Two years ago, the residents of Travois Village mobile home park in Missoula were hit with a $200 monthly rent hike on the lots beneath their homes after a Texas-based company bought the park.    Then last year, that company — Oak Wood Ventures — proposed an additional $150 increase at Tr avois and at Harvey’s Park, a Bonner property the company also purchased. That would have brought the rent to $795 at Travois and $770 at Harvey’s — just for the land — a nearly 25% increase. Oak Wood, though, dropped the increase to $50 after residents organized with the Missoula Tenants Union and eventually formed their own unions.  This year, the rent at the parks will rise by no more than $19. That’s after the company agreed to the unions’ demand for a 3% cap on any rent increase. “The lesson is that if you stick together and if you organize, this process can work,” Erik Brilz, a Travois resident and a member of the union’s bargaining team that negotiated with Oak Wood, told Montana Free Press in a July interview. “It’s a matter of dedication and organization and everyone being willing to fight and fight together.”  Those local wins illustrate a high-stakes predicament renters are facing across Montana: the choice to “sit back and accept rising rents” or come together to fight for a better future, Jackson Sapp, one of the Missoula Tenants Union’s founding organizers, said at a Missoula forum in July. Sapp said that while that may sound “pie in the sky,” the bargaining success of the Travois and Harvey unions with their corporate, out-of-state landlord is an example of what tenants’ unions can accomplish.  “To say it more plainly, we won rent control in Montana,” Sapp said. “Montana is a conservative, a deeply conservative, red state, where our state government literally has prohibitions on instituting rent control. And we won that outside of the legislative process. These victories were not conceivable five years ago.”  The Missoula Tenants Union and, three hours east, Bozeman Tenants United are among dozens of similar organizations across the country seeing success through lease bargaining with landlords and campaigns to increase local- or state-level tenant protections. In addition to continuing to organize individual apartment buildings and trailer parks, the Montana unions say they plan to bring their fight to the Montana Legislature in 2027 and collaborate with tenants’ unions nationwide to grow their economic and political power.   Benjamin Finegan, executive director of Bozeman Tenants United, told MTFP the things that tenants most need — rent control, public investment in housing and laws that level the legal playing field between tenants and landlords — are “politically impossible” right now.   “The job of tenants unions is not just to fight for immediate and necessary material improvements and people’s lives right now but also to build a political movement to make what’s impossible now, possible tomorrow,” he said.  Significant tenant organizing began in the 1960s as part of the Civil Rights Movement. But the modern tenant movement has its roots in the 2007 foreclosure crisis and was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, said Greg Baltz, an assistant professor of law and co-director of the Housing Justice and Tenant Solidarity Clinic at Rutgers Law School in New Jersey.   “Between booming home prices, lack of availability of new homes, high interest rates and wages that aren’t keeping up with inflation, we have an entire generation of tenants who don’t see the pathway to homeownership,” Baltz said. “If you don’t see yourself as a … future homeowner, but someone who is going to have to pay rent to a landlord for the rest of your life, that is a strong motivator to get organizing.”   That housing crisis inspired the founding organizers of the Bozeman and Missoula tenants unions, both of which officially formed in 2022.   “If you don’t see yourself as a … future homeowner, but someone who is going to have to pay rent to a landlord for the rest of your life, that is a strong motivator to get organizing.” Greg Baltz, assistant professor at Rutgers Law School  Finegan, 29, said he and several other younger, working-class people supported Bozeman Tenant United co-founder Joey Morrison’s 2021 campaign for the city commission. Morrison lost, but the group learned from knocking on doors that housing and tenant issues were not being sufficiently addressed. In a July interview, Morrison said that experience was part of what motivated them to form the union. The union’s membership is mostly renters, though homeowners with a mortgage are also welcome to join, according to BTU’s website. It started with about a dozen people and has grown to a few hundred, Finegan said. Between 30 and 50 people typically show up for regular union meetings, though more show up for bigger actions like volunteering for Morrison’s campaign or for town hall meetings, he said.    BTU, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit organization similar to many political advocacy groups, has seen some success from its campaigns to ban short-term rentals, like Airbnbs, in Bozeman, and a program providing free legal assistance for renters.  In October 2023, the Bozeman City Commission increased restrictions on some short-term rentals, and Morrison won his mayoral campaign the following month. After nearly two years of BTU advocating for the tenant’s right-to-counsel program, the city commission voted unanimously in December 2025 to create a program providing free mediation and legal services to renters.  