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housing crisis
Game Changers: How to Build the Economy We Deserve
What's needed are bold yet realistic policies that break cleanly from the corruption of the Trump years and the free-market fundamentalist era that preceded them. Righting the rules means an end to game-rigging by ruling elites and instead crafting rules that first and foremost protect the well-being of working people.
Sep 15, 2026
Editor's Note: The following is part of new series for Common Dreams based on "Game Changers: Economic Policies for a Working America," a project spearheaded by the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Game Changers is a collaborative initiative bringing together leading economists and policy experts to develop bold, new ideas to build a stronger, fairer, greener, and more inclusive economy for all Americans. Through dozens of policy briefs, supporting research papers, and online webinars, the project offers solutions designed to help working people thrive while preparing the country for the economic challenges ahead. ""People are looking for solutions that improve their daily lives—not just marginal changes around the edges," says economist Juliet Schor. "Our proposals make housing, care, and daily life more affordable."
The Economy We Deserve
When a system reaches the point of breakdown, it’s time for radical change. That was the lesson of the 1930s, when the Great Depression ignited transformative labor and social movements that reset national priorities. It was also the negative lesson of the 1980s, when elites responded to stagflation with a neoliberal turn to “free markets” and enhanced corporate power. The resulting intensification of income and wealth inequality has enabled state capture by a white supremacist authoritarian movement in alliance with tech and fossil fuel interests.
The antidote is increasingly clear: recognizing the equal dignity of every human being and working to guarantee their right to economic security, the opportunity to thrive, a livable planet, a world free of racism, and democratic governance of our lives, societies, and economies. Large majorities of the public understand that the current system is failing most of us and threatening democracy itself. They’re ready to begin building an economy that we deserve.
It’s time to “right the rules” to create an economy that meets individuals’ basic needs for food, shelter, care, education, health, and free time.
Social change, and especially major economic transformation, requires a compelling positive vision of the possible. The Game Changers project was formed to provide that vision. Rooted in new economic thinking and research to address the multiple dysfunctions of the current system, it offers far-reaching ideas that go beyond the failed policies of the past, both neoliberal and liberal, and the corrupt authoritarian practices of the present.
It’s time to “right the rules” to create an economy that meets individuals’ basic needs for food, shelter, care, education, health, and free time. We envision that happening in multiple ways: local public provisioning for health, child and long-term care; federal income supports; access to work with good wages and reasonable hours; raising wages at the bottom and the middle to address longstanding racial and other inequalities; and sensible and compassionate immigration policies. We lay out plans for new public infrastructures such as high-quality mixed-income public housing with renewable energy systems and a low-cost, efficient public payments system. We need to detoxify the natural environment, restore ecosystems, and stabilize the climate system.
Investments in individuals, communities, nations and the planet are key to prosperity. But we need more than that. Changing the game implies that the game is rigged. We offer policies that help working people build power, through collective organizations, in the workplace and the state. These organizing strategies address racial and other divisions that weaken communities. They’ll help redress the asymmetries of influence that plague this moment.
A new game also requires fundamental transformation of large-scale economic structures, such as the financial architecture, the international trading system, and the functioning of the macroeconomy. Our policies do that through breaking up concentrated power, penalizing rent-seeking, stabilizing the financial system, and forcing corporations to pay their fair share of taxes. These measures help fund the investments in people and planet that are required for a decent economy.
Game Changers: The Economy We Deserve
One throughline among the wide range of proposals we have developed is that they are based on strong economic research and reasoning, but they reject the economic story that has dominated policymaking. Conventional economic thinking has been shown to be misguided in area after area. Minimum wages don’t cause unemployment; rent control doesn’t reduce housing supply; and equality and efficiency are not opposed. Climate action is cheaper than inaction, worktime reduction and higher productivity go together, and investments in social goods can pay for themselves.
The economic logic of our approach is based on game theory, as well as common sense. Zero-sum, competitive games like the one the economy has been stuck in yield much worse outcomes than cooperative games. When we join together in communities, labor unions, civic associations, and business enterprises, outcomes are far better. This recognition is the basis of a powerful new economic paradigm: invest in each other, secure the future, and realize the promise of multi-racial democracy throughout society. It’s time to change the game.
Anatomy of the Crisis
The roots of our current predicament can be situated in the early 1970s, when the economic damage wrought by an earlier wrong-headed foreign adventure—the Vietnam War—coincided with an increase in oil prices resulting from conflict in the Middle East. The resulting economic crisis of inflation and recession brought to a head longstanding political, social and economic struggles. Workers mobilized and built power through militant trade union activities; African Americans gained voice and political influence via the Civil Rights movement; the women’s movement demanded equal treatment. These developments coincided with declining competitiveness of US business and a profit squeeze. Panic arose within the American business class as they feared they were losing control.
All the proposals share the goal of helping to build a positive-sum economy that works for all, rather than a zero-sum economy where the greed of the one percent trumps the well-being of the ninety-nine percent.
An additional factor was increased environmental awareness. The first Earth Day in 1970 attracted 20 million, the largest protest action in US history. Existential panic was especially present in the fossil fuel industries of oil, gas and coal. Fossil fuel interests, including Exxon and the Kochs, fought back, investing millions to capture politicians and state institutions. They joined with other business interests to support representatives of both parties who would break unions and negotiate trade agreements that undermined the power of US workers. They de-regulated banks and other financial institutions to allow them to grow bigger, more profitable and, as we were to discover in 2007 and 2008, more dangerous to our economy and livelihoods.
In wave after wave, the state cut taxes for the rich and reduced government resources for investing in and supporting people and communities. The capture of politics and politicians by big capital directed even more money to the military industrial complex. The economic vision associated with neoliberalism was summed up most up memorably by Ronald Reagan in his First Inaugural Address: “Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.”
By the 2000s, this neoliberal approach had been adopted by a significant portion of the economics profession, and “laissez-faire” became the baseline and even touchstone for economic policy. But in reality, the push for laissez-fare was a cover for state policy that boosted the rich at the expense of everyone else. This helps to explain how policy could evolve in just a few decades from the neoliberalism of Reagan to the authoritarian corruption of the Trump administration and its allies.
State capture has ensured that neither the economy nor the government works for most Americans. Naturally, and perhaps by design, this has led to general mistrust and even disdain by many Americans for the federal government, though there is less skepticism of state and local government. As a result, the potential for the public sector to act as a countervailing force against the power of big business is further undermined by angry and discouraged voters.
