Pictorial History of the Tenant Movement

21. The small landlords, who typically owned the buildings housing poor tenants, were now pressured by sharp increases in fuel costs and the specter of encroaching abandonment. Their organization, the American Property Rights Association, fixed the blame for their shrinking profit margins on rent regulations and the politicians who supported them. Lacking the funds of the real estate organizations representing larger operators, they utilized such grass roots strategies as demonstrations. Illustration 21 pictures a demonstration during fall 1976, which was part of a campaign, coordinated by several diverse real estate groups, aimed at persuading the legislature to allow the Emergency Tenant Protection Act to lapse in 1977. Photo by Laureanne Pare.