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When tenants win rights enshrined by legislation, it’s because we’ve fought our landlords. The mass rent strikes in New York’s Lower East Side tenements brought us building codes that mandate basic habitability standards, the requirement of a court process to legally evict, and the country’s first …

But policy is not a neutral tool that balances the interests of tenants and landlords. Policy reflects and congeals class power; it is a tool for class war. The founding document of the United States, the Constitution, designed our electoral process around protecting property holders from the prope…

But as they continued to meet, the Mariachi tenants came to understand rights not as upper limits but as instruments. “Tenants’ rights” became ingredients in the organizing adage of “turning what you have into what you need to get what you want.” The association learned about California’s protectio…

A solicitation deck for Dunleer Investments, founded by Turner, confirmed they’d found their target.9 It listed key features of their building to entice investors: it was “non-rent controlled” (a phrase both underlined and italicized), in a neighborhood “slated for new ‘metro-centric’ development,”…

A Craigslist ad for an apartment in their building animated their commitment to each other. The “affordable luxury apartment” in the listing’s photos was renovated with distressed-wood floors and pristine white walls and staged with mid-century-modern furniture. Figuring Boyle Heights as a place to…