The FBI cut the phone lines during the 1977 disability rights sit-in. Then they turned off the hot water.
They locked the doors from the outside. One hundred and fifty people were trapped on the fourth floor. Half of them used wheelchairs. The government assumed they would leave.
Kitty Cone was thirty-three. She had muscular dystrophy. Her muscles were failing, but her logistics were flawless. She knew how to organize people.
The federal government had promised to sign regulations protecting disabled Americans from discrimination. The policy was known as Section 504. They printed the promise on paper. Then they stalled. Without a signature, it was just typography.
The protesters entered the regional Health, Education, and Welfare building in San Francisco on a Tuesday morning. They took the elevators to the director's office. They brought sleeping bags and catheters. They informed the staff they were not leaving until the law was signed.
By sunset, the police surrounded the exits. Kitty sat near the windows. She organized the floor plan. She assigned committees for security and sanitation. She kept her medication in a small cooler.
According to federal memorandums released decades later, the strategy to end the occupation relied on medical attrition. The building was not equipped for long-term habitation. The FBI calculated that a population requiring ventilators, specialized diets, and daily medical aides would voluntarily evacuate if the environment became sufficiently hostile. They instituted a blockade.
The blockade went into effect immediately. No food deliveries allowed. No medical supplies permitted through the lobby. Guards stood at the main doors checking identification.
Kitty's muscles deteriorated faster under the physical strain. She couldn't walk. When the phone lines went dead, the fourth floor lost contact with the press. The government waited for the quiet.
Kitty dropped to the floor. She realized the barricades were designed for standing adults. The police had blocked the hallways at waist height. They hadn't blocked the linoleum.
The floors were covered in cigarette ash and spilled coffee. She dragged her body through it. She crawled under the barricades to reach the restricted elevator shafts and unguarded offices.
She carried notes in her pockets. She found a single working payphone the FBI missed. She called the local news desks. She called the mayor's office.
She crawled back. When her arms failed, someone pulled her by her ankles. The Black Panthers heard the news reports. They crossed the police lines with hot meals. The FBI could not stop them without a riot.
They shut off the elevators, so she crawled.
The occupation lasted twenty-five days. It remains the longest non-violent occupation of a federal building in American history. On April 28, the Secretary of HEW signed the regulations without a single alteration.
The protesters left the building the next morning. They went back to their apartments. The Rehabilitation Act regulations laid the groundwork for every accessibility law that followed. The HEW building still stands on United Nations Plaza. The elevators run on a schedule. The doors are heavy glass.
Kitty Cone: the woman who crawled under the barricades.
I love lying to my landlord. âWeâre currently looking at a comparable unit in the area at $[a hundred dollars less than our current rent]/month, so if your offer has any flexibility to come down on the rent, that would help us reach a decision about whether or not to renew our lease hereâ and the comparable unit exists only in my own beautiful mind
Actually, no! And since several people have replied asked for my script for negotiating lower rent, Iâm gonna share that below, as well as the philosophy behind it. Full disclosure that Iâm not a leasing office person or a realtor or god forbid, a landlordâIâm just someone who has been a renter for 10+ years across different states, and I know for a fact that I have saved myself thousands of dollars by successfully negotiating a lower monthly rent on almost every lease Iâve ever signed. (Also, Iâve only ever rented in the U.S., so this advice may not be as applicable elsewhere.)
