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In the Cully Neighborhood of Northeast Portland at a mobile home park called El Rancho, residents are building power together to assert their rights as tenants. Jazmin Velez of La Casa Común (a participating community in the Multnomah County Leaven Community Land & Housing Cohort), is helping to facilitate this tenant-led energy for change using the Sacred Organizing practices learned in the cohort.
Prior to October 2021, like many residences, each of the families living at El Rancho had their garbage collected once a week by a garbage truck. In October, however, the truck stopped coming. For a while, there was no pickup at all. The trash accumulated and the owner of El Rancho said the responsibility fell on the residents to solve the problem. After a period of time, the owner placed a few gray bins in a row for all of the families to share, with compost and recycling pickup still discontinued. The small row of bins were insufficient for the entire community. Trash continued to build, residents with disabilities had trouble accessing the bins, and a rodent problem was increasingly out of control.
Early in 2022, the owner (who lives out of state) arrived at El Rancho and began knocking on residents’ doors with demands, attempting to implement new policies on the spot. Jazmin, a resident of El Rancho and leader at La Casa Común, knew this was not acceptable. She confronted the owner saying “I am a community organizer. I know my rights and I know the rights of my neighbors.”
She began to organize with her neighbors, many of whom are primarily Spanish-speaking, and brought the situation to the team at La Casa Común who, using the experience and practices of the cohort, came alongside Jazmin and the El Rancho community. They hosted two house meetings with residents, created a list of resident concerns, and brought those concerns to a lawyer from the Oregon Law Center. Out of that conversation, the lawyer offered to help facilitate a Know Your Rights training with the El Rancho community which they subsequently held at a nearby park in July of 2022. The residents learned about how to create a Resident Committee and the team began researching the requirements for becoming officially recognized, holding elections, and creating officers for the committee. Currently, La Casa Común is in the process of helping to facilitate the election process for the new Resident Committee officers as the next step of this organizing process.
Jazmin always makes clear that this is work they do with the community, not for the community. This process of Sacred Organizing that the Leaven Community Land & Housing Cohorts practice, brings people together in relationships and builds power to advocate for our communities together. This is the spirit and energy of what La Casa Común and the El Rancho community are harnessing to advocate for themselves, their families, and the land upon which they live.
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