Formidable Tenant Activist Michael McKee Dies at 85

Michael McKee, a fiery tenant rights activist who helped cement various rental protections for residents throughout New York, died on Oct. 21 of brain cancer in his Manhattan apartment at the age of 85. His husband, Eric Stenshoel, made the announcement.

McKee’s 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 West 17th Street. He was a film editor at the time.

After a boiler blew in 1970, and remained out of commission, 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.

Yet McKee was not satisfied with simply organizing his own building, and instead joined the Metropolitan Council of Housing to help organize others.

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.

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.

Upper West Side City Council Member Gale Brewer mourned McKee in her newsletter, calling him a “mensch” who devoted his life to helping people. “He had a deep knowledge about housing issues that no one else could replicate,” Brewer wrote in her epitaph to McKee. “‘He had a wonderful ‘happy warrior’ attitude that assured tenants and tenant associations that they had rights that could be activated if they followed certain procedures. He was never wrong.”

The Chelsea Democratic Reform Club, which noted that McKee had called the neighborhood home since 1966, issued a similarly effusive statement: “Mike wasn’t 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.”

Praise rolled in from the East Side as well. “Mike was an indomitable force, never giving up no matter how many times tenants were betrayed by Albany and screwed by the real estate industry,” Stuyvesant Town—Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association President Susan Steinberg said.

Steinberg said he had worked with the association in 2006-2007, when then City Council Member—and now Planning Commissioner Dan Garodnick—helped head an ultimately unsuccessful drive to buy the sprawling apartment complex.

“Those who knew him relied on his long memory of events, his encyclopedic knowledge of all things housing and his savvy suggestions for advancing tenant protections. We will miss him,” the Tenants Association added.

In 2006, Congressman Jerry Nadler sang his praises on the floor of Congress, just as the NY state legislature was pushing efforts to end rent control and rent stabilization laws.

“His combination of committed leadership and innovative organizing has grown the tenant movement into the important force it is today,” Nadler said in his floor speech. “Few activists have proven as forward-thinking and savvy as Mr. McKee.”

“Mr. McKee has been not just a key strategist in many of the battles New York City tenants have faced over 30 years, but also a graceful public face,” he added.

In an Instagram post peppered with numerous photos of the two of them locked in a warm embrace, City Council Member Erik Bottcher called McKee a “giant” in the tenant rights movement, as well as a “dear friend and a mentor.”

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’s and master’s, from Baylor University and Middlebury College.

According to the New York Times, which pinned McKee as a cinephile who 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’d had enough of his broken window, and the rest is history.