This top-heavy economic and political system is populated by corporations too often driven by short-term profit-seeking rather than long-term investments, and by a government that invests too little in people and communities and too much in fossil fuel interests and the military-industrial complex. The average worker’s standard of living has stagnated for decades despite large increases in productivity. Affordability may be a buzzword. It is also a pressing day-to-day issue for most American families.
The rise of billionaires and even one trillionaire, along with the enormous power of tech and fossil fuel capitalists in the Trump Administration, is in some ways the natural extension of this decades-long pattern. But we are also experiencing unprecedented perversions and pathologies, as reflected in the vast corruption exhibited by the Trump family and friends and the hyper-inequality of society, with a handful of billionaires striding over millions of Americans barely able to make ends meet. And now fossil fuel interests are redacting “climate change” from government’s—and possibly even society’s—to-do list.
It is long past time to break this destructive cycle and usher in a new economic structure, and a new paradigm to support it.
Changing the Game
The Game Changers are examples of bold yet realistic policies that break cleanly from the corruption of the Trump years and the free-market fundamentalist era that preceded them. The policies address how both markets and government work, based on the premise that the role of government is not merely to clean up after the messes when markets fail, but to ensure that markets work consistently on behalf of working people rather than being rigged against them.
Game Changer policies span a broad canvas of economic issues—health care, housing, immigration, care work, labor, the environment, trade, and finance. All the proposals share the goal of helping to build a positive-sum economy that works for all, rather than a zero-sum economy where the greed of the one percent trumps the well-being of the ninety-nine percent. They are based on a simple set of propositions.
- Changing the game means investing in each other.
Childcare, health care, and a clean and safe environment are not commodities to be sold to those with the most purchasing power, nor are they privileges to be granted to those with the most political power. These are universal rights that should be shared by all.
Something is deeply wrong with an economy where people who play by the rules must struggle to get by, while the wealthy flaunt their power with impunity.
Investing in each other means strengthening personal connections by making sure that working people have time and energy to invest in their families and communities. It means uniting with those by our side who are striving for a better life. It means spurning attempts to pit us against each other—white against non-white, native-born against recent immigrant, worker against worker—to divert attention from the abuses perpetrated by those on top.
In short, investing in each other means building an economy in which everyone is free to survive, strive, and thrive.
- Changing the game means securing our future.
Economic security should not be a privilege for the few. A secure economy must be resilient enough to safeguard present as well as future generations from workplace abuses, environmental destruction, and supply-chain fragility.
Securing our future means recognizing that there are things that all should be able to afford, like housing, education and care. It means recognizing that there are things we cannot afford, like the poisoning of our air and water and lavish tax breaks and handouts for the rich. And it means building an economy in which the lives of working people are not subjected to catastrophic disruptions that result from concentrated wealth and power in the hands of people who do not care.
Securing our future also means forging solidarity with others across the world with whom we share not only the same planet, but also the same struggle against transnational elites who seek to divide nations and peoples to pursue ever more wealth and power for themselves.
- Changing the game means righting the rules.
Today the rules for how markets and governments work are rigged in favor of the wealthy and powerful. Something is deeply wrong with an economy where people who play by the rules must struggle to get by, while the wealthy flaunt their power with impunity.
Righting the rules means ending reckless and predatory financial practices that siphon wealth from working families into the hands of speculators and banksters. It means reorienting housing markets to provide affordable homes for all rather than to maximize profits for real-estate barons. And it means ending the tragic squandering of lives and wealth to shore up a military-industrial complex that offers empty promises of national security even as it undermines the security of families and communities by engaging in immoral and unnecessary wars.
Righting the rules means an end to game-rigging by ruling elites and instead crafting rules that first and foremost protect the well-being of working people.
The call for changing the rules highlights a key aspect of our approach. Many of the Game Changer policies involve redesigning how the market works rather than calling for major new public spending. They transform market outcomes, thereby reducing the need for post-market redistributions to achieve more fairness. And in calling for more public spending in some areas, we also propose new revenue sources and fiscal priorities to improve the functioning of the economy, as detailed in the Game Changer on funding the future.
Getting from Here to There
To animate the changes we are proposing, we need to restore people’s faith that change is possible. We’ve noted the existence of pervasive cynicism and disillusionment with government. In an age of state capture, when government has so frequently failed workers, communities of color, rural families, and distressed geographies, these feelings are warranted. Part of the difficulty of defending democracy against the current authoritarian threats is that the system has empowered elites while disempowering and discouraging working people.
As we’ve argued, changing the game requires far-reaching policies that offer improvements and are based on strong economic analysis. That’s a given. Overcoming cynicism and disillusionment requires something else as well: people’s actual lived experience fighting for and winning change. By being part of a truly democratic movement, and achieving victories, it’s possible to rebuild trust in government, businesses, and each other.
We must reject the false tensions between collective strategies and individual dreams, between worker welfare and business health, between climate caution and economic prosperity.
A transformative agenda won’t be enacted in one stroke. It may start with smaller victories and incremental steps. Each successful campaign engages people who can then be part of the next, bigger effort. Or perhaps we notch an early win with a big, bold Game Changer. That can be followed by smaller steps to make sure it’s implemented fairly and successfully. Social and economic restructuring will come in the form of changes, big and small. And with each positive step, trust in government—and each other—increases.
We are optimistic about the possibilities for deep transformation. Our reasoning is based on the episodes we began with—the paradigm-shifting moments in which new economic models arise and stick. While such shifts can be connected to intellectual trends, they are often more rooted in social conditions and political coalitions: New Deal thinking and labor mobilization in the context of the Great Depression, or neoliberal economics and business opportunism in the context of the stagflation of the 1970s and early 1980s.
In this moment of crisis, we need both new perspectives and new coalitions. We must reject the false tensions between collective strategies and individual dreams, between worker welfare and business health, between climate caution and economic prosperity. We must build a broad movement that includes workers, communities of color, small businesses, professionals concerned about AI, community leaders sickened by division, and anyone and everyone who knows that democracy cannot stand when oligarchy thrives.
The traditional American motto, “out of many, one” is often used to refer to the power of our diversity. Forging a broad and unified force for a better future will be key for the many—movement builders, unionists, community organizers, civic leaders, and all who stand with them—to triumph against the one percent. A transformative policy package, like the Game Changers, is one part of the coalition-building needed for the future we deserve.
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Why the New Housing Bill Doesn't Go Far Enough
The 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act relies too heavily on private-market principles to fix a housing crisis that was largely created by the private market itself.
Aug 25, 2026
On July 11, 2026, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act became law, making it the most significant federal housing package enacted in more than three decades. Many are celebrating the bill for “simply existing.” However, for many working-class tenants, the bill is not enough.
