He was bracing for the battle of his life.
In July of 2021, a group of Bourma's neighbors gathered in a courtyard of their home at Southern Towers, a 60-year-old complex of five apartment buildings in Northern Virginia. The group was organizing against their landlord.
Bourma told the crowd that this was their time to fight back. Corporations are not here to help us. They come here to invest their money, make some money, and then leave.
A Los Angeles-based real-estate owner-operator run by a pair of former Israeli paratroopers and a veteran of the junk-bond pioneer bought Southern Towers in August 2020. In keeping with one of the hottest trends in real estate, big investors are buying multi-unit properties for their rent potential at a time of faster inflation.
A representative of the firm said that they had a vision to meet the needs of the greater Washington community with the Towers joining a range of office, hotel, and apartment assets owned by the firm.
During a nationwide ban on evictions, tenants received eviction notices instead of improvements and upgrades. Many African immigrants who have grown to love the community were worried by their landlord's agenda. In favor of the 25,000 Amazon employees who would soon work at the company's planned second headquarters, they wondered ifCIM wanted them gone.
Bourma told Insider in December that they love this area, even though they want to quit and move.
Bourma and his neighbors wanted to prevent their landlords from brushing them away. They made political appeals and participated in public protests in front of the Towers.
The new strategy was to follow the money.
African Communities Together started sending letters to pension funds that have billions of dollars tied up in CIM projects. Bourma spoke to the pension board about landlord neglect.
A Boston University law professor who focuses on shareholder activism said that public pensions are a critical funding source for private institutional investors.
The tactic is paying dividends. In July, residents of Southern Towers had their first private meeting with CIM and an observer from the Pennsylvania Public School Employees' Retirement System pension fund.
There were two more meetings that resulted in concessions from CIM, including a temporary rent cap and a timetable for repairs to broken elevators. Tenants say the measures are half measures.
Insider talked to some tenants. Some people asked that their last names be kept out of the public eye because of professional consequences. Two former CIM property managers and two witnesses to discussions between CIM and investors at a professional conference asked for anonymity because of the possibility of being retaliated against. Insider knows their names.
Many of the demands of the tenants are still outstanding. A state with relatively weak rent laws has been able to capture the attention of the company. Except for San Francisco, landlords don't have to bargain with tenant associations.
Bourma said in December that it was a win for a landlord to make them come to the table. To have them listen to what we have to say is a win.
Rents are hitting all-time highs just as inflation adds to the cost of everyday items in the US.
Multi-unit investment reached a record high of $335 billion in 2021. Big-money investors are pumping billions into the sector, leaving many renters to find that their new landlord is a Wall Street giant that makes a lot of money from its investments.
Tenants and landlords are on a collision course due to that. What's to come across America could be a result of the fight between the Southern Towers tenants and the CIM.
The working class in Alexandria, Virginia, is a haven for Southern Towers' five 16-story buildings. Three-quarters of their tenants were people of color in 2020. Most of the immigrants are from African countries.
A company representative said that the company wants to keep Southern Towers as "quality workforce housing" in the area. The person said it's part of the strategy of enhancing communities with properties from affordable housing to data centers.
The southern towers were already in a bad state. Tenants had been asking for a rent freeze. When it bought the properties, it did so at a reduced price. The investor was going to make a significant investment into the properties when it struck the deal.
The deal was financed with a 10-year loan from Freddie Mac. The Korean Teachers' Credit Union put the total amount of money involved in the deal at $700 million, with almost $200 million of that going to the Towers.
The terms of the deal were favorable. The property's condition was not the same as the other one.
The former property manager said that the situation faced by the company was caused by buying a lemon. It wasn't just a lemon, they didn't realize it. It was not good.
During the 1990s, the former manager visited a family member in the towers. The manager said that most things seemed worse, with leaks, mold, and "insectations" of roaches and mice so large that they looked like inflatables.
It was almost like a death scene in a scary movie when I walked into some of those apartments. It's similar to someone coming out of the closet and killing you.
