I have lived all my life in Los Angeles, but I have never seen anything like the level of destruction we experienced this past January due to the fires that ripped through our neighborhoods. In real time, I saw the devastating impact of climate change. At the same time, landlords across the city were spiking rents because the wellbeing of their tenants was last on their list of considerations.

Unfortunately, while moments of crisis make visible so many amazing acts of solidarity, generosity, and support from people looking to help those in need, they also present us with the ugliest side of greed and profit-seeking under our capitalist system.

It’s the need to respond to this greed that’s leading more and more tenants to join tenant unions and demand that public officials pass legislation that protects against price gouging and price fixing. Rent control is one key policy that can protect tenants, but ultimately we need solutions that put land and housing into social ownership. And the success of these efforts starts with all of us, collectively, as tens of millions of people who make up our renter nation fight for housing as a human right.

A Pattern of Vulture Capitalism

Grotesque approaches from private equity companies and investors in times of profound tragedy and chaos did not appear out of nowhere in 2025. We have seen this movie before. After the foreclosure crisis–induced Great Recession, the United States experienced one of the biggest-ever wealth transfers from families to Wall Street. We saw it yet again during the COVID-19 pandemic as families struggled to keep up with rents and mortgages in the face of widespread job losses.

Banking on disasters as opportunities to make profits at the expense of the planet and marginalized communities has become the norm in a pattern of vulture capitalism. Increasingly, a small number of large corporations are using their financial capital to acquire our cities’ remaining affordable housing stock.

The constant land grabs consequently give these large corporations expanded control. To date, traditional private market solutions have not relieved the problem. This is not by accident. It is by design.

As long as we continue to treat housing as yet another Wall Street lever for profit generation, those with financial power over the market will continue to make massive windfalls through the current system, and we will continue to be unable to solve this housing question.

The Roots of US Tenant Organizing

In 1872, Friedrich Engels published his pamphlet, The Housing Question, writing that “the housing shortage is no accident; it is a necessary institution, and it can be abolished together with all its effects on health, etc., only if the whole social order from which it springs is fundamentally refashioned.”

The economic concept of supply and demand encourages us to believe that the only way out of the housing crisis is to build more housing. But after 150 years of building housing, the question Engels wrote about in 1872 troubles us still. It turns out that while building new affordable and accessible housing is necessary, it is insufficient to solve our housing crisis.

To help those who are most marginalized, we must also focus our attention on preserving the remaining affordable housing stock we have.

Tenant fights and organizing efforts have occurred in the United States since the turn of the 20th century. New York perhaps best encapsulates the success of tenant organizing efforts during that period, with a series of successful rent strikes and eviction blockades throughout the state, leading to policies that improved the living conditions of low-income tenants living in slum dwellings. One key policy win was the passage of rent control in 1920.

During World War II, rent control became national policy (and remained in effect until 1947), but New York has been one of only a handful of states that have maintained the policy since then. Two other states—California and Oregon—have passed statewide rent control guidelines. There are also several municipalities that have similar policies in place.

The Pandemic Lights a Fire

During the COVID-19 pandemic, tenant organizing expanded rapidly, as millions of people mobilized when faced with the threat of eviction. Tenants galvanized to advocate for rent cancellation and eviction moratoriums to maintain their housing during the pandemic, and organized for stronger renter protections for the long haul.

Organized tenant efforts became part of the national conversation. For example, Moms for Housing in Oakland, CA, drew attention to and challenged the notion of a housing shortage when they occupied vacant units owned by a real estate investment firm. Due to their action, they were able to move in, and the units were ultimately placed in a community land trust. More recently, in 2024, local tenant unions joined forces in forming the national Tenant Union Federation.

Rent control remains a central tactic to protect tenants from landlords who spike rent without remorse or concern for tenants’ health and wellbeing. Rent control is also a key mechanism that tenant unions and organized groups can use to fend off speculation in their neighborhoods.

Rent control fights are inherently fights against corporate control. In concrete terms, it is a government program that limits the amount of money a landlord can demand for leasing a home. Rent control laws are usually enacted by municipalities, and the details vary widely, but all are intended to keep housing affordable.

As demonstrated in the Swing State Housing Poll, conducted by Right to the City Action and the Center for Popular Democracy, rent control is wildly popular. According to the US Census, nearly half of all renters (21 million families) are housing cost-burdened, meaning they spend over 30 percent of their income on housing; over half of those renters (12.1 million families) are severely cost-burdened (paying more than 50 percent of their income on rent), according to a 2025 Harvard study. Many families facing such constraints are put in the impossible position of making life-or-death decisions each month to either pay rent, feed themselves, or cover their medication.