Finegan said that, along with addressing the immediate problem of eviction, the program also aims to shift the “deeply, structurally unfair and exploitative legal system,” where most landlords can afford legal representation when they want to take someone to court, but renters often can’t.  A sign at the entrance of Katoonah Lodges mobile home park outside of Missoula points the way to the party celebrating the launch of the park’s union on May 21, 2026. Credit: Katie Fairbanks/MTFP The Missoula Tenants Union similarly began with a citywide effort to address affordability and strengthen tenant protections, including a less-successful campaign for tenants’ right to counsel. The Missoula group, which welcomes renters and homeowners but not landlords or property managers, is also organized as a 501(c)(4) nonprofit. Founding organizer and union steward Sapp, 31, said the Missoula Tenants Union began with informal meetings of renters that led to the idea of a union. While the group started small, it quickly snowballed, he said.  “The housing prices are getting so insane that people understand they have to do something,” Sapp said. “Whereas they might have been not super politically involved before, when it comes down to your life and to your home, you don’t have any other option than to get involved.”  While about 300 people have signed the Missoula Tenants Union’s membership form, about 100 pay dues, and about 30 are active organizers, Sapp said. About 20 to 40 people show up at the union’s monthly meetings, with about five to 10 attending new member orientations, Sapp said. Those numbers don’t include all the residents of the unionized mobile home parks. Over the last couple of years, union representatives have met with city staff and officials to discuss a tenants’ right-to-counsel program, but have been told it’s too expensive, at least at this time.  “Obviously, we do need this, but it’s our responsibility to kind of pivot and test the waters in different ways,” Sapp said. “We now know that the ingredient that might put right to counsel over the finish line next time is by having a larger base of support. And how do we get that larger base support? We help people start unions and change their quality of life in their actual properties.”  The union has “transformed” over the last year and a half with the focus on organizing individual properties, including six mobile home parks, Sapp said.   The first parks to unionize, Travois Village and Harvey’s Park, have seen the largest wins so far, with their corporate landlord, Oak Wood Ventures, negotiating a lease with the residents’ bargaining team. While other unionized parks have not had luck bringing their property owners to the bargaining table, some have seen maintenance concerns and other issues addressed, Sapp said.  Bozeman Tenants United has, in the last few years, also helped residents of apartment buildings and mobile home parks organize into their own unions to push back against rent increases, out-of-state private equity groups buying up properties and landlords continually putting off maintenance.   In 2023, BTU helped residents of the Bridger Peaks Apartments, a community for residents 55 and older, form a union to push the property management to address concerning conditions. Resident Marie Lynn, 73, told MTFP that unsafe conditions included garbage not being picked up for weeks, the outside doors not locking and the air conditioning going out in the summer.  “The seniors who live here got together and said, ‘Enough is enough,’ and brought demands to the owner and management, and now it’s a great place to live,” she said. “I’m a beneficiary here of tenant organizing.”  Last summer, the Bozeman union helped residents of the Rose Park Plaza Apartments in Billings unionize and demand that their corporate landlord, Capital Realty Group, improve their reportedly poor living conditions at the income-restricted complex. The tenants won a key demand for mold remediation, with the company paying for their hotel stays during the work, Finegan said.  The union also helped organize tenants at the King Arthur Park and Mountain Meadow Estates mobile home parks located just outside the Bozeman city limits after the parks went up for sale last July. The group’s bid to buy the park was “not even close” to those submitted by large private equity corporations, Finegan said. The King Arthur Park and Mountain Meadow Estates union, which represented about 60% of residents, then sought a lease favorable to the tenants before the sale went through. After the landlord increased the rent by about $100 per month, effective May 1, just days before the sale was finalized, enough union members agreed to withhold their rent and proceeded with a rent strike, Finegan said. “The seniors who live here got together and said, ‘Enough is enough,’ and brought demands to the owner and management, and now it’s a great place to live. I’m a beneficiary here of tenant organizing.” Bridger Peaks Apartments tenant Marie Lynn After the sale was finalized, there were threats, followed by concessions from the new owner, California-based Cabrillo Management, Finegan said. The company pushed back the rent due date, waived late fees and has been making repairs at the parks, he said. Members of the parks’ union were split on whether to escalate or take a less confrontational approach, but voted narrowly to end the strike after three weeks, Finegan said.  Some park residents have lingering concerns about how the rent strike went forward, a Mountain Meadow Estates resident told MTFP in August. The resident, who fears retaliation from BTU and asked not to be named, said only a small percentage of residents agreed to withhold their rent. Going on strike just days before the sale went through, the person added, was a “volatile” way to start a relationship with the new owner.  