The 21st Century Renewing Opportunity in the American Dream, or ROAD, to Housing Act contains more than 60 provisions covering housing construction, manufactured and rural housing, homeownership, rental housing, veterans’ housing, federal program reform, and community banking. Its central strategy is to increase the housing supply by reducing regulatory barriers and encouraging state and local governments to allow more construction.
The problem is that the bill relies too heavily on private-market principles to fix a housing crisis that was largely created by the private market itself.
Where new housing construction has accelerated due to reforms like those in the bill, new development is overwhelmingly catering to the wealthy. This does little to prevent the displacement of working-class neighborhoods, as overall rents continue to climb to match what landlords hope to extract from newer residents.
“Tenants today are paying more rent than they’ve ever paid for the worst conditions they’ve ever endured, but our ultimate power is our rent.”
Everyday Americans are left facing the consequences. Rapidly rising rents, home prices, and other living expenses have made housing the single largest monthly expense for millions of American families.
These rising costs are compounded by a national shortage of 7.2 million affordable, available rental homes for extremely low-income renters. Not a single state has an adequate supply of affordable rental housing for its lowest-income renters.
Together, these conditions have created a nationwide housing crisis.
There are many reasons why this crisis persists. One is financial pressure on landlords, according to Ruthy Gourevitch, director of housing policy at Climate and Community Institute.
“In the current market context, where landlords are taking out large loans to acquire properties, they have to increase rents and cut back on maintenance to make those loan obligations,” she told Inequality.org in an interview.
Private landlords are buying and leasing in a highly speculative market. They must charge high rents to maximize profits on risky loans. The brunt of that risk is borne by tenants, according to Tara Raghuveer, director of the Tenants Union Federation.
“The tenant is also the one who suffers the most when the risk starts to fall apart,” Raghuveer told Inequality.org. “That’s what’s happening right now, and this bill has nothing to do with that reality.”
When examined more closely, the ROAD Act is timid in its approach to tackling the private power that prioritizes profit over affordability. Large institutional investors were banned from purchasing single-family homes under the bill, but dominant corporate landlords in the multifamily rental market remain untouched and are still driving up rents. This bill only continues to subsidize their dominance.
The bill contains provisions that boost programs like Community Development Block Grants, enabling municipalities to finance affordable housing construction. However, these programs still result in mostly privately owned housing.
Public funds provide subsidies that feed profits to private developers and landlords. While these subsidies may start off providing affordable housing, they do not remain so in the long term, perpetuating rent instability and poor tenant protections for low-income tenants.
“Currently, the public sector plays a massive role in subsidizing private profits,” says Raghuveer. “We propose an alternative, which is that the public sector actually reclaims and owns responsibility for delivering housing.”
Profit is priority for private developers and landlords. To fight this, tenant advocates are fighting for policies that decommodify housing. Investment in publicly-owned housing can build a large supply of environmentally sustainable, high-quality housing that everyone can access, regardless of wealth or market forces.
The HOMES Act proposes one such vision for bold and broad social housing investment. It would establish a federal Social Housing Development Authority (SHDA) to build, acquire, and upgrade millions of green, affordable, publicly held housing units with permanent capped rents for mixed-income tenants.
An SHDA would allow the public to buy housing from those who took out risky loans. It also ensures that public investment and rental income result in long-term, lower, capped rents and builds a revolving loan fund for further upgrades and social housing construction.
Gourevitch, along with other housing researchers and progressive organizers, has found social housing investment consistently contributes to racial and economic housing equity, while public management allows democratic control over tenant protections, rents, and amenities.
Social housing investment can also create more climate-resilient infrastructure without relying on climate-myopic private developers.
“What we see in other countries with governments that have more agency over their housing is the ability to move at the speed and scale that the crises we face demand. In Singapore or Vienna, you see the government innovating on questions of decarbonization, energy efficiency, and resilience as different climate shocks and stressors come their way,” Gourevitch explains.
Climate resiliency upgrades under private landlords may lead to rent hikes or property flipping. Instead, Gourevitch’s research has found that, “with green social housing, what we see is that because rents are capped and stay affordable over a long period of time, those energy efficiency and decarbonization investments do not translate into displacement.”
Achieving this policy vision across the United States, under these political conditions, may seem far off. Still, tenants across the country are organizing for a different vision. Tenants are fighting for immediate rights to stay in their homes. For emergency rent caps to protect tenants’ housing stability. For broader power over their homes from their landlords.
“Tenants today are paying more rent than they’ve ever paid for the worst conditions they’ve ever endured, but our ultimate power is our rent,” as Raghuveer says. “When we organize tenants as collectives, we articulate a vision for the world that looks very different from the one we live in today.”
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Don't Mourn Alan Greenspan
He never mourned for you.
Jun 24, 2026
Alan Greenspan, who served as chair of the Federal Reserve from to 1987 to 2006 and who died on Monday, was a monster. He was the Henry Kissinger of economic policy. Like Kissinger, he was mistakenly considered a genius. Reporters, businesses, and many members of Congress hung on his words—more accurately, his jargon-filled word salad, which obscured more than it explained—to understand what was going on in the economy. Despite the fact that his policies, like Kissinger's, were a blatant failure, he was, also like Kissinger (who also died at 100), still taken seriously by the media after he left government service, and made a ton of money as a consultant. Both men caused enormous harm and suffering for which they were never held accountable.
The New York Times obituary has a few paragraphs about writer and pseudo-philosopher Ayn Rand's influence on Greenspan, but doesn't do justice to the fact that Rand's inner circle wasn't just a discussion group. It was a cult. Greenspan absorbed her belief that selfishness was the highest principle. It was that view that guided his economic thinking, including when he was Fed chair, and before that, chief economic advisor to President Gerald Ford.
The core of Rand's influence was Greenspan's belief that government should play no role in regulating business. He believed that corporations could police themselves without any government rules. He reflected Rand's belief that corporations' self-interest and greed, and those of major shareholders, would lead them to behave responsibly.
Greenspan was appointed Fed chair by Ronald Reagan in 1987 and reappointed by George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush. He was also part of the corporate ruling class, serving on the boards of several Fortune 500 corporations, including Mobil Oil, J.P. Morgan, the Aluminum Corp. of America (Alcoa), Morgan Guarantee Trust Co., Automatic Data Processing Inc., Capital Cities/ABC, Pittston Company, and General Foods.
Greenspan's influence, along with the intense lobbying by the banking industry, provided the justification for the dismantling of dismantling of decades of government bank regulations, providing lenders with the leeway to engage in an orgy of mergers, speculation, and risky and racist lending practices that ultimately led to the collapse of major Wall Street firms.