Until policies like rent control are implemented across the United States, housing will remain widely unaffordable. The fight for rent control is worthwhile, not only because it ensures that rents are capped to maintain affordability, but also because it weakens large investment firms’ interest in distressed housing assets. If we can cap the rents of our units, we can limit the profits of these companies, and that is an important step to enable advocates to advance our society toward a more just system where housing is treated as a human right.

A housing supply strategy that does not rely on “the market” is required to at least supplement private housing.

A Social Housing Vision

Controlling rent is only a first step. Many conventional economists say that rent control discourages private landlords from building. The data are less clear on this point than many landlord advocates claim. What is clear is that both in cities that have rent control policies in place and those that do not is that the cost of housing is far too high for far too many US families. The market system of housing supply is not working, period. This means a housing supply strategy that does not rely on “the market” is required to at least supplement private housing.

Social housing is a public option for housing that has three key qualities: It is permanently affordable, protected from the private market, and under democratic community control of the residents who live there. There are various models of social housing such as public housing, community land trusts, and housing cooperatives. In all forms, public backing is critical in order to bring social housing to scale.

In Los Angeles, tenants have been at the forefront of some of the most innovative social housing initiatives in the country. In 2022, voters in Los Angeles approved the ballot initiative known as Measure ULA (United to House LA), which has already collected $375 million through a “mansion tax.” This imposes a 4 percent tax on property sales over $5.1 million and a 5.5 percent tax on sales over $10.3 million, with the goal of investing a substantial portion of that money into affordable and social housing solutions.

In February 2025, in Seattle, voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 1A, which authorizes a 5 percent tax on employee compensation over $1 million per year to fund social housing citywide and is expected to generate about $53 million annually.

Policy wins such as those in Los Angeles and Seattle will make it possible for resident-owned housing cooperatives and homes stewarded by community land trusts (CLT) to become a much larger percentage of overall available housing. In other words, public funding can allow social housing to be built to scale.

In Los Angeles, ULA funds can be used both to support housing preservation, such as tenant acquisitions for distressed properties at risk of being flipped, as well as build new housing for some of the city’s most vulnerable residents—like farm workers, day laborers, and restaurant workers—and others, including teachers and nurses.

While most cities have yet to achieve policy gains like these, ground-up tenant organizing efforts elsewhere provide guidance and inspiration for what is possible. A well-known example is the Sky Without Limits Cooperative in Minneapolis, MN.

After close to a decade of organizing and court dates, the residents of the five buildings that make up Sky Without Limits were finally able to remove their landlord and buy the building, allowing residents to collectively manage and make decisions about their own homes.

For years, these tenants (who would eventually become housing co-op co-owners) in Minneapolis fought to have their slumlord make repairs to their almost uninhabitable units. With support from their sister organization, United Renters for Justice/Inquilinxs Unidxs, residents of the five buildings created bylaws and agreements for their housing cooperative. The city’s land bank, supported by the nonprofit Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Twin Cities, raised the capital, and the tenants are currently in the process of raising $2 million to take direct ownership and transition the buildings to community housing co-op control.

Projects like Sky Without Limits give us a glimpse into what it will take to establish governing structures and decision-making practices where residents are involved, leading the strategies and developing the best infrastructures for them. Democratic governance is at the center of these solidarity economy models. Within this alternative economic system, we can tap into our biggest advantage: ourselves, the people that make up the renter nation within the United States.

But as we attempt to move away from the extractive toward the regenerative, we will need both the private and public sectors to play a role in providing the resources and policies to move toward a more solutions-oriented approach to solve our modern-day housing question.

A People-Centered Strategy

We cannot transform our current housing system without tenant organizing. We know tenants are best positioned to bring the solutions and strategies required to reinvent our housing system and have a more harmonious relationship with the land.

From policy fights at City Hall to the development of resident-owned and -controlled property management companies that prioritize transformative justice practices instead of punitive measures to ensuring residents have all the amenities they need to thrive, tenants are rising and putting new ideas and strategies to the test.

While our movements have yet to build the level of connection to the land needed to prevent the continued natural resource extraction, we are seeing organized tenants take the fight to both the public and private sectors through strategies to stem the loss of the limited affordable housing stock that still exists in our cities.

The formation of strong tenant unions that enact policy change at all levels of government to ensure renters are protected from speculative practices weakens the financial sector’s hold over the market.

These vital wins and long-term fights will lead to new opportunities to get creative and try alternatives that shift the current economic system to one that centers solidarity—on the path toward a more social and democratic land and housing system.

---

---