In March, Somerville landlord Mouhab Rizkallah sued the editors of The Tufts Daily, the university’s independent student newspaper, for libel. Rizkallah alleged the paper refused to correct part of a story about him that he says implies he was lying. The parties have now come to an agreement and had Read more…
A Somerville orthodontist and landlord with a litigious pastis suing two Tufts University student journalists over coverage of a renters’ protest outside his office, claiming a story in the college newspaper defamed him and caused him emotional harm by suggesting he had lied. At issue in the lawsuit, filed in Read more…
Militant tenants are organizing and fighting across the US. The Tenant Unionist Column, recurring here in Partisan Magazine, will chronicle these ongoing fights against landlords and other real estate capitalists. Head over to Partisan Magazine to read more!
A group of 20 tenants, organizers and local supporters holding signs reading “Somervillain” and “LaCourt Lies” marched from the Davis Square T stop to the office of Mouhab Rizkallah, owner of LaCourt Realty and The Braces Place in Somerville, on Feb. 3. The protesters, organized by the LaCourt Tenants Union, Read more…
After another day of attending online graduate classes from her one-bedroom apartment in the summer of 2020, Mary Stathos rose from her desk to heat up what felt like her millionth can of soup for dinner that week. As she padded around her kitchen, she avoided the spots where the Read more…
Greater Boston Tenants’ Union is an anti-capitalist and police abolitionist organization which seeks to build a “world without landlords”—that is to say, a society ruled by the working class. On June 14, Nick Watter of GBTU joined The Gavel’s Albar Shahnoor for an interview (upon which this article is based) Read more…
It’s August 1, 2019, my first night in my overpriced apartment and I am crying while someone plays “Rock and Roll All Nite” down at the gas station below me. I am unpacking my clothes and placing them into a closet that is still lined with contact paper that must Read more…
At the end of June, the federal moratorium on evictions will expire, putting thousands of families in Massachusetts at risk for eviction. Andrea Park is a housing and homelessness staff attorney with the Massachusetts Law Reform Institute. She says the federal moratorium doesn’t protect all tenants and the ones receiving Read more…
Rumors circulated that the landlord wanted everyone out. But Giuliana Perez could not contemplate leaving her two-bedroom apartment, where light pours into the living room, in the middle of a pandemic. What would she do with her elderly mother? How would she pay first and last month’s rent at a Read more…
Nearly 80 renters and community members turned out last Saturday at the Institute for Contemporary Art/Boston for a one-time matinee. Instead of perusing the museum’s collections, these tenants staged their own gallery exhibit outside with artistic renderings of the shoddy living conditions within the buildings owned by landlord Gerald Fineberg. Read more…