Pretium Partners Put Under Public Scrutiny As Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System Receives 88 Emails Urging A Halt In Future Investments

In less than 24 hours, 80 people emailed the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System (TCRS), including enrolled members of the TCRS, with three demands: 1. Stop future investments in Pretium Partners, the largest single-family rental company in the United States. 2. Hold Pretium accountable to renters in Minneapolis and nationwide, and 3. Urge Pretium to meet with tenants to urgently address their concerns and the concerns of Progress renters across the country. 

On Thursday, March 30, 2023, United Renters for Justice sent out a mass request for people to email the TCRS. 88 people sent the email in total. The TCRS invests in Pretium Partners, a national company with over $51 billion in assets that owns Progress Residential. In 2020, the TCRS committed $125 million to Pretium Partners through the Pretium Single-Family Rental Fund III. 

Shanika Henderson, a Progress Residential tenant who has been organizing her neighbors, flew down to Tennessee to speak before the TCRS, only to find the TCRS had canceled the meeting. “This is not ok. I deserve to have my voice and the voices of other Progress Residential tenants heard.” As a result, she, Angela Bonfiglio (a United Renters for Justice organizer), and K Agbebiyi (Housing Campaign Coordinator with PESP) spoke via Facebook live to United Renters for Justice’s more than 4700 followers. 

In North Minneapolis, Shanika and other Progress Residential tenants have been organizing for several years through tenant meetings, 311 calls to the City of Minneapolis, home inspections, meetings with Regulatory Services, press conferences and actions, placing their rent into escrow, submitting repair requests, and speaking in front of major investors like TCRS. Following these organizing efforts, in January the Minneapolis City Council passed a list of agreements that the landlord managed by Progress Residential signed in order to operate in the City of Minneapolis. 

According to Jack Marr from Renters Union Nashville, “As somebody who gets my retirement from TCRS, I have a personal stake in my money funding the problems that I see here in Tennessee. The issues that Progress Residential tenants are seeing are not unique to Tennessee or Minnesota. This is a systemic effect of corporatizing our living conditions.”