Baltimore Renters United is a tenant-led organization advocating for housing justice. We use organizing, outreach, and education to build tenant power. We value partnerships and collaborations with communities, legal advocates, social justice organizations, tenant unions and service providers. We center on dismantling the systemic racism that has constructed and maintains an inequitable housing system. When housing injustice is recognized, accountability and transparency is demanded from all appropriate institutions and governmental structures.

Our Mission

Baltimore Renters United (BRU) envisions a Baltimore where all tenants have safe, stable, affordable, and fair housing and where all tenants, especially those by virtue of being people of color, black, brown, immigrant, low-income,  LGBTQ+, disabled, elderly or otherwise oppressed people are free from exploitation. We envision a future where land and housing are community-controlled and a basic right. BRU is building a tenant-led movement for Housing Justice in Baltimore.

Our Vision

We envision a future where land and housing are community-controlled and a basic right. BRU is building a tenant-led movement for housing justice in Baltimore.

Our Values

Community and Teamwork: To build a movement together, we have to connect with each other, support each other, and see each other’s struggles so that we can envision and work toward the future we want to see as a collective. To get to a future where our communities have control over land and housing and where housing is a basic right, we must pool our availability, time, resources, and collective brilliance to address the issues our communities face one by one, piece-by-piece.  

Tenant Voices: When we stand in solidarity, speak truth to power, and vigorously campaign for justice and the changes we envision, we win. BRU is committed to ensuring that tenants have the support and space they need to demand safe, stable, and affordable housing together with dignity, pride, and power.

Knowledge is Power: We pride ourselves on spreading knowledge because someone before us gave us the knowledge and tools we need to understand why housing justice work is important. We strive to facilitate knowledge-sharing between and among our folks because knowledge is power. When we share knowledge to better ourselves, stand with our neighbors, and feel less crazy because we see that the oppression we face as tenants is not our fault. 

Commitment: BRU is not a service provider organization, We value “getting in where you fit in,” and showing up with enthusiasm and flexibility. We find where we can take on responsibility and take charge to move the work forward however we can. No one person can hold this movement together, our movement can only be successful if we all pitch in and do our part.  

We’re All We Got: We all have more in common than we think. Creating strong bonds, building trust,  supporting one another is a central part of our organizing.

Self-Determination: Those who are closest to the problem are closest to the solution, and that means that we center the vision that tenants. We prioritize solutions that ensure tenants have power over their own lives and meaningful choice over what happens in their communities.  

Leadership Development: We foster a “leader-full” movement. BRU encourages the hard work of individual growth so and openness necessary for all of us to grow, learn, and be well.