. It’s
time for you to change your ways. Blame the pandemic, or blame me, or
blame society, I don’t care. But two of the people who are to blame for
my family’s relative poverty, and for the fact that most of my friends
have moved out of Portland since I first moved here — for the fact that
any musician even slightly less successful than me can’t afford to live
in this city — are you guys, Mr. and Mrs. Randall.
But we regular people don’t expect people like you to change without a
fight. However, let this be entirely clear: if there is to be a class
war in America, it is people like you who started it. We are only
responding to your mindless greed and the broken system which people
like you broke and make sure stays broken. No more.
Sincerely,
David Rovics, your tenant
P.S. I have paid the rent on time every month since April, 2007.
David Rovics has been called the musical voice of the progressive movement in the US. Since the mid-90’s, Rovics has spent most of his time on the road, playing hundreds of shows every year throughout North America, Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Japan. He has shared the stage regularly with leading intellectuals, activists, politicians, musicians and celebrities. In recent years he’s added children’s music and essay-writing to his repertoire. More importantly, he’s really good. He will make you laugh, he will make you cry, and he will make the revolution irresistible. Check out his pamphlet: Sing for Your Supper: A DIY Guide to Playing Music, Writing Songs, and Booking Your Own Gigs