There was a dark mold around the heating units of five apartments that Insider saw during a visit to Southern Towers in July. The mother said that her son was sick for much of the winter because he was pregnant with another child.
The environmental assessment done at the time of the purchase found no mold issues on the campus, according to the representative.
Tenants who weren't native English speakers complained that they weren't taken seriously. Laila said that if she didn't like the conditions in her apartment, she could move to a more expensive apartment or leave.
Tenants faced difficulties in paying rent early in the coronaviruses epidemic because their jobs were disrupted or they had to quit. Bourma was laid off in the spring of 2020.
The US government tried to make up for the economic pain. The anti-eviction policies were adopted by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. The Rent Relief Program was launched in June 2020.
According to an Insider evaluation of a study commissioned by African Communities Together, more than 10% of all households were affected by eviction in the first six months of ownership by the company.
More than 500 measures were filed against these households, with many of them having multiple proceedings filed against them. The study shows that Southern Towers was just a small part of the city's rental stock.
The Towers had an actual eviction rate of just 0.41% and 0.78%) in the years of 2020 and 2021, compared with the city's rate of 1.62%.
The eviction notices had a significant impact on the community even though they were not able to kick anyone out for not paying rent. Tenants who were unaware of their rights or were afraid of going to court left the towers after receiving a notice.
Bourma said that immigrants get scared if they are told to go to court.
Billions of dollars have been invested in real estate by the pension funds. Some of these funds were sent a letter earlier this year, asking them to intervene and make sure that they don't "displace immigrant residents" and that it provides "livable conditions."
Bourma spoke at a PSERS public forum in June. PSERS gave the group $250 million for an infrastructure fund earlier in the year The tenants were fighting.
According to an excerpted recording of the meeting, Bourma said that they were pushing them out of the place they had built for years.
The pressure seemed to work. The tenants won a seat at the table with executives from the company. They wanted a more compassionate attitude from the building staff and a pause in evictions.
There were disagreements. At the first meeting, the company said it had filed evictions to help tenants apply for Rent Relief Program. Tenants didn't like the explanation because they weren't required to file evictions. They said their credit was ruined.
The back and forth continued over two more meetings and culminated with some concessions fromCIM: a short-term cap on rent increases, more money for pest removal and lobby staff, and frequent efforts to gather feedback from tenants.
Bourma was keeping up with the pressure. The tension can boil over in public forums.
Bourma was on a panel about ethical housing investment at a gathering of the council of institutional investors. He described the issues he and other tenants faced in an appeal to the conscience of investors who he hoped would factor social and governance issues into their investment decisions.
It was time for Jerry Thomas to set the record straight after he showed up unexpectedly. Two audience members who were not affiliated with the tenants were jarred by the aggressive tone of the flyers distributed by Thomas after he disagreed with Bourma's characterizations.
Thomas' behavior was dismissed as unsurprising by a representative of the company.
Tenants of the Southern Towers are not the only ones following the money. The Minnesota State Board of Investment will have to review its relationship with a private-equity firm that has worked with Pretium because of poor living conditions and high fees. In California, there have been similar scenes.
Tension is growing between renters and landlords with Wall Street connections. The Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority bought properties in Cincinnati to prevent them from being sold to out-of-town investors. A group of tenants from across the country organized by advocacy group People's Action pushed the White House to pass a pro-tenant executive order that would boost federal oversight of institutional landlords. Rent control and tenant rights laws have been passed thanks to tenant movements.
In December, Bourma told Insider that he had seen some improvement. The air-conditioning unit and a few other tenants have been cleaned of mold.
The company says it worked individually with its renters over specific issues. It cited a high level of recent lease renewals and a building survey as signs of satisfaction, but only a fraction of the complex had responded to the survey.
Bourma and the tenants aren't happy. The back door of a building that was broken during Insider's visit is still broken today. The fight will drag on because of this.
Bourma said they were not going to leave. We are going to keep putting pressure on. We need a place to live that is peaceful.
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