‘This problem isn’t just happening somewhere else’: Dozens rally in State College for rent fairness
They came in rusted Volvos and black BMWs, with makeshift cardboard signs and professionally printed ones, in surgical masks and homemade face coverings.
Several dozen protesters — county residents, workers and students — gathered in downtown State College on Friday night to promote awareness of local rent and housing issues, as similar events took place around the country. With their vehicles plastered in signs like “Pay over profits” and “Be fair to renters,” they honked while slowly driving in circles as part of a “Rent Fairness Car Rally.”
Others pitched tents outside realty offices and clapped as the cars drove by. They chanted slogans such as, “Hey hey, ho ho, slumlords have got to go!” and “1-2-3-4, we can’t pay our rent no more!”
“People are scared about losing their housing, and what we’re trying to do today is say we all need to be in this together,” said Emily Smith, a Penn State graduate student and member of the Centre County COVID-19 Community Response group, which organized the rally. “That means property management companies and property owners in town need to come to the table and work fairly with their tenants.”
The Community Response group, which dubs itself “4CR,” wanted landlords to make three promises: No evictions, no late fees and good-faith negotiation. More than 30 million jobs have been lost in the last six weeks alone, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, making the act of paying rent a difficult proposition for many.
So 4CR wanted to make clear Friday, the first day of the month when rent is due, that many more will be impacted before the coronavirus pandemic is over. And, if State College and Centre County want to get through it, then those who need help need to ask for it and those in the position to give help need to offer it.
About two dozen vehicles met in the Beaver Avenue Lot around 5:30 p.m. to prepare. One car covered its entire hood in washable white-block letters, “Housing is a human right.” Another used blue painters’ tape to attach a cardboard sign reading, “Cancel Rent + Evictions.” And another, without tape, simply let a poster board dangle from the top of a closed window: “The rent is TOO DAMN HIGH.”
“It’s the working class that bears the brunt of this,” co-organizer Bailey Campbell said.
On Thursday, the Downtown State College Improvement District issued a news release, outlining how a group of local off-campus property owners and managers donated $50,000 to Penn State’s Student Care and Advocacy Emergency Fund.
Penn State’s Manuel Rosaldo, a postdoctoral fellow, felt many landlords still have not done enough.
“There are some landlords who are really just scraping by and in a difficult situation themselves, and there should be funds to support those landlords,” Rosaldo said, a few minutes before the rally began. “And then there are others who are extremely wealthy and have hedge funds and Big Business is behind them, and those are the ones we think should be sharing their fair share.”
But, organizers said, Friday’s rally — which attempted to follow social-distancing guidelines — wasn’t just for local college students. Some families arrived in cars with children, one elderly woman brought her lapdog, and some came from out of town.
Richard Anderson, a 40-year-old Spring Township resident, was careful not to step out of his car due to concerns surrounding COVID-19. But he said in a phone interview, as a former college dropout and now a postdoctoral fellow, that he never would’ve been able to step out of his low-income job in his 20s without help. And now, he hoped, his presence might help others.
“We want to make a symbolic public action — very, very safely — in order to dramatize and make visible the fact our fellow community members are having a really hard time,” he said. “We wanted to come together and let folks know there are people right here in our county that need help.
“This problem isn’t just happening somewhere else.”
This story was originally published May 2, 2020 at 11:00 AM.