The banking industry's greed—its insatiable appetite for profits and wealth—led to the 2007 mortgage meltdown, the implosion of the housing market, the near-collapse of the financial industry, and the breakdown of the whole economy, including widespread layoffs and foreclosures, from which we have still not fully recovered. But it was made possible by the see-no-evil views of Greenspan and his ilk.
In the late 1990s, during Greenspan's watch at the Federal Reserve, banks and private mortgage lenders began pushing subprime mortgages, many with “adjustable” rates that jumped sharply after a few years. These risky loans comprised 8.6 percent of all mortgages in 2001, soaring to 20.1 percent by 2006. That year alone, 10 lenders accounted for 56 percent of all subprime loans, totaling $362 billion. These loans were a ticking time bomb, waiting to explode.
Starting in 2007, housing prices fell by third. Americans lost $7 trillion in wealth. Over 5 million Americans lost their homes. The drop in housing values affected not only families facing foreclosure but also families in the surrounding communities because having a few foreclosed homes in a neighborhood brings down the value of other houses in the area. The neighborhood blight created by the housing collapse was much worse in African-American and Hispanic areas because they were the primary victims of subprime loans and almost twice as likely as whites to lose their homes to foreclosures.
Brooksley Born, chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1996 to 1999, wanted her agency to regulate derivatives and other exotic financial investments (including credit default swaps) that she accurately predicted were too risky and would lead to disaster. But Greenspan, along with President Clinton’s Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin and economic advisor Larry Summers, stopped her from exercising the kind of regulatory authority that would have prevented the calamity. In 2000, Edward Gramlich, a Federal Reserve Board member, repeatedly warned Greenspan about subprime mortgages and predatory lending, which he said jeopardized the twin American dreams of owning a home and building wealth. He tried to get Greenspan to crack down on irrational subprime lending by increasing oversight, but his warnings fell on deaf ears.
Greenspan was the leading culprit of the policies that led to the economic collapse. He allowed the banks' short-sighted gluttony to cause enormous human suffering.
It wasn’t until the system imploded that Greenspan gained any insight about the fundamental flaw of his belief that greed is the best operating principle for the economy. In 2008, testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Greenspan admitted: “Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity, myself included, are in a state of shocked disbelief…. This modern [free market] paradigm held sway for decades. The whole intellectual edifice, however, collapsed in the summer of last year.”
Of course, there was plenty of evidence throughout history that big corporations do NOT behave responsibly unless they are required to do so by government regulations and enforcement. This has been especially true of banks. But because Greenspan was such a libertarian ideologue, in thrall to Rand and others, he could not, or refused to, see what was right in front of him. For the millions of Americans who lost their homes, their jobs, and their small businesses through no fault of their own. Greenspan's self-awareness came much too late.
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Rent Control Will Protect Students Against Homelessness
The situation is dire. Students and their families are suffering right now, with young people’s futures at stake—as well their immediate well being.
Mar 21, 2026
The numbers are dire. More than 1.4 million students are homeless in the United States. In California, there are more homeless students than ever: At least 230,000.
Something needs to be done, and quick. Rent control will provide the relief that students and their families need right now.
Numerous experts have pointed out that students need stable, affordable housing to learn and thrive. California Homeless Youth Project Director Pixie Pearl, for example, told LA School Report that unhoused students struggle with a lack of access to nutritious foods, mental healthcare problems, and chronic absenteeism, among many other issues. It’s incredibly difficult to receive an education when one is homeless.
We also know that unaffordable rents are linked to higher mortality rates, as reported by Eviction Lab, the prestigious think tank at Princeton University, and a wide-ranging UC San Francisco study on homelessness found that most people are pushed into the streets because of sky-high rents. So immediately addressing skyrocketing rents is key, and rent control is the tool to use.
Yet corporate landlords and certain politicians want to keep the status quo, saying that we merely need to build more housing to drive down rents. Not only is there no urgency in that approach, which has serious flaws and does nothing for students right now, but developers build almost exclusively luxury rental housing—a key fact that Zillow’s chief economist pointed out as a major problem for improving housing affordability. And, of course, poor and middle- and working-class families with students can’t afford luxury apartments.
As a result, housing experts are increasingly calling for politicians to pass rent regulations to protect tenants.
University of Southern California Professor Manuel Pastor, co-author of the USC Dornsife’s Rent Matters report, wrote: “The housing crisis requires a range of strategies, [and] moderate rent regulation is a useful tool to be nested in broader strategy. It has fewer damaging effects than are often imagined, it can address economic pain, and it can promote housing stability. And housing stability matters because it is associated with physical, social, and psychological well-being; higher educational achievement by the young; and benefits for people of color.”
In response to a recent effort to pass rent stabilization in Providence, Rhode Island, University of Minnesota Professor Edward Goetz noted in a Boston Globe op-ed: “City officials are responding to the [housing affordability] crisis with a proposal to enact rent stabilization. Vocal critics of the policy make a wide range of doomsday predictions about what will happen if a city adopts it. But the actual record of rent stabilization across the country tells a dramatically different story. In fact, rent stabilization can be an effective approach to the affordability challenges faced by Providence renters, as it has been in other U.S. cities.”
In a 2023 letter to the Biden Administration, a group of 32 top economists wrote: “Through well-crafted policies, rent regulations can be designed in a manner that protects the general health and well being of renters, promotes affordability, mitigates future inflationary episodes, and maintains landlords’ ability to receive a fair and reasonable return on investment.”
But rent control isn’t the only tool to protect students against homelessness.
Housing Is A Human Right and other activists have long urged elected officials to quickly implement the “3 Ps”: Protect tenants through rent control and other tenant protections; preserve existing affordable housing, not demolish it to make way for luxury housing; and produce new affordable and homeless housing through such concepts as adaptive reuse and prefabricated housing.
It bears repeating. The situation is dire. Students and their families are suffering right now, with young people’s futures at stake – as well their immediate well being.
Rent control will immediately stabilize rent and bring quick relief. Politicians, across the country, have that tool at their disposal. They need to pass rent regulations. Pronto.
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Twin Cities Unions Planning ‘Largest US Rent Strike in 100+ Years’ as ICE Occupation Drives Eviction Crisis
"Tenants in Minnesota are in a crisis," said Minneapolis City Council Member Aisha Chughtai. "The federal invasion forced many of our neighbors to stay home and devastated our local economy."
Feb 17, 2026
Tenant and labor unions in Minneapolis and St. Paul have announced plans to carry out what they said would be the "largest rent strike in the United States in the last 100 years."
Beginning on March 1, if Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz does not meet their urgent demands for an eviction moratorium and rent relief, a coalition of nearly 26,000 workers has pledged to withhold rent, which they said could create a massive economic disruption.
