City Life/Vida Urbana
activist group
City Life/Vida Urbana (CL/VU, clvu.org) (est. 1973) commonly known as "City Life," is a social justice group in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1973, a group of local residents and activists with roots in the civil rights, feminist and anti-Vietnam War movements founded the Jamaica Plain Tenants Action Group, now City Life/Vida Urbana. Since 2008, City Life has focused on preventing evictions of both former owners and renters resulting from a rise in foreclosures. City Life/Vida Urbana is currently based in Jamaica Plain, with satellite memberships in East Boston, Brockton, Lynn, Quincy, and Worcester.
Organizational history
Early organizing focused on stopping housing divestment and neglect. Growing numbers of city slumlords had stopped maintaining their buildings – while still raising the rent on units that were unsafe and unsanitary. Others were burning down their own buildings for profit. Tenant organizers identified the worst buildings and organized occupants to take power. Soon thousands of tenants across the city were holding rent strikes, taking owners to court and even picketing in front of their suburban mansions.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 28, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5123255. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1973 and 2008.
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This entry incorporates text from “City Life/Vida Urbana” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.