The National Tenants Bill of Rights is a campaign, not a statute.

NLIHC’s factsheet lists seven headings: a fair application; a fair lease; freedom from discrimination and harassment; a habitable home; reasonable rent and costs; the right to organize; and safeguards against evictions. Those are campaign headings. They are not the seven protected classes in the Fair Housing Act, and they are not a substitute for ORS Chapter 90 or the California Civil Code.

NLIHC wrote the proposal with tenant leaders, legal-aid experts, and advocates. That is a policy process, not a legislature. Their page describes a proposal meant to protect the people who rent their homes — NLIHC publishes its own national renter count there; we cite the campaign, we do not repeat the figure as ours. The primary sources live on nlihc.org/national-tenants-bill-rights. Cite those if you are writing about the campaign. Cite your state chapter if you are deciding what to do tonight.

When a site quotes the Bill of Rights as if it already binds your landlord, that site is mixing advocacy with law. This classroom keeps them apart.

Freedom from discrimination in housing is already federal law: the Fair Housing Act, enforced by HUD. File at hud.gov/reporthousingdiscrimination. Many states and cities add classes the federal Act does not name.

A habitable home is already a state-law duty in most of the country — implied warranty of habitability, or a statutory equivalent. The exact list (heat, water, structure) is in your state chapter, sometimes with a city housing code on top. We name the chapter. We do not reprint the temperature.

Safeguards against eviction already exist as court procedure. In almost every state, a landlord completes a lockout through a court case and a law-enforcement officer — not by changing the locks. That is why a notice is not an eviction. The campaign wants more: right to counsel, just cause, longer notices. Some cities already have pieces of that. Most of the country does not.

The right to organize is already protected in some states and in much federally assisted housing. It is not a universal private-market right. Confirm the housing type.

NLIHC should rank for its own campaign. HUD should rank for the Fair Housing Act. Oregon CAT should rank for Oregon organizing. Stay Housed LA should rank for LA eviction defense. A renter who types “tenants bill of rights” is often asking a different question: “Do I already have these rights?” The honest answer is mixed, and no campaign PDF will say so in the first paragraph.

That mixed answer is original education. It is not a rewrite of NLIHC, and it is not a national statute we invented. It is the map: campaign here, federal law there, state chapter here, city office there.