MIKE McKEE born on this date, was a tenant organizer at Met Council on Housing and the Brooklyn Tenants Union. In 1974 Michael founded the New York State Tenants & Neighbors Coalition, a statewide membership organization that lobbies and advocates for tenant rights legislation. When serving as executive director of the Peoples Housing Network from 1977 to 1982, Michael founded the School for Organizers. He was also the treasurer of the Tenants Political Action Committee.
If you live in rent stabilized housing in New York State, you owe the affordability of your apartment in large part to the tenant movement leadership of Michael McKee for more than half a century. If you were able to succeed your late same-sex partner in your stabilized apartment, McKee played a role in that, too, winning a succession case when his then-partner, Louis Fulgoni, died of AIDS in 1989.
McKee was born in Fort Worth, Texas into a military family that moved around the US and Japan. He graduated from Baylor University and got a master’s degree in French from Middlebury College. He moved to Paris in 1963 to become a film editor, and while he couldn’t secure a work permit, he steeped himself in French cinema.
He lived in Chelsea since 1966. McKee (1939–2025) was one of NYC’s most influential tenant rights organizers, as well as a pioneering gay activist. A broken window in his West 17th Street apartment sparked a lifelong crusade for housing justice. After his landlord ignored repairs, & later left the building without heat, McKee led tenants in a successful rent strike that culminated in 1977 with NYC’s 1st collective bargaining agreement between renters & a landlord. The tenants eventually purchased the building & converted it into a co-op, & McKee subsequently left a job in film editing to become a full-time organizer.
He worked with both the Metropolitan Council on Housing & the Brooklyn Tenants Union, & then founded the New York State Tenants & Neighbors Coalition (1974), the People’s Housing Network, & the School for Organizers. As treasurer of the Tenants Political Action Committee, he helped secure key legislative victories: extending rent regulation statewide, protecting seniors & disabled tenants from rent hikes, curbing illegal evictions, & codifying the right to habitable housing.
McKee was also openly gay at a time when few activists in housing were. He was a founding member of the Chelsea Gay Association (1978–83) & an early advocate for LGBTQ+ tenants facing housing discrimination. His longtime home on W. 21st Street, which he shared with artist Louis Fulgoni until Fulgoni’s death in 1989, became a personal battleground for tenant succession rights–a case that helped set precedent for same-sex partners.
In 2008, McKee married his partner, lawyer Eric Stenshoel. He remained a fixture in both Albany & in Chelsea organizing circles well into his 80s. Michael McKee died on October 21, 2025 in his rent-controlled apartment at age 85, leaving behind a legacy that reshaped New York’s tenant protections & affirmed housing as a human right.