Step 0: Know Thy Enemy
The key thing to understand about all residential landlords, whether theyâre corporate conglomerates or Just Some Asshole, is that their assetâthe propertyâis a Cinderella carriage that magically turns back into an expensive ass pumpkin of a liability any time itâs sitting empty. The property taxes, insurance, mortgage, HOA fees, and maintenance costs all still come due every month/quarter/year whether they have a tenant to cover it all and then some, or not.Â
Because of this, at the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to fill every unit at all times with someone who will reliably pay the rent on time and in full. And because everything else is secondary to that goalâand because with the exception of Just Some Asshole landlords, the person responding to your emails and writing up your lease paperwork is several degrees of separation removed from the shareholders who profit off your rent moneyâtheyâre almost always willing to negotiate with you. As long as it gets the liability converted into an asset faster or keeps the carriage from turning back into a pumpkin for longer, then in the long run, itâs actually in their best interest to give you a better price.Â
Step 1: Identify Your Leverage
If you understand how supply and demand works, you can figure out how much leverage you have pretty easily. High supply and low demand = you have more leverage, and vice versa. Do they have an âAVAILABLE NOW - MOVE IN TODAYâ sandwich board on the sidewalk or a web banner that says âFirst month freeâ? Does their website and/or Apartments.com show a bunch of currently open listings? Do you already live there and know at least two families on your floor have moved out in the last several months with no one new moving in to replace them? These are all indications that they have more than one unit currently sitting empty, meaning higher supply and lower demand. No sandwich board and a website that just says âcall for availabilityâ? They might just suck at marketing, but more likely, supply is lower and demand is higher.Â
You have the least leverage if youâre a prospective tenant looking to move in somewhere that has a waitlist. They have no reason to offer you a discount if six other people are already in line to pay full price for apartments that arenât even vacant yet (but you can still ask!). You also have no leverage to negotiate if youâve already signed a lease and youâre in the middle of the lease period; you legally agreed to pay $X/month for Y months, so youâre stuck with that until the lease is up.
At the other end of the spectrum, you have the most leverage if youâre a current tenant who has always paid your rent on time and youâre being offered a renewal on your existing lease with higher rent than you're currently paying, especially if they already have some units that have been empty for a while. If you move out, not only is your unit going to sit vacant for at least part of a month, theyâre also probably going to have to put in some work to âturnâ the unit (repainting, professional cleaning, etc) to get it in move-in condition for the next tenant.
All of this means that if you move out, even if they can fleece you out of your security deposit and find a new tenant the very next month, itâs still gonna cost them at least a few thousand dollars to turn that pumpkin back into a carriage again. Theyâre probably willing to come down by $100-$200/month or so on the renewal offer rent if you ask, because they know itâll actually save them money in the long run. Similar situation if youâre a prospective new tenantâif they canât get you or anyone else to sign a lease and move in this month, thatâs $[whatever the monthly rent is] down the drain, and theyâll never get it back. Itâs a perishable item about to spoil.Â
Step 2: Get Their Opening Offer
This is the first number theyâll quote you for the rentâthe sticker price that youâve always just accepted as set in stone. The truth is, theyâve built some buffer into that number. Thereâs almost always some room for them to come down, and depending on your leverage, they will if you ask nicely. But for reasons that baffle me, most people donât!
Step 3: Wait, Research, & Counter
Donât reply to their initial offer right awayâunless thereâs a waitlist (in which case, you have little haggling power anyway), wait a few days. It makes them sweat a bit, and it shows you arenât desperate. The person who is rushing to reply is not the one who has more leverage in the negotiation, and making them wait reminds them of that. In the meantime, use Apartments.com or Zillow to get an idea of what similar units in the same area are currently going for. Then you come up with your counteroffer.
As a general rule, anything more than about 20-25% below their opening offer (or below market rates) will probably just piss them off or make them take you less seriously. But when weâre talking about your monthly rent over the course of a year or two, even a 10% discount adds up to a lot of money!
When I negotiated our original lease for my current place, I also asked for and got a two year lease term instead of the standard one year. But whatever automated calendar event system they use to remind their leasing office staff when itâs time to send out renewal offers didnât get the memo about that, so they mistakenly sent me a renewal offer the following year, meaning I got to see how much they would have jacked up the rent if they couldâve. For that second year of the lease alone, my negotiating saved us $3,000!Â
Step 4: BDE (Big Dick Emailing)Â
Hereâs the tricky part. You need to write an emailâalways negotiate over email if you can, itâs too easy for a salesperson to bowl you over on the phone and anything they say that isnât in writing means nothingâwhich simultaneously makes it sound like you would sign a lease with them in a heartbeat and like you are actively flirting with five other apartment complexes right now who all want you so bad it makes them look stupid, because you are just so sexy and fun and your credit score is eight inches flaccid. You need to make them believe you are both highly motivated and ready to sign on the dotted line and willing to just walk away from the table at any second, but if they could just come down a little bit on that number, youâd delete those other hoesâ numbers forever! Hereâs the rough script I use every time:
â Thank you for [your email/the tour/sending over the offer letter/etc]. I have had a chance to review and consider it. I think [name of apartment complex] would be the perfect fit for me, but I am also exploring and touring other options in the area, including a comparable unit nearby at $[a little below your counteroffer number]/month.
