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Janet Freeman

Janet Freeman (May 18, 1950 - April 29, 2011) was a community organizer and tenant advocate in New York City's lower Manhattan. She was a founder of the Croman Tenants Association, the Coalition to Protect Public Housing and Section 8, and of Co-op Watch, to prevent evictions through phony conversions. She started campaigns to organize Extell tenants and Shaoul tenants, and efforts against 'phony demolitions' and landlord harassment. As lead organizer for the Neighborhood Coalition to Fight Proliferation of Bars, she defended the local Little Italy/Chinatown neighborhood’s character, fighting against invasive cabarets and upscale nightlife. Elizabeth Street between Kenmare and Spring Streets is co-named "Janet Freeman Way" to commemorate her activism on behalf of the community.

Life

Freeman was a native New Yorker growing up in Stuyvesant Town. She moved to her first apartment, on Elizabeth Street between Kenmare and Spring Streets, at the age of 17, remaining on the block for 43 years. For most of that time, she lived in a ground-floor residential storefront distinguished by its copiously graffitied exterior that gave no quarter to gentrification or the commercial upscaling of the neighborhood.

Activism

Freeman was widely admired among tenant advocates for an unusual mix of impressive qualities: her intellect and insight, her personal dedication to ordinary people, her passion for their rights, and the depth, breadth, thoroughness, and accuracy of her research. She employed these in an unbroken series of actions and campaigns over three decades. Protective of her independence and integrity, and averse to bureaucracy, she almost always worked as a free agent or volunteer, even refusing paid positions for the same things she did freely.

Tenant and housing advocacy

In 1989, Freeman learned about the death of Lincoln Swados, a disabled tenant who died after his landlord, as part of a co-op conversion, built a construction shed around his apartment, effectively blocking his access to the street. She became a founding member of the Coalition for Justice for Lincoln Swados. Her work there led to the creation in 1990 of Lower East Side Co-op Watch, where she organized tenants in buildings undergoing conversion and created a database to analyze and track co-op conversions—both to challenge them individually and to raise the issue to the public, the media, and elected officials. Her campaign included demonstrations, speak-outs, and workshops, collaborating with the state attorney general’s office and Met Council.

Through the mid-1990s she counseled tenants on their legal rights as a Met Council tenant advisor. Strongly believing that tenants in private and public housing should work together in one unified movement, Freeman joined the East Village activist organization the Coalition for a District Alternative (CoDA) and Margarita Lopez’s campaigns for district leader and later the City Council, working door-to-door registering voters in the neighborhood’s housing projects. In 1996, in response to a federal bill to privatize the projects, she joined with public-housing activists to create the Lower East Side Coalition to Save Public Housing & Section 8, reaching out to tenants door-to-door; creating postcard and call-in campaigns; holding meetings, rallies, and forums several times each week; and coordinating the local effort with national organizing.

In 1997, when then-state Senate majority leader Joseph Bruno announced his intention to eliminate rent regulations, Freeman teamed up with Valerio Orselli, head of Cooper Square Mutual Housing, to mobilize and educate tenants. Despite opposition from then-City Councilmember Antonio Pagan, their forum attracted so many people that the speakers had to be brought out into the street to address those who could not fit into the hall.

In 2000, after over a decade of volunteer work, Freeman accepted a part-time position with the City-Wide Task Force for Housing Court, providing legal information for pro se tenants, tenants appearing in court without the benefit of an attorney. She was also the tenant representative for a pro se tenant coalition involved in an HP action, where she set a precedent by successfully arguing in court—both in written briefs and oral arguments—that the legal stipulations that define Housing Court settlements should require that the owner correct outstanding Department of Buildings and Environmental Control Board violations.

Community organizing

Freeman's earliest effort was to get trees planted on the street where she lived. As real-estate values rose on the Lower East Side and in Little Italy and Chinatown, Freeman organized tenants threatened by aggressive landlord-developers. She founded the Coalition of Tenants in Croman-Owned Buildings, organized tenants in Extell-owned buildings, and worked with tenants in Shaoul buildings. She also fought the commercial transformation of the neighborhood, leading the fight against the proliferation of bars and nightlife in and around Little Italy and Chinatown.

Street co-naming

To commemorate Freeman's concern for the people of Little Italy and the Lower East Side, Community Board 2 and the New York City Council, in conjunction with sponsors Chinatown Headstart, Housing Court Answers and Friends of Petrosino Square, co-named Elizabeth Street between Kenmare & Spring Streets "Janet Freeman Way," June 20, 2013.

References

Janet Freeman