Direct Action at Home: Performative Spaces of Tenant Resistance in Los Angeles

Abstract

Given the rising number of evictions in the United States, self-organised and housing-insecure tenants actively fight back against their harassment and displacement. Because of the high rate of informal evictions, housing struggles between tenants and landlords are not only fought in courts; they often take place at the homes that they themselves and their landlords occupy. How do precariously housed tenants resist their displacement, and turn domestic spaces into spaces of tenant protest and resistance? This article examines the performative capacity of residential buildings in tenant direct actions in Los Angeles. By protesting at their own homes and those of their landlords, tenant groups claim control over their domestic spaces and establish a direct correlation between the lavish lifestyles of their landlords and their own unliveable conditions. The performativity of residential buildings during actions emphasises the violence of landlord harassment and forced evictions, turns personal experiences of housing insecurity into public spectacles, and enacts corrections to power imbalances in rental arrangements. More than sites of collective actions, residential spaces provide material evidence of tenant exploitation and a means of visualising tenant power.