Why The Left Should Organize To ‘Abolish Rent’

“It would take four full-time minimum-wage jobs to afford to rent a typical two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the United States.” Damn.

Rent in the United States is out of control. So could tenants help the housing crisis?

We spoke with author and organizer Tracy Rosenthal about their new co-authored book “Abolish Rent.” In it, they describe the experience of organizing with the Los Angeles Tenants Union and how the struggle between tenant and landlord is really the site of the housing insecurity.

Obviously, building a citywide tenant union is not simply a way to tweak housing policy but rather the experience helps to illuminate why the wonky approach to housing reform doesn’t go far enough.

“Every first of the month is another opportunity for organizing, collective action, and collective refusal,” Rosenthal writes. Spiking eviction rates, rents, and rates of unsheltered homelessness should be an opportunity to examine how our solutions to the so-called housing crisis have failed.

Much like we have unions to thank for the weekend, as Rosenthal describes it was mass rent strikes on New York’s Lower East Side that brought the first building codes. Power concedes nothing without a demand. And though the demand for rent abolition may not be accomplished in our lifetimes, as Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis describe in their new book, it's about time we begin organizing toward it regardless.

What’s your worst landlord story?

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