“We organize tenants at the building level, at the neighborhood level, and citywide…fighting the forces of capital…writing and passing policy that changes the structure of the world that our people get to live in.”

2021 BIOGRAPHY

Tara Raghuveer is the director and co-founder of KC Tenants, the citywide tenant union in Kansas City. KC Tenants is led by a multigenerational, multiracial, anti-racist base of poor and working-class tenants, organizing to ensure that everyone in Kansas City has a safe, accessible, and truly affordable home. KC Tenants includes over 450 leaders and a membership of over 4000 tenants in Kansas City.

In 2019, KC Tenants wrote and won a tenants bill of rights and took on a major out-of-town evictor. In 2020, KC Tenants pushed the city to fund the implementation of the tenants bill of rights, won a temporary local eviction moratorium, launched a tenant hotline, organized statewide for COVID-19 relief and intervened in thousands of evictions. In 2021, KC Tenants organized tenant unions across the city, developed a proposal for a People’s Housing Trust Fund, convened tenants impacted by COVID-19 evictions to fight for their rights, and much more.

Tara guides KC Tenants strategy and supports a powerful team of organizers to implement the vision that comes from the organization’s leaders. Tara has studied evictions in Kansas City since 2013, leading the Kansas City Eviction Project. In addition to local tenant organizing, Tara is the Homes Guarantee campaign director at People’s Action, a national network of grassroots organizations. Previously, she organized in the immigrant rights movement. Tara is an Australian-born Indian American immigrant who was raised in the Kansas City area, on the Kansas side of the state line.