Across the country, renters and unhoused people are organizing to demand that all levels of government address the nation’s housing crisis.
On September 25–28, housing justice organizations held National Housing Days of Action, and low-income people put their bodies on the line. In Washington, DC, dozens were arrested for calling for generous public funding for affordable housing at the office of Representative Steve Womack (R-AR), who chairs the US House subcommittee on housing appropriations.
In many cities—including Little Rock, AR; Bridgeport, CT; Lewiston, ME; Louisville, KY, Philadelphia, PA; and Los Angeles, CA—tenants, unhoused people, and mobile home residents joined together in the actions. In the “swing state” of Nevada, hundreds marched in Las Vegas with signs proclaiming “We Rent, We Vote” to remind politicians that renters are a key voting bloc in the November elections—and strongly favor rent control and deeply affordable, publicly provided housing.
In California, hundreds of people rallied in Sacramento, where Governor Gavin Newsom (D) recently issued an executive order for state agencies to sweep homeless encampments, threatening to cut funding to localities that do not comply. Newsom issued his order after the US Supreme Court’s verdict in Grants Pass, OR v. Johnson affirmed punishing people for sleeping outside, even if there is no other shelter available. Rally participants decried the criminalization of homelessness, calling instead for tenant protections and for the state to fully fund one million truly affordable homes.
These campaigns are part of a growing grassroots movement that is coalescing behind the notion of social housing.
What Is Social Housing?
Social housing means homes for people, not profit. It means treating housing as a public good and a basic human need, rather than as a speculative commodity. Many housing justice organizations define social housing as housing that is permanently and deeply affordable, even for the lowest income households.
Social housing is publicly owned or under democratic community control. It can never be resold for profit, and for-profit investors are barred or restricted. It is democratically managed through the input of resident associations, tenant unions, and surrounding communities. It can include quality public housing, permanently affordable and accessible housing owned by mission-driven nonprofits, supportive housing for the recently unhoused, as well as models for nonprofit community control such as resident-owned community land trusts and limited equity cooperatives.
Social housing means homes for people, not profit.
Public housing—directly funded by the government and hence affordable to the lowest income people—is a fundamental cornerstone of social housing. In the United States, public housing is a form of social housing that has been around for generations. Although undermined by decades of cuts and neglect, it still serves as one of the only forms of deeply affordable housing options left, housing 860,000 families nationwide.
A Movement Emerges
To advance social housing and other housing justice goals, renters are organizing against the outsized influence of Wall Street investors and corporate landlords in our nation’s profit-driven housing system.
Renters Rising, a national association of low-income tenants who have corporate landlords, was launched in 2021 by community groups with the support of the Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) and has rapidly grown to a membership of over 21,000 renters nationwide. Additionally, in 2024, five tenant unions joined forces to form a national Tenant Union Federation.
As rents continue to skyrocket, these groups and others are fighting back on multiple fronts. They have won local rent stabilization ordinances in such places as Saint Paul, MN; Montgomery and Prince George’s Counties in Maryland; and South Portland, ME.
They have also advocated for a “housing first” approach to homelessness. As unhoused groups point out, rising housing costs are a primary driver of homelessness—more than mental illness, drug use, and other factors. Prioritizing rapid rehousing without first imposing other requirements decreases homelessness and gets people back on their feet.
Social Housing Momentum Builds
Momentum around social housing is growing. On September 18, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Senator Tina Smith (D-MN) introduced the Homes Act, which would establish a national Social Housing Development Authority with the power to acquire and convert vacant, tax-foreclosed, or distressed properties—many of which are currently corporate-owned—into social housing.
The bill builds on local and state efforts. A New York bill for a Social Housing Development Authority, introduced in February, would create social housing and cap rents at 25 percent of household income. New York City tenant groups, campaigning for a “Livable New York,” are demanding green social housing for all, funded by taxes on the rich. In California, housing justice groups won the passage of SB 555, which mandates a government study on developing below-market social housing for households “who are unable to afford market rents.”
We are also seeing organizing in opposition to corporate landlords at the grassroots level.
In late 2019, for example, a collective of unhoused mothers in Oakland, CA, entered a vacant home owned by a corporate landlord, and occupied it for months with community support. The group, called Moms 4 Housing, won the property’s transfer to a local community land trust. The home now serves as transitional housing for mothers and children. The campaign also led to the creation of a statewide housing acquisition fund, and inspired additional tenant-led community land trust organizing.
