Social Housing Goes to Washington

Every first of the month, half the country’s renters hand more than 30 percent of their wages to their landlord. A quarter of them pay a majority in rent — a tremendous cash transfer from bosses to landlords that leaves tenants broke, exploited, and mad as hell.

In cities, towns, rural areas, and reservations across the country, renters are organizing for lower rent and better conditions. Through long-established organizations and newly formed autonomous tenant unions, they are standing up to landlords, pushing for stronger rent controls, and proving the power of organized tenants. Though their demands vary from place to place, the words used to describe the vision for a better future are increasingly the same: “social housing.”

In a country as large and diverse as the United States, it isn’t surprising that the precise meaning of those words varies somewhat from place to place, but in general, tenants are calling for housing that is decommodified, resident controlled, and widely accessible.

It can include rentals (like public housing, which is permanently affordable and outside the speculative market) and cooperatives (where residents own a share of their building but cannot profit much from its resale). It can be produced via new construction or by acquisition and conversion, as when a private rental building is bought by its tenants and turned into a limited-equity co-op.

But in all its variations, social housing is a far cry from our anti-social housing norm, in which homes are expected to generate monumental profits for their owners and disorganized tenants are subject to the petty tyranny of landlords.

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