The resident agreed with the Bozeman union’s mission and said it has good members. Still, the person said the BTU seems to be pushing for press attention and actions to give the impression of progress and justify grant funding rather than focusing on what tenants want. Finegan told MTFP he knows some residents feel BTU was pushing an agenda by pursuing a rent strike, but that the organization did its best to support the parks’ union, with members who felt strongly about the need to strike, as well as tenants who were extremely scared to withhold rent.  “The only agenda that was ever being pushed was, ‘what is the best way to keep every single person in their homes,’ and at the end of the day, there was never a full consensus about that,” he said. For the Bozeman and Missoula unions, working with residents of mobile home parks and low-income apartment complexes has expanded their membership beyond the mostly young, college-educated original organizers.  Sapp said the Missoula Tenant Union’s “strange melting pot of people and politics” was on full display during the launch of the Katoonah Lodges mobile home park’s union last May. The 55-plus community was purchased by Texas-based Axia Realty Partners in January 2025.  During the May event, speaking to a crowd of about 50 people on a sunny spring evening, Katoonah resident Richard Wager quoted conservative activist Charlie Kirk, “we just need to start a conversation,” before describing how his rent has increased by about $250 over the last two years, while annual increases to his and his wife’s Social Security benefits haven’t kept up with rising costs.   “We have a chance to see change with a tenants’ union,” Wager told the crowd. “We need to stand in solidarity with each other across the city and parks to ensure Axia… meets us at the bargaining table. The action goes beyond political lines because we are both Democrats and Republican tenants in this park.”  Members of the King Arthur and Mountain Meadows tenant union and supporters, including Democratic Western Congressional District candidate Sam Forstag, hold a rent strike authorization press conference at King Arthur Park outside of Bozeman on May 1, 2026. Credit: Courtesy of Jered McCafferty, Bozeman Tenants United The crowd of young people who live in downtown Missoula, working people from trailer parks in the city and senior residents of Katoonah in the county have political beliefs that seem to run the gamut of American politics, Sapp said, noting that the variety is representative of the working class.  “Irrespective of people’s political beliefs going into it, we’re there because we have a class interest, which is that none of us control our housing,” Sapp said. “And all of our housing is being threatened by out-of-state, need I say more, private equity firms from Texas or from Alabama or from New York. Wherever it is, they don’t care about us. But we care about each other.”  Baltz, the law professor and co-director of the Housing Justice and Tenant Solidarity Clinic at Rutgers Law School, said the average rental property is governed by state law, though that can be complicated if the building has a federal subsidy or the landlord has a federally backed loan. Certain states, including Montana, have made it unlawful for municipalities to pass their own tenant protections, which can be a barrier, especially in more progressive cities in conservative states, he said.  While tenant unions fundamentally focus on the relationship between landlords and tenants and what’s happening in any given building, they don’t have to stop there, Baltz said.  “There are so many tenants, so they really do have the capacity to expand into all areas where political decisions touch a tenant’s life,” he said.  In Bozeman, the tenant union’s involvement was a major contributor to the success of Morrison’s 2023 mayoral campaign, which took a housing-centered approach that resonated with Bozeman voters facing a growing housing crisis and seeking new, younger leadership, Morrison said.  As mayor, Morrison meets with BTU like any other group, but said he brings an important working-class perspective to city government.  “There are some folks in Bozeman who believe there’s an emergency around too many apartments going up,” he said. “Having someone in elected office who knows that is not an emergency. An emergency is not being able to keep a roof over your head, pay your electric bill, feed yourself and your kids. It’s so important to keep that perspective of what actual pain is in our community.”  Bozeman Mayor Joey Morrison ran on a platform of protecting tenant rights. Credit: Matt Standal / MTFP Another Bozeman Tenants Union founding organizer, Katie Fire Thunder, said she is bringing a similar perspective to the state Legislature. In December 2025, the Gallatin County commissioners appointed Fire Thunder, 25, to House District 59 after Rep. Ed Stafman resigned. Fire Thunder is running to retain the seat this November. “People always write off Bozeman, ‘That place is gone, Bozangeles, it’s not a place for real Montanans,’ but real Montanans are here, and we’re still fighting for our home,” she told MTFP. “It feels hard when the money we are stacked against is so much you can’t even fathom. … The only way we win is by organizing people, getting people to show up.”  The unions’ efforts also caught the attention of Missoula-area Democrats Rep. Jonathan Karlen and Sen. Willis Curdy, whose districts include Travois Village and Katoonah Lodges.  