The plans were announced on Tuesday by the tenants union Twin Cities Tenants, which is joined by five labor unions: Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 26, SEIU Healthcare Minnesota/Iowa, UNITE HERE Local 17, the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) 1005, and Communication Workers of America (CWA) 7250.
They argued that a freeze on rents is desperately needed after "nearly three months of federal occupation" under President Donald Trump's "Operation Metro Surge," which sent nearly 3,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other immigration agents to the area, resulting in multiple fatal shootings and a wave of civil rights violations, including explicit racial profiling.
The unions said the daily presence of militarized agents "has taken a painful economic toll on poor and working-class tenants across the Twin Cities."
"Over 35,000 low-income Twin Cities households were already unable to afford the rent before the federal siege," they said. "Estimates show over $47 million in lost wages among people who have not been safe to go to work, and at least $15.7 million in additional rental assistance needed due to lost household income—leaving many of those households at imminent risk of eviction."
Evictions in Hennepin County spiked by 45% between this January and last, while requests for financial assistance have nearly doubled, according to a report this month from the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder.
As the federal siege wore on and immigrants remained trapped in their homes, community members raised tens of thousands of dollars through GoFundMe campaigns. But it proved far too little to help the thousands of families suddenly at risk of losing their homes.
On January 30, tenant organizers, union members, and other local activists staged a sit-in at the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority and called for an immediate halt to evictions. Another group gathered outside the governor's mansion in St. Paul.
“We’re here today because federal immigration enforcement, eviction courts, and the police power of the state are converging to terrorize the same families,” said Jess Zarik, co-executive director of HOME Line. “Housing instability is being used as a weapon, and the scale of this crisis is unlike anything we’ve seen in our 34-year history.”
While city and state leaders have fought back rhetorically against the Trump administration's highest-profile abuses—including the shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by agents last month—and called for accountability, organizers said they've been slow to remedy the wider effects it has had on working-class residents across the Twin Cities.
“A lot of people just can’t get to and from work because ICE has been stopping random cars on the road, largely based on what they think the skin color of the driver is,” said Klyde Warren, a Minneapolis renter and Twin Cities Tenants organizer. “How are you supposed to go to work and make money to pay your rent in those conditions? The answer is a lot of people just can’t right now, but the eviction courts are still operating as if things are normal and they’re not normal.”
Last week, Walz's office told Axios that the governor "does not currently have the legal authority to enact an eviction moratorium."
Walz enacted an eviction moratorium in early spring 2020, which tenant organizers said allowed renters to stay home safely to avoid risks from the Covid-19 pandemic. He did this using what is known as a "peacetime emergency" declaration, which allows the governor to circumvent typical rulemaking procedures during extraordinary circumstances.
The city councils of both Minneapolis and St. Paul voted unanimously last month for nonbinding resolutions calling on Walz to take similar action to protect vulnerable residents from displacement.
"Tenants in Minnesota are in a crisis. The federal invasion forced many of our neighbors to stay home and devastated our local economy," said Minneapolis City Council Member Aisha Chughtai (D-10). "We need real solutions for the cliff of the rental crisis we are facing on March 1."
"I will be going on rent strike on March 1, and I call on my constituents to join me, until we can get a real solution from our state government for this crisis," she said.
Even as ICE's operation draws to a close, some agents are still deployed and arresting Twin Cities residents. Organizers said that even after the surge itself ends, the economic fallout will need to be addressed.
"We absolutely need an eviction moratorium," said Geof Paquette, the internal organizing director at UNITE HERE Local 17. "Our members were struggling to keep up with housing costs before ICE occupied our streets. It has now become an emergency as many of our members are behind in their rent. It's well past time for some relief."
The unions have estimated that if just 10,000 of their members withheld their rent, it could cause $15 million in economic disruption and pressure the city and state government into action.
"The people of Minneapolis and St. Paul have shown the way, fighting a federal invasion and caring for their neighbors; their fight and their care continue in this historic rent strike," said Tara Raghuveer, director of the Tenant Union Federation. "Tenants and workers have decided that... they have no other choice but to strike. In taking this step, they join a storied tradition of struggle. The struggle can end whenever the governor steps in to do what's right."
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Rent Control Is the American Way
Taking care of each other is a part of the American way. Politicians doing the right thing on the behalf of vulnerable tenants is also a part of the American way.
Feb 01, 2026
The real estate industry doesn’t want you to know an important fact about rent control: Since World War I, rent regulations have protected poor and middle- and working-class tenants against skyrocketing rents and predatory landlords. Rent control, in other words, has long been a part of the American way.
Soon after World War I, elected officials understood that they needed to protect tenants against sky-high rents due to a worsening housing shortage. Fair rent committees, with an emphasis on “fair,” were set up in 153 cities in the United States, and those committees routinely reached out to landlords to stop unreasonable rent hikes. In Washington D.C. and Denver, rent commissions determined fair rents, and, in New York, state legislators passed emergency laws to control sky-high rising rents.
Politicians knew that they couldn’t allow the status quo of unfair rents to continue, and they knew that they had the power to do something about it. So they stepped in to help hard-working Americans.
During World War II, politicians again did the right thing and expanded rent control. The federal government established rent control for around 80 percent of rental housing in the U.S. in response to housing shortages and rent gouging. When that federal program was phased out, some states, such as New York and New Jersey, established their own rent control policies in the early 1950s.
If there was ever time for politicians to protect tenants, now is that time, and the situation is dire.
Throughout this period, elected officials understood that tenants needed stable, affordable housing that would not force renters to choose between eating or paying the rent or paying medical bills or paying the rent. Americans’ well-being was at stake.
Fast forward to the early 1970s. With worsening inflation, rents spiked. President Richard Nixon pushed for temporary rent controls, and that was followed by American cities passing rent regulations, including Berkeley, San Francisco, and Los Angeles.
Unfortunately, in the 1980s and 1990s, the deep-pocketed real estate industry pushed back, aggressively lobbying state legislatures across the country to pass rent control bans or restrictions. Landlords and lobbyists went against the American way of looking out for people.
Today, more than 35 states have laws that stop the expansion of rent control while the real estate industry’s profits, through unfair, excessive rents, go through the roof. Between 2010 and 2019, renters paid a staggering $4.5 trillion to landlords in the U.S, according to Zillow.
Recently, Big Tech and Big Real Estate teamed up to charge wildly inflated rents through a rent-fixing software program by RealPage, which brought about numerous lawsuits and investigations. The software allowed corporate landlords to collude and charge outrageous rents that harmed Americans throughout the nation.