Renters are organizing against the outsized influence of Wall Street investors and corporate landlords in our…housing system.The campaign also captured national attention and raised awareness that vacant homes vastly outnumber unhoused people. Nationwide, 16 million homes sit vacant; in fact, there are 28 vacant homes for every unhoused person in the United States.
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From California to Texas to New York, tenant unions are exposing some of the problems in government-subsidized but profit-driven “affordable housing.” CASA, a national power building organization, notes that tenant unions, because they represent a collective, can help ensure that people who are more vulnerable to exclusion, “such as immigrants and people with criminal records, are able to access social housing.”
For example, in Hyattsville, MD, immigrant renters affiliated with CASA formed a tenant union and went on an 18-month rent strike, winning transfer of their building to a more mission-driven landlord who agreed to affordability requirements.
The work of these groups is inspiring, but difficult. Advocates can help expand organizing protections for those propelling the movement forward. All levels of government can enact legislation to ensure tenant unions have the universal right to organize and bargain collectively, as recognized in San Francisco’s Union at Home ordinance.
Social Housing for Whom?
Social housing must first serve and prioritize those most excluded by for-profit developers and landlords. New construction is often geared at luxury buyers, even though poorer renter households—of whom over 11 million qualify as “extremely low income” in government classifications—have the greatest housing needs.
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, extremely low-income renters comprise the large majority—69 percent—of severely cost-burdened renters who must spend over half their income on housing. All told, the market falls 7.3 million homes short of the housing these families need. Yet aside from public housing, government affordability guidelines and subsidies are usually aimed at families in higher income brackets. For the neediest, so-called “affordable housing” subsidized by the government is usually still out of reach.
If social housing is to effectively meet our housing emergency and stop rising homelessness, it must ensure the poorest families are not excluded again. To achieve this requires applying principles of “targeted universalism”—that is, setting universal goals while using processes targeted at specific groups to achieve them.
What does it look like to apply targeted universalism to social housing? Social housing should be widely available, including to moderate-income households, in order to achieve lasting and widespread affordability across the housing system. Yet because housing production takes time, to most effectively curb homelessness and displacement and to best advance racial, gender, and economic justice goals, people with the most need must benefit first.
If social housing is to effectively meet our housing emergency and stop rising homelessness, it must ensure the poorest families are not excluded again.
“Building only for the middle class and hoping for it to trickle down—that doesn’t really work. That’s why we have a housing crisis,” says Alex Vazquez, national organizing director at CASA. “It’s time we shift our focus to those most in need: the poorest, people with disabilities, the unhoused, seniors, individuals with [criminal] records, undocumented immigrants, single mothers with children, and other marginalized groups.”
Whether social housing ends up being truly accessible hinges upon how it’s financed. Housing is expensive to build. Creating housing that’s affordable to the poorest households in need—at the scale of need—requires generous, direct upfront public funding.
Today’s Opportunity
Today, politicians have an opportunity to align housing policy with the growing movement for social housing on the ground—and with our nation’s dire need.
In July, responding to movement demands, President Joe Biden’s administration called on Congress to pass a temporary rent cap on corporate-owned properties. Over 50 base-building organizations sent a letter demanding that Biden go further, including by issuing executive orders to establish an Office of Social Housing and immediately cap rents in federally insured properties.
That office would be part of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and would align existing programs with social housing goals, with the input of housing justice organizations. In August, on the campaign trail, Vice President Kamala Harris proposed a $40 billion Innovation Fund to offer competitive grants that could potentially fund permanently affordable social housing—if people organize to ensure the money is spent this way.
Yet thus far, the Biden-Harris administration has leaned heavily on expanding the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program, a deeply flawed and inefficient policy that hinges on tax breaks to Wall Street investors. Because it is ultimately profit-driven, LIHTC typically creates “affordable housing” that is often not truly affordable. And despite expending public dollars, it imposes only temporary affordability measures on homes, benefiting investors at the expense of low-income residents, who are often pushed out by rent hikes both before and after affordability requirements expire.
Our government must instead renew generous direct public funding to create deeply affordable housing. Vienna, Austria, where most residents live in social housing, is often cited as an international example of how social housing can preserve affordability for the long term. Efforts in Vienna began with public housing that first targeted the neediest.1 The city’s social housing was also directly funded by levying new taxes on the rich. We can heed these lessons on who to prioritize and how.
Renters Rising and partner groups are calling for federal legislation to implement these principles and invest $1 trillion over 10