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North Carolina Tenants Union is building tenant power across the state by organizing apartment complexes, fighting rent increases, winning critical repairs, and helping tenants stop the privatization of public housing.<\/p>\n
I spoke with Organizing Director Hailey Huget about how the organization adapted Action Builder<\/a> for tenant organizing, similarities and differences between labor and tenant campaigns, and why tracking apartment units is just as important as tracking people when it comes to tenant organizing.<\/p>\n My name is Hailey Huget, and I\u2019m the Organizing Director for the North Carolina Tenants Union. We are a statewide tenant union made up of local tenant unions in cities across North Carolina.<\/p>\n We\u2019re focused on apartment complexes where folks share the same landlord and can be brought together to put pressure on that landlord to win things like critical repairs, stopping rent increases, and stopping the sale of buildings that were public housing to private developers. We also focus on policy campaigns that are oriented toward improving the rights of renters in North Carolina.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve been in labor for a long time, and that was really how I made my way into organizing. I organized my workplace in DC, fell in love with it, and then realized, \u2018I\u2019m going to be a professional organizer.\u2019 I\u2019ve caught the bug.<\/p>\n We ended up moving down here [to North Carolina], and, for several years, I stayed working for a labor union, doing tech worker organizing. While I was doing tech organizing professionally, I was a volunteer involved in the local Winston-Salem tenant union, which is called Housing Justice Now.<\/p>\n I realized there are a lot of similarities between the craft of labor organizing and tenant organizing, and I just kind of fell in love with it and really fell in love with the organization of North Carolina Tenants Union.<\/p>\n I used Action Builder in the labor context before coming to the tenant union. But in\u00a0 tenant organizing, a person\u2019s address is much more essential information about them. Not just a person\u2019s address, but mapping out all of the units in a complex and their status is very important.<\/p>\n So one of the ways we\u2019ve adapted the platform for our purposes is instead of just tracking people as an entity, we also have units as an entity that we\u2019re tracking.<\/p>\n We\u2019ll have canvassers go to a property, and they\u2019ll knock on a door, and then when they get that kind of hollow ringing sound and no one appears to live there, they can mark the unit status in ActionBuilder as \u2018vacant.\u2019<\/p>\n Or, you knock on a door, someone opens it a crack, and they are like, \u2018I don\u2019t want to talk to you,\u2019 and then they shut it.<\/p>\n If you didn\u2019t get their name, you can\u2019t actually put them as a person in Action Builder, but you can put whatever their unit number is, marked \u2018Do not knock\u2019 or \u2018Refused to speak.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cOne of our organizers credits Action Builder with helping us make our campaigns much more systematic.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s really helpful to track vacancies in a complex to assess a landlord\u2019s plans for the complex.\u00a0<\/p>\n If they\u2019re letting a lot of units remain vacant for a long time and systematically not filling empty units, that can be a signal that they\u2019re intending to sell the building or, if it\u2019s public housing, it can be a signal of an intent to privatize.<\/p>\n Thousands of Google Sheets. Literally a nightmare. And you\u2019re not just inputting them into a sheet, but the sheet that you\u2019re using for that canvass might not speak to the other Google sheet you had for last month\u2019s canvass or yesterday\u2019s canvass. So just lots of de-duping and indexing and nightmarish situations that arise from the many out-of-date, duplicate Google Sheets.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not really a method, it\u2019s more of just chaos, like piles of paper on a table.<\/p>\n One of our organizers credits Action Builder with helping us make our campaigns much more systematic and with some recent successes that we\u2019ve had with campaigns in Durham, where that person organizes.<\/p>\n \u201cOne other thing we\u2019ve been able to make really good use of is the Action Network integration. It\u2019s just been an incredible game changer, honestly, to have the platforms talk to each other.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I\u2019d say don\u2019t be afraid to lean on your support person to help you configure it. [Senior Partner Success Specialist] Jenn Diagostino was so helpful and really super, super creative.<\/p>\n I would just show her spreadsheets of the information that we would be capturing and she was like, \u2018OK, I have a workaround.\u2019<\/p>\n So just not being afraid to say, \u2018Here\u2019s what we\u2019re doing now and what we need.\u2019 There will be workarounds available.<\/p>\n One other thing we\u2019ve been able to make really good use of is the Action Network integration. That has been extremely helpful for automating various processes that would have taken a lot of time before.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s just been an incredible game changer, honestly, to have the platforms talk to each other.<\/p>\n If they\u2019re a renter in North Carolina who wants to organize their own building, then they should go to the website and fill out our interest form<\/a>, and we\u2019ll reach out soon.<\/p>\n For folks who aren\u2019t in North Carolina or who aren\u2019t renting, the best way is to donate<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tenant organizing is tricky, especially in our case. Most of the tenants that we organize with are in public housing or other forms of federally subsidized housing, and they are paying member dues to the organization. It\u2019s wonderful, and it\u2019s great that they are eager to pay dues, but also those amounts added up are not going to fully fund the organization in the way that labor union dues will fund staff positions [in a labor union]. So donating is really important.<\/p>\n You can read more about the North Carolina Tenants Union here.<\/a> Click here to donate to support their work.<\/a>You can learn more about Action Builder here<\/a>, sign up for a live demo here<\/a>, or email us at join@actionbuilder.org to get started using the tool.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" North Carolina Tenants Union is building tenant power across the state by organizing apartment complexes, fighting rent increases, winning critical repairs, and helping tenants stop the privatization of public housing. I spoke with Organizing Director Hailey Huget about how the organization adapted Action Builder for tenant organizing, similarities and differences between labor and tenant campaigns, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7028457,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[181823],"tags":[6336,3767,8136,14206,9809,843,4839,16570,5296,32744,10855],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7028456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-partner-interviews","tag-action","tag-blog","tag-builder","tag-carolina","tag-network","tag-north","tag-organize","tag-renters","tag-state","tag-tenants","tag-union"],"yoast_head":"\nCan you introduce yourself and tell us a little about the organization?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/actionnetwork.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/IMG_9900-2.jpg\")
How did you find yourself in tenant organizing?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Action Builder was originally designed for labor organizing. How have you adapted it for tenant organizing?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
What does that look like in practice?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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Why makes tracking units strategically important?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/actionnetwork.blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/101_IMG_2399-1-2x1-1.jpg\")
What did tenant organizing look like before Action Builder?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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What advice would you give tenant organizations considering Action Builder?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
How can people support the North Carolina Tenants Union?<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Thank you to Hailey for taking the time to speak with us about your work and Action Builder! <\/h4>\n