If there was ever time for politicians to protect tenants, now is that time, and the situation is dire. Eviction Lab, the prestigious research institute at Princeton University, found that increasingly unaffordable rents are linked to higher mortality rates. And a wide-ranging study on homelessness by the University of California San Francisco revealed that people ended up living on the streets because of sky-high rents. An urgent way to address these life-threatening problems is to utilize rent control—an American tradition since World War I.
But activists believe that rent control isn’t the only tool to fix the housing affordability and homelessness crises. There needs to be a multi-pronged approach called the “3 Ps”: protect tenants through rent control and other renter protections; preserve existing affordable housing, not demolish it to make way for unaffordable luxury housing; and produce new affordable and homeless housing.
Taking care of each other is a part of the American way. Politicians doing the right thing on the behalf of vulnerable tenants is also a part of the American way. Today’s elected officials must continue that work, especially since tenants throughout the country are facing serious risks of death and homelessness. They must immediately utilize rent regulations and the 3 Ps.
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The Republican Policy of Making More People Homeless
More people than ever are being forced into homelessness or are spending more than half their income on rent.
Dec 21, 2025
As Congress continues to negotiate the next set of funding bills before the upcoming deadline at the end of January, policymakers must ensure sufficient and timely funding for critical housing and homelessness programs. These programs help millions of people afford housing, a basic need. But proposed cuts could leave more than 600,000 people struggling to pay the rent — a sizable share of whom would then be at high risk of eviction and homelessness (see table here for details by state). Congress should instead use a final 2026 funding bill to keep people in their homes and support communities’ efforts to make housing more affordable for everyone.
The Administration and congressional Republicans already made deep cuts to health coverage and food assistance in their megabill enacted earlier this year. They could impose similarly harmful cuts to housing and homelessness assistance through the appropriations bill now under negotiation. It’s critical that no families lose assistance and communities have the resources to at least maintain current levels of assistance.
To make that happen, a final funding bill for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) should:
- Help more than 170,000 formerly homeless people stay in their homes with access to services. HUD issued a funding notice for the Continuum of Care (CoC) program, the main homelessness solutions program, that would cap the percentage of funding that can be used to pair rental assistance with supportive services at 30 percent — compared to about 87 percent under current policy. That change alone would take housing assistance away from more than 170,000 formerly homeless people, HUD estimates.While HUD temporarily rescinded the notice, the department stated it will make “technical corrections” and reissue it. The funding notice includes other policy changes for the funding competition that are so drastically different from previous years that some communities could be left without any CoC funding in 2026 to connect unhoused people with housing.But the timing of the notice alone will cause chaos. Some communities are facing delays in their 2026 funding because HUD issued the new funding notice months later than the usual grantmaking timeline. CoC-funded projects are on a variety of funding timelines, so projects that are expecting money in January will receive nothing. The longer HUD takes to reissue a notice and complete the grantmaking process, the longer and more extensive the gaps in funding for housing and services for formerly and currently homeless people. Many communities do not have resources to fund these services in the interim, forcing them to scale back or end housing assistance and services, which will leave many people experiencing homelessness once again.Congress needs to ensure that communities have the funding they need. Congress can — and should — direct HUD in the final funding bill to renew existing grants for 2026 (which would complete the two-year grants that first provided funding in 2025). This would keep people stably housed, and prevent funding disruptions for communities across the country, all without any increase in funding.
- Maintain assistance for the more than 50,000 households that use the successful Emergency Housing Voucher (EHV) program to pay the rent each month. The EHV program has provided life-saving assistance to households at risk of or experiencing homelessness or fleeing domestic violence and trafficking, but its funding is expected to run out in 2026. While both the House and Senate include some helpful language in their HUD funding bills, neither proposal would fully address the funding cliff. A final bill should provide additional funding to ensure these households don’t lose assistance and the stability they’ve achieved.
- Sufficiently fund the Housing Choice Voucher program, the country’s largest federal rental assistance program. Neither the House or Senate annual funding bills for HUD include enough funding to keep pace with inflation and maintain existing levels of assistance in the voucher program. Without adequate funding, many agencies would have to stop issuing vouchers to new families as a way to control costs, leading to fewer people getting the help they need. This has already happened to many agencies this year, so HUD and housing agencies have nearly depleted existing emergency resources.We estimate that, under the House bill, about 411,000 fewer people could receive assistance, and about 243,000 fewer people would receive assistance under the Senate bill. Housing Choice Vouchers are a critical tool for helping people with low incomes afford housing, including people experiencing homelessness. It’s particularly important to ensure the voucher program has robust funding given the other threats to assistance discussed above.
Taken together, these cuts would further limit who receives housing assistance, leaving up to 600,000 more people without an affordable, stable home in the coming year. Rental assistance is a critical, evidence-based solution to reducing and preventing homelessness, but already eligible households can’t access it due to chronic underfunding. More people than ever are being forced into homelessness or are spending more than half their income on rent. Taking the steps outlined above could keep these problems from getting worse.
Cuts to rental assistance, on the other hand, will leave more people waiting for help, especially because the deep cuts to Medicaid and SNAP in the Republican megabill passed in July will make housing even less affordable for millions of families. Both of these programs support housing stability by covering other basic expenses, allowing families more room in their budgets for rent. Moreover, access to health supports is a critical component of the highly effective strategies that pair rental assistance with personalized health and social services to help unhoused or formerly unhoused people — the very supports the Administration is also attempting to drastically scale back.
More people than ever are being forced into homelessness or are spending more than half their income on rent.A final funding bill for 2026 must also protect against further partisan use of rescission authority and illegal withholding of funds by including language that ensures appropriated funding reaches the communities Congress intends, and that agencies have sufficient staff to manage these programs. Such guardrails along with the provisions described above would immediately benefit people across the country and are a necessary step for making housing and other basic needs more affordable.
Looking forward, Congress should do more to address housing affordability and homelessness. Housing costs are typically the single biggest part of a household’s budget, especially for people with low and moderate incomes. With record numbers of people being forced into homelessness and more than 24 million renters spending more than half of their incomes on rent, expanding rental assistance, in addition to increasing supportive services and the supply of affordable housing, are needed to make progress.
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An Open Letter to Mayor-Elect Mamdani, a Political Moderate
The social democratic countries in Europe and other countries, including Canada, have long had much broader social safety nets that go far beyond what you have proposed. There's a deeper reason the oligarchy does not like you.
