Lorraine Key (1921-2008)
Member of the Campaign for Renters Rights
On Wednesday morning CRR treasurer, Karen Harper, called Lorraine Key to talk to her about a rental issue. She instead spoke to her close friend Janet, who told her that Lorraine had died that morning.
Lorraine was loved by her fellow tenants, neighbors and activists. She was a tough Brooklynite with a powerful sense of humor and a great sense of her rights. She did not put up with bullying or harassment and fought every attempt to put her down. Last month she told us, animatedly, how she had reprimanded her landlord for saying they were going to allow her to stay. “Allow me to stay?” she later reported, “I told them, you’re not allowing me anything. I am not leaving this apartment.” Unable to walk any great distances, at age 83, she rode in the pickup truck on the CRR’s Save Section 8 “float” on the July 4th parade in Alameda, where we gave out 3,000 flyers. Lorraine was a good working class fighter.
She lived a colorful life, growing up during the depression and visiting pre-revolutionary Havana in the 1950s. She moved to California in the following decade. For thirty years Lorraine worked as a union waitress at the bourgeois Claremont Hotel.
Lorraine, 87, suffered a stroke two years ago but managed to stay in her apartment on Section 8. She moved into her apartment in 1966 and was covered by the rent control law that was passed in Oakland. On three occasions the Campaign for Renters Rights fought attempted evictions against Lorraine. Each new landlord salivated at the opportunity to get her out and raise the rent substancially.
It could be said that every attempted eviction helped kill Lorraine, but her tenacity to fight also strengthened her will to go on. The last time I spoke to Lorraine was on Saturday night when she mentioned her new landlord was trying to add the garbage bill onto her rent. This for someone with very little income and little to spare. Lorraine was at times a little prickly, but she was never selfish.
Her neighbors regularly visited her, cleaned her apartment, took her shopping and generally looked out for her. Her frailty, as a person nearing 90-years, seemed to arouse a strong comradery and community for those that lived in her environment. The consistent greediness and self-obsessed nature of Lorraine’s landlords was a dramatic contrast to the decency and willingness to give that was Lorraine.
When she died, Lorraine had been a tenant of her apartment complex for over 41 years. She joined the CRR in 2002 attending dozens of meetings. Following our first victory against an eviction attempt Lorraine wrote the CRR a letter, ending it, “Thank you again my dear friends. Call on me if I can do anything for anyone except get up and give a speech. All my love, Lorraine.”
During the bumpy period this summer when her landlord was foreclosed on, the tenants pulled together a united front and forced the bank to be cautious about any evictions or other attacks. On this occasion we made a statement to Lorraine that the CRR has never made to any tenant. Given her health, we said to her that “the CRR will not allow you to be evicted. It will not happen.” In 10 years of campaigning we have never told a tenant that. But we were serious. It was also a huge comfort to Lorraine.
Lorraine made it known that she wanted her ashes spread on the neighbor’s back yard where two of her small dogs were buried. She could not afford a funeral and asked that any memorial for her not be religious. Lorraine’s fortitude, principals and warmth will be missed by all her fought on her side.
A Memorial will be held for Lorraine on Monday.
Rob Rooke
Campaign For Renters Rights 510 595-5545
No comments:
Post a Comment