If we could come down to $[your counteroffer number]/month on the rent, I would be prepared to sign the lease today. Let me know your thoughts. Thanks! "
Step 6: You Win Either Way
Sometimes they really do just accept your counteroffer without question and send you over a revised lease to sign. (When this happens, I make a note for next time that my counteroffer was probably too high and I shouldâve asked for more!) More often, they get approval from The Powers That Be and come back with a number thatâs higher than your counteroffer but lower than their initial offer. Assuming I can afford it, I always accept this offer; youâve achieved your goal of saving yourself money from sticker price, and theyâre likely to lose patience if they have to keep going around and around with you. And sometimes (though only very rarely), they may come back and say the price is firmâin which case, guess what? You still didnât lose anything by asking!
THIS!!! Exactly this. I didnât mention it above because I just couldnât fit it neatly anywhere, but once while negotiating a lease renewal, I got as far as receiving their counteroffer, which was basically âprice firm :(â, but then life happened, so I forgot to respond and accept. The email sat in my inbox for a week. And then, completely unprompted, they magically replied again saying, âactually, nvm, howâs $[number that is lower than our opening offer] sound?â
To them, it looked like I was staring them down cold as ice like
I was literally just busy with other stuff! and they were sweating!!! BULLETS!!!
What they aren't telling these kids that's really dangerous is that if you do make it all the way to the heart of a Scientology building, the autosave will lock you into entering the Tom Cruise boss fight chamber, and you won't be able to leave until you defeat him in combat.
Fun fact: due to the ongoing financial support from the people of tumblr, critically endangered pygmy raccoons being rehabbed in Cozumel are now able to get vaccines for deadly diseases like distemper and rabies before they are released.
Yeah so tumblr has actually raised thousands of dollars for direct conservation actions to conserve the critically endangered pygmy raccoon. Some things funded include:
Necropsies
Veterinary care and lab tests for sick animals
Food for animals in rehab
Gas money to go rescue animals in trouble after hours when my partner doesnât have access to the work van
A small plot of land to start building outdoor rehab enclosures on and potentially house long term residents
random anecdote for father's day: one time during a long car ride my dad asked me, "you're familiar with Murphy's Law, right?" and i was like "isn't that the one about how anything that can go wrong will go wrong?" and he said "yeah, exactly" and i said "why do you ask?" and he went "well, have you heard of Cole's Law?" and i said "no, actually, what's that?" and he said "it's mostly lettuce and carrots with a little dressing mixed in"
a lil tomato soup made from roast tomato, onion, garlic and bell pepper with a lil grill ches. regular marble cheddar, some farmers market truffle cheddar, and a lil pickle for the filling. bread is a sourdough pullman's loaf recipe of my own design
man it is SO funny that everyone's still cycling this post considering that the meal poisoned the shit out of me
turns out the bread i baked there had started to mold, the cheddar cheese had started to mold, and the chicken stock I used for the soup's best before date was over a year ago. I found all of this out a day or so later and I'm now still dealing with the gastroenteritis symptoms
taking T has informed my opinion of the strength gap stuff, because I definitely build extra muscle just lying about doing jack shit, and my arms feels harder and more full, BUT I am still 90% weaker than my girl friend who has random cantelope biceps for no reason. so it's kinda like, testosterone will give you a little stool to stand on, but there are ladies out there born with full on ladders. and that's so great.
you have to love trans women more than you hate transmisogyny, you have to love jews more than you hate antisemitism, you have to love Black people more than you hate white supremacy, you have to love Indigenous people more than you hate colonialism, you have to love the disabled and mentally ill more than you hate ableism, you have to love. you have to love.
We can make it up again @gendergod - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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