Tara Raghuveer is the Director of the Tenant Union Federation (TUF), a national union of unions organizing tenants to exercise political and economic power at a massive scale. TUF, founded in 2024, has led a new era of tenant unionism, training thousands of tenants to build “supermajority, strike-ready unions,” supporting successful rent strikes, securing millions in payouts from federal lenders to fix properties, leading bargaining with corporate landlords, and organizing the largest portfolio union in American history, representing 1500 units across nine properties in six states. Tara led negotiations to win new leases, rent reductions, and major repairs with the Independence Tower Tenant Union, ending an eight-month strike in 2025, and with the Bowen Tower Tenant Union, ending a four-month strike in 2026. She led negotiations alongside the Kentucky Tenant Union, securing the first tenant-bargained agreement in the American South in 2026.
Previously Tara was the director of the Homes Guarantee campaign, organizing to win federal tenant protections through the White House, Treasury Department, and the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
In 2019 Tara founded KC Tenants, the 10,000+ member citywide tenant union in Kansas City, MO, which she ran for seven years. KC Tenants is responsible for the city’s Tenants Bill of Rights (2019), Right to Counsel (2021), Source of Income Discrimination Ban (2024, pre-empted by the state), and an Office of Language Access (2024). The union organized to stop thousands of pandemic evictions through escalated direct action (2021), to win a $50 million bond for housing under 30% Area Median Income (2022), to win $10.5 million for the City’s housing trust fund (2022), to elect four members of City Council (2023), and to defeat a $2 billion regressive tax that would have funded a downtown stadium (2024). In recent years, Tara led the union towards property-level organizing and the largest and longest rent strikes in regional history (2025-2026).
