When Tay’Laur and Tay’Leah Paige got the eviction notice taped to their door in August 2023, they thought it was a mistake. The sisters had only missed July’s rent at their North Hollywood apartment during the entertainment industry strikes, which had put Tay’Leah out of work, and their property manager had seemed understanding.

By their first court date in November, they had been approved for Los Angeles Emergency Rental Assistance, a program that would cover about six months of rent. But their landlord — Equity Residential — would not accept the money.

The landlord’s refusal baffled the sisters. They had been good tenants in what was marketed as a luxury building, though they say reality often fell short of that expectation. As court dates stretched on through 2024, their debt snowballed from missing one month’s $3,400 rent payment to nearly $50,000. Late fees started to double mid-lease, and utilities and court costs piled on.

Marty McKenna, a spokesperson for Equity Residential, told Vox they do not discuss individual residential accounts or property-level decisions, but said, “eviction is a last resort and an inefficient way to recover rent.”

After finally vacating their unit in August 2024, the sisters spent months sleeping in their car and hotel-hopping. When they finally got approved for affordable housing — something they’d been on a wait-list for since before moving into their Equity Residential building — they were then quickly denied. The tens of thousands of dollars in rental debt on their credit reports effectively disqualified them from the very program designed to help people in their situation.

“These credit reports, these debts, and the eviction records are things that are real barriers to getting people re-housed.”

Now, Tay’Laur and Tay’Leah are part of a small group of former Equity Residential tenants launching a first-of-its-kind back rent debt strike that will go public in early October. The campaign, organized with help from the Debt Collective, the country’s first national debtors union, has developed a tool that helps tenants document problems with their landlords and generate formal dispute letters — part of a broader strategy to challenge what organizers see as systematic abuse of renters.

“These credit reports, these debts, and the eviction records are things that are real barriers to getting people re-housed,” said Alex Ferrer, a Debt Collective organizer who helped develop the debt complaint tool.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau data from January shows that 14 percent of active renters still carry late fees from the past year, down from a peak of 23 percent in early 2023 but still affecting millions of households.

While existing surveys capture current tenants with back rent, they miss former tenants who’ve been evicted and still owe debt — a data gap that means the Federal Reserve estimate that American renters owed between $9.3 and $10.9 billion in back rent as of late 2021 likely undercounts the true scope. That debt piled up when pandemic relief programs fell short.

The planned........

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