Cea Weaver is a director of organizing/campaign manager at Upstate/Downstate Housing Alliance.
The fact that Joe Biden felt the need to call for nationwide rent-increase caps this past week is a refreshing turn toward pro-tenant policy at a time when millions of renters are all but ignored by both parties.
Landlords scored a major victory with the end of eviction bans. The path forward for organized tenants and socialists has to make prying power out of landlords’ hands a top priority.
The call to cancel rent won widespread support and helped advance a vision of housing justice we can build off of for years to come.
Rent control can build tenant power and undermine the logic of speculative neighborhood investments. New York needs it right now.
We talked to four tenant organizers about how to build working-class movements for housing justice.