Karlen told MTFP that the Missoula Tenants Union’s organizing efforts have made a real difference in communicating with residents and presenting a unified front while working with landlords. During the upcoming legislative session, that network will help residents get the information they need to testify, which Karlen said has been a challenge for him in the past.  While some lawmakers may be hesitant to work with the tenants’ unions, Karlen said he sees the groups as facilitators for the residents.  “When I’m at some of the meetings at parks in my district, they’re being led by residents, not by people at the tenants’ union,” he said. “The way I pitch it is, I don’t care who is involved. These are our constituents being impacted in a meaningful way, and we need to focus on the underlying issue. I’m sure some legislators will say they’re anti-landlord or whatever that might be, but I hope people can see beyond any conceptions they might have.”  Members of the Katoonah Lodges tenants union pose for a photo during the union’s launch party on May 21, 2026. Credit: Katie Fairbanks/MTFP Karlen said some legislators forget that most mobile home park residents are homeowners, and that work is needed to help protect their home investments.  “Let’s not wait until every park is owned by companies exploiting residents before we do something,” he said. “There’s a shrinking window to pass legislation that has an impact that immediate.”  The Bozeman and Missoula unions are looking toward the 2027 Montana legislative session as an opportunity to bolster the rights of tenants and mobile home owners.  Sapp said the Missoula union hopes to work with tenant-friendly lawmakers, including Karlen, who, along with Republican legislators, previously introduced legislation to provide assistance and protections to mobile home park residents with mixed results. In 2023, lawmakers passed a mobile home park resident “bill of rights” that Gov. Greg Gianforte vetoed. Similar legislation did not pass in 2025.  “The thing that’s different than last year is that we have, between us and Bozeman, probably close to 10 trailer parks that are unionized and organized,” Sapp said. “Here’s hoping that bringing hundreds and hundreds of trailer park residents for a rally on the state Capitol will make [Gianforte] want to sign the bill instead of veto it. Make them feel a little pressure.”   Missoula and Bozeman organizers said they will also continue to collaborate and aim to work with residents in other parts of the state, which will help the groups take “bigger swings” down the line, Finegan said.  Tara Raghuveer, director of the national Tenant Union Federation, of which Bozeman Tenants United is a founding member, said the “union of unions” sees Montana’s rurality as a bonus when it comes to organizing. Tenants in less-populated states have more political sway per capita than in more populous states, she said.  “People are ready to fight, and the political conditions are such that tenants could be a deciding, not just an economic and political class, but a deciding class in state and national politics,” she said. “That’s one of many reasons why we feel invested in growing the tenants unions in Montana and beyond.”   Locally and nationally, the tenants’ unions still face challenges, such as limited capacity and opposition from the real estate lobby, organizers said.  Finegan said a common misconception is that “the union hates homeowners and thinks every landlord is the devil,” but in many cases, small mom-and-pop landlords have been great union allies.  “The opponent is greed and corporations that care more about a bottom line than about people,” he said.  Katoonah Lodges residents and supports filled out postcards asking the mobile home park’s owner to bargain with the union during the union’s launch party on May 21, 2026. Credit: Katie Fairbanks/MTFP The Montana Landlords Association, which represents and advocates for landlords statewide, has no opinion on the tenants’ unions, President John Sinrud told MTFP.  Building power is the philosophy that guides union work and is one reason why tenant unions are making a difference where housing-related nonprofits cannot, Sapp said.  That feeling of empowerment and solidarity was game-changing for Hannah Robitaille, who joined the MTU in January. After experiencing housing insecurity as a child and an adult, Robitalle said the problem felt so large she didn’t know what she could do about it or that anything would make a difference. But after getting involved with the union, tangible results felt possible, as did the ripple effects of being empowered as a poor or working-class person, she said.  “When people feel like they can do something and when they feel like they’re in solidarity with each other, that feeling in their hearts is huge, and it just changes so much about their existence,” Robitaille said. “Not just the living conditions that we’re working to alter, but the connections that we make in our community, finding each other again, working together, and prioritizing all of our well-being has been really meaningful to me.”  Sapp said people come back to the union because they get something out of it, whether that’s material things or a greater feeling of connection.  “If you go to a good meeting, and you feel, when you’re leaving, you feel really empowered, in organizing spaces historically, they call that ‘good church,’ because it’s just exactly what it feels like,” he said. “You’re uniting with other people behind something bigger than you.”  The post Tenant unions grow ranks in the face of increasing rents, landlord issues appeared first on Montana Free Press. ...read more read less