Dec 06, 2025
Dear Mayor-elect Mamdani,
It should not come as a surprise to alert citizens that your decisive victory in the Mayoral race has prompted your opponents – the privileged super-rich and their indentured servants in City Hall – to label you as an “extremist,” “radical,” or, in Trump’s view, a “communist.” How ludicrous! Your affordability agenda is hardly immoderate. Many Democratic politicians have taken these positions over time.
Free bus fares exist in some municipalities in the U.S., including Kansas City, Missouri, Tucson, Arizona, and Alexandria, Virginia. Proposing half a dozen city-run grocery stores in New York City’s “food deserts” (meaning a geographic area with limited access to affordable, healthy food options) is hardly radical. You could even have them structure these stores as consumer cooperatives (owned by consumers). Food co-ops have existed in numerous communities in the U.S. for years. Your rent stabilization proposal is not uncommon – many large cities have rent controls to protect powerless tenants from avaricious landlords, especially from today’s very large corporate landlords with their fine-print contract peonage. Also, there are cities in the U.S. offering partially publicly subsidized child care. New Mexico just launched a statewide universal child‑care program.
The social democratic countries in Europe and other countries, including Canada, have long had much broader social safety nets that go far beyond what you have proposed.
What the oligarchy and large corporations really do not like about you is that you are projecting a consistent and wide-ranging voice for the people, the workers, the poor, and the powerless in the corridors of political power of City Hall. They have had long-game statism, or a corporate state, at the local, state, and federal levels, with little opposition by the two-party duopoly.
Regarding your self-description as a democratic socialist, that doesn’t pass the laugh test. You are not arguing for nationalization of banks and insurance companies, utilities, not even, to our knowledge have you called for a “public bank,” which has existed so effectively in North Dakota (now a Republican stronghold) founded in 1919.
Indeed, President Donald Trump has become a corporate socialist par excellence. As The New York Times reported on November 25, 2025, (“$10 Billion and Counting: Trump Administration Snaps Up Stakes in Private Firms”) the Trump administration has de facto partly nationalized an array of private companies for ulterior political motives under the contrived banner of national security. The companies include Intel, U.S. Steel, Westinghouse, MP Materials, Vulcan Elements, and MP Materials. This invites bribery by other means, i.e., a Trump donation in exchange for an administration sweetheart investment. The fabled Central Intelligence Agency now features a venture capital firm, In-Q-Tel, ostensibly to fund commercial technologies to fortify the U.S. intelligence community and the Department of Defense. But under Trump, partisan political motives likely will inform the CIA’s investment portfolio.
As for taking a stand on pending legislation ending the unconscionable daily electronic rebate of tens of millions of dollars in stock transaction taxes (a progressive tiny sales tax of one tenth of one percent on stock sales), you have been AWOL despite urgings by your numerous colleagues in the state legislature to sign on to a bill that would end the rebate and specifically allocate the many billions of dollars annually to mass transit, education, health care and environmental protection.
So far, your silence has put you to the RIGHT of former Mayor MICHAEL BLOOMBERG. During his presidential run in 2020, he said:
“Harness the power of the financial system to address America’s most pressing challenges. Introduce a tax of 0.1% on all financial transactions to raise revenue needed to address wealth inequality, and support other measures – such as speed limits on trading – to curb predatory behavior and reduce the risk of destabilizing “flash crashes.”
Note, Bloomberg goes beyond a sales tax on STOCK transactions to include all financial transactions (such as bonds and derivatives).
In addition, a New York Times op-ed of April 17, 2000, by ROBERT E. RUBIN – big banker and former Treasury Secretary under Clinton – wrote, urging increasing revenues, “on a highly progressive basis, for example, by increasing corporate taxes, restoring individual rates, repealing pass-through preferences, AND IMPOSING A FINANCIAL TRANSACTIONS TAX (our emphasis).”
Some reporters may wish to ask you, “Why, as a democratic socialist, are you to the RIGHT of Bloomberg and Rubin when it comes to tiny sales tax mostly on Wall Street’s high-frequency stock trades?”
As for your plans to expand the housing supply in New York City to make housing more affordable, all kinds of efforts are underway to do this around the country, including in the California high-priced housing market.
Check out the National Cooperative Bank in Washington, D.C., which provides loans to consumer co-op models in the housing, food, and other areas of economic activity. The Bank was established in 1978 with our support, by the Carter Administration, and then spun off by the Reagan regime. It might be useful in funding your housing and grocery store initiatives.
There is one more example in which you are conventional. So far, you are part of the class of public servants, which we have described as “incommunicados” when it comes to working closely with progressive civic leaders and citizen groups. (See The Incommunicados by Ralph Nader and Bruce Fein https://incommunicadoswatch.org/). Put simply, it is too hard for many progressive advocates to get through to you or your top aides. You may wish to assign a staffer as a liaison to these groups whose ideas, experience, and endurance can be of signal assistance to what will probably be a turbulent tenure.
Be guided by the adage that “NONE OF US ARE AS SMART AS ALL OF US.”
May you succeed and put forces in motion throughout the state and country of a deliberative democracy in successful action with sound civic engagement. The cardinal pillar of a democracy, worthy of the name, is JUSTICE, for without justice there is no freedom and liberty for the people.
We anticipate your considered response.
Sincerely,
Ralph Nader
Bruce Fein
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Make Americans Homeless Again: Trump's Intentional Housing Crisis
Trump is causing major damage, and his team at the Department of Housing and Urban Development knows it.
Nov 28, 2025
America’s urban landscapes are cursed with skyrocketing rents, evictions, and tent cities—thanks to President Donald Trump. His administration has launched what can only be described as a brutal, scorched-earth attack on federal housing programs. Trump's Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is slashing billions from successful programs and proven initiatives that keep people off the streets. Trump clearly prioritizes ideological crusades over human lives. This is not a better policy; it is cruelty and it is exacerbating a housing crisis that has left millions of America’s citizens on the brink. Trump’s war on the vulnerable is forcing 170,000 Americans back into homelessness, gutting local efforts in states like California and New York, while ignoring root causes like unaffordable housing and stagnant wages.
At the heart of this disaster is the Continuum of Care (CoC) program, which helps connect homeless people with permanent rental subsidies, shelters, and support services. Under Trump’s HUD, this crucial program is being gutted for fiscal year 2026. More than half of its funding, previously designed for permanent housing, is now being redirected to temporary shelters that come with punitive preconditions such as mandatory drug treatment or work requirements.
Support for permanent housing is now limited to just 30% of the budget, a significant drop from the previous 90% that allowed flexibility for real needs. Local nonprofits will now find it harder to secure grants as HUD is also now imposing competitive bidding on nearly all funds. This means that eligibility is being wielded as a political weapon: Agree with the Trump administration on various issues and receive funding. Disagree on the issues and lose funding. Accountability is not the issue here; it’s all about Trump’s culture-war agenda, punishing progressive districts while rewarding red-state sycophants.
