Michael McKee, a fiery tenant rights activist that helped cement various rental protections for residents throughout New York, has died of brain cancer in his Manhattan apartment at the age of 85. His husband Eric Stenshoel made the announcement.<\/p>\n
McKee\u2019s defining foray into collectively agitating for better housing conditions began in 1969, when his landlord refused to mend a broken window in his apartment on W. 17th Street. He was a film editor at the time.<\/p>\n
After a boiler blew in 1970, and remained that way, McKee and his fellow tenants began withholding rent; their strike would lead to the first collective bargaining contract between renters and landlords in NYC, signed in 1977. The agreement was very favorable for Mckee and his fellow renters, and they eventually purchased the building outright and converted it into a co-op.<\/p>\n
Yet McKee was not satisfied with simply organizing his own building, and instead joined the Metropolitan Council of Housing to help organize others.<\/p>\n
When the Republican-controlled assembly in Albany pushed to phase out rent-stabilization laws in the early 1970s, McKee was spurred into creating his own tenant coalition, which evolved into the nonprofit organization Tenants & Neighbors. He also created a school for tenant organizers and helmed the Tenants Political Action Committee, which focused on elections.<\/p>\n
He went on to amass a string of victories for renters, such as preventing senior citizens from being slapped with rent hikes and strengthening eviction protections. He also expanded rent regulation to elsewhere in New York State, making him an organizer to reckon with beyond the five boroughs.<\/p>\n
Upper West Side City Council Member Gale Brewer mourned McKee in her newsletter, calling him a \u201cmensch\u201d that devoted his life to helping people. \u201cHe had a deep knowledge about housing issues that no one else could replicate,\u201d Brewer said wrote in her epitaph to McKee. \u201c\u2018He had a wonderful \u2018happy warrior\u2019 attitude that assured tenants and tenant associations that they had rights that could be activated if they followed certain procedures. He was never wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Chelsea Democratic Reform Club, which noted that McKee called the neighborhood home since 1966, issued a similarly effusive statement: \u201cMike wasn\u2019t just a statewide tenant leader; he was our neighbor. His organizing took root in the apartment houses and walk-ups of our community, where he turned frightened tenants into informed associations and kitchen-table meetings into durable power.\u201d<\/p>\n
In an Instagram post peppered with numerous photos of the two of them locked in a warm embrace, City Council Member Erik Bottcher called him a \u201cgiant\u201d in the tenant rights movement, as well as a \u201cdear friend and a mentor.\u201d<\/p>\n
McKee was born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1939. His birth name was Jay Edwin McKee, in honor of his father, a lieutenant colonel in the military; he changed it to Michael not long after arriving in New York. He held degrees in French, both bachelor\u2019s and Master\u2019s, from Baylor University and Middlebury College.<\/p>\n
According to the New York Times, which pinned McKee as a cinephile that spent a solid chunk of a youthful stint in France at the movie theater, he also had jobs at a dance company and an advertising agency after moving back stateside. Then, he decided he\u2019d had enough of his broken window, and the rest is history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael McKee, a fiery tenant rights activist that helped cement various rental protections for residents throughout New York,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20592,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135,13893],"class_list":["post-20591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news","tag-tenant-activist"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}