Cancel Rent! Cancel Mortgages! Sheet and Banner Drop
The COVID-19 pandemic has closed businesses across the country and thrown over 30 million people out of work. Many people who were already living precariously on the edge of financial ruin before the pandemic will now have trouble coming up with rent or mortgage payments for the month of May. Eviction and foreclosure freezes have expired here in Wisconsin and will not be renewed by Gov. Evers or the state legislature. Thousands of people around the state risk becoming homeless on June 10th, when evictions will start being carried out. We need to cancel rent and home mortgages entirely for the duration of the crisis. We need a rent freeze and demand that housing be made available to all.
We are therefore calling for a day of action on June 1 – which is rent day for most tenants. We’re asking people to show their support by participating in one or more actions. One action that you can do from home is to hang a white sheet or banner out your window, take a photo of it, and post it on Twitter or Facebook with the hashtags #CancelRent, #CancelMortgages, or others. You can share your posts at our Facebook page or tweet them at @mkematu. We will also be organizing additional actions that people can do from home, such as calling abusive landlords to demand that they treat tenants fairly during this crisis. You can also file a complaint about your landlord by visiting www.matunion.org.
