Activity

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…

We need to put class conflict at the center of the housing question, and the housing question at the center of class conflict. Workers have often been the focus of this fight, but tenants (both working and unemployed) have a crucial role to play too. Exploitation through our housing has long ensure…

Neither building nor, for that matter, blocking new private housing will overcome the misery and injustice of rent. We need to transform the power relations that keep this system in place. We need to break the private monopoly on development—its stranglehold over the pace and type of production, de…