Trump’s claim to be fixing America is, instead, a brutal bulldozing of the safety net that has helped tens of thousands of citizens and families.
Trump is causing major damage, and his team knows it. Internal HUD documents admit these cuts will displace tens of thousands of people across the nation and erase years of progress in reducing chronic homelessness. In California, the epicenter of the crisis, Attorney General Rob Bonta has sued the administration alongside 19 other states and two governors, arguing the changes are illegal. Los Angeles County alone stands to lose subsidies for 5,000 households, including families with children, and veterans. Even some Republicans, like Nebraska's Rep. Mike Flood, are scrambling for a one-year funding extension, a tacit admission that Trump's "reforms" are a recipe for chaos.
New York faces a similar apocalypse. Homelessness has surged amid post-pandemic evictions, leaving thousands of families in need of assistance. Trump's pivot to "shelters and rehabilitation centers" over long-term stability directly sabotages the city's "Housing First" model, which prioritizes rapid placement into homes before tackling addiction or mental health, proven to reduce recidivism and costs. Led by Attorney General Letitia James, the multistate lawsuit filed in Rhode Island's federal court calls this an unconstitutional power grab, as HUD rewrites congressional spending without approval. Over 1,000 organizations nationwide have begged Congress to intervene, while Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren demand answers on how these cuts will fuel tent encampments from Seattle to Boston.
HUD spokesperson Scott Turner has pathetically defended Trump, claiming that the Obama-Biden “Housing First” approach is a failed “homeless industrial complex” enabling addiction without accountability. But the data says otherwise. Housing First programs decreased homelessness by 88% and improved housing stability by 41%, compared to Treatment First programs. But Trump’s “solution” will achieve the opposite, forcing people into transitional housing with strings attached, ignoring that most homelessness stems not from untreated addiction but from poverty. By capping permanent aid and politicizing grants, Trump is inflating costs and dooming the cycle to repeat. Families will fracture even though Trump claims he will make exceptions for those with children, vets, or seniors.
Trump’s claim to be fixing America is, instead, a brutal bulldozing of the safety net that has helped tens of thousands of citizens and families. But as lawsuits mount and bipartisan pleas for extensions grow, perhaps Trump will be prevented from implementing his nefarious plan. By evicting the most vulnerable Americans to score political points, Trump is not draining the swamp; he is flooding the streets. Congress must act now to renew the grants and prevent Trump’s overreach that will affect tens of thousands of needs Americans. Let voters remember that in Trump’s America, there is nothing but evil and despair.
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A Win for Mamdani Is a Win for Renters Everywhere
Mamdani is the antidote to the corporate landlord dominance we see in cities across the US. He doesn’t just speak on behalf of rent-stabilized tenants; he is one.
Nov 12, 2025
Zohran Mamdani, a tenant who lives in a rent-stabilized apartment and made affordable rent the primary issue in his campaign, has been elected mayor of New York City.
To be clear, a win for Mamdani is a huge win for renters—not just in New York, but across the country. Mayor-elect Mamdani has shown that a populist mayoral candidate with a bullhorn can ground a winning campaign in issues that impact constituents just trying to get by and have a decent place to live.
During the campaign, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo repeatedly attacked Mamdani for living in a rent-stabilized apartment and supporting a rent freeze. It was a display of character and courage that Mamdani never backed down. Instead, he doubled down. And the attacks against him continued through the last mayoral debate, where Mamdani stated emphatically, “You’ve heard it from Andrew Cuomo that the number one crisis in this city, the housing crisis, the answer is to evict my wife and I. He thinks you address this crisis by unleashing my landlord’s ability to raise my rent. If you think that the problem in this city is that my rent is too low, vote for him. If you know the problem in this city is that your rent is too high, vote for me.”
Mamdani understands the debate comes down to a very basic question: With rents so high, where are people supposed to live? The Starbucks barista, McDonald's worker, and Lyft driver are experiencing what most candidates are afraid to talk about—that they are one rent increase away from losing their apartment.
With over 2.3 million renters in New York City, it’s about time they elected a mayor who would put affordable rents front and center.
Too often, the dialogue around rent has been dominated by investors and corporate landlords. They seemingly have a bottomless pit of money to get their message out and line the campaign coffers of candidates who offer them carte blanche to raise rents and undermine tenants. As Mamdani stated during the race, “The same landlords who said they didn’t have enough money to freeze the rent, gave Cuomo $2.5 million dollars, the single largest check in this entire race.”
Mamdani is the antidote to the corporate landlord dominance we see in cities across the US. He doesn’t just speak on behalf of rent-stabilized tenants; he is one. And that makes all the difference.
Rent control is not new. It has been around since 1919. As real estate became more corporatized, multi-family buildings became a commodity—a line on a balance sheet. It’s less about the people and more about the building as an asset whose value is based on rents. In the 1990s, Apartment Associations led a nationwide campaign to curtail or ban altogether rent control. Currently, 37 states have banned it and states like California only allow rent control in buildings built in 1996.
Cash-strapped tenant organizations have done their best to move the needle on rent stabilization efforts, but they often face a deluge of money from the real estate industry, expensive lawsuits, and elected officials willing to reverse their progress.
Mamdani’s win as mayor signals new hope for campaigns that address the need to control skyrocketing rents. It sets in motion a new model nationwide centered on the needs of constituents, rather than corporate-dominated policies that have no tangible benefit to constituents and fail to improve the quality of life for low-income people.
With over 2.3 million renters in New York City, it’s about time they elected a mayor who would put affordable rents front and center.
Leaders across the country are watching what is happening in New York. The rents are so high that even someone working two full-time jobs can still be rent-burdened, paying over 30% of their income in rent. That is not sustainable.
New Yorkers reached a tipping point and found in Mamdani a leader who provided a platform of solutions, not more excuses for why they cannot get the relief they need. And hopefully, other cities will follow suit, attracting candidates that want to solve problems rather than kowtow to rich donors.
Let’s face it: Stabilizing housing costs is a reasonable practice, which is why most homeowners pay the same amount every month in mortgage payments. Mortgages don’t go up 17% every year to line the pockets of lenders. That would be ridiculous, and it is for renters too. Giving renters stability is not just a reasonable ask; it is a necessity.
As a lifelong renter, I believe we are on the precipice of policy change in the US. Renters and low-income communities are rising up to demand that the government acts in their interest.
Mamdani serving as mayor of America’s largest city, while living in a rent-stabilized apartment, is a game changer. More of this in other cities is desperately needed.
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