Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis - Paperback

by Tracy Rosenthal (Author), Leonardo Vilchis (Author)

Abolish Rent takes aim at one of the foremost engines of inequality and injustice.

Rent drives millions into debt, despair, and onto the streets. The social cost of rent is too damn high. Written for anyone fed up with the permanent housing crisis, complicit politicians, and real estate greed, Abolish Rent dissects our housing system from the perspective of those it immiserates. Through brisk, unequivocating analysis and
striking stories of resistance, it shows us how tenants can, through organizing and
collective action, finally rebalance the scales.

From two co-founders of the largest tenants' union in the country, this deeply reported account of the resurgent tenant movement centers poor and working-class people who are fighting back, staying put, and remaking the city in the process. Authors Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis take us to trilingual strategy meetings, raucous marches against gentrification, and daring eviction defenses where immigrants put their lives on the line. These are the seeds of the revolutionary movement we need to make our housing, our cities, and the world our home.

Author Biography

Tracy Rosenthal is a co-founder of the L.A. Tenants Union whose writing has been published in The New Republic, The Nation, The LA Times, and others. They serve on the advisory board of Housing the Third Reconstruction with UCLA's Institute on Inequality and Democracy. Rosenthal is now on rent strike in New York City.

Leonardo Vilchis has been organizing tenants in Boyle Heights for more than thirty years. Trained in liberation theology, he co-founded Union de Vecinos in 1996 to stop the demolition of the Pico Aliso public housing projects, winning the right of return for two hundred and fifty families. In 2015, he co-founded the L.A. Tenants Union to organize tenant power at a citywide scale. Merging with LATU in 2019 to form the Union de Vecinos Eastside Local, Union de Vecinos has maintained a leadership role defending the long-term community against gentrification and displacement. Vilchis was activist-in-residence at the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy in 2020 and now serves on the advisory board of its Housing the Third Reconstruction research endeavor. He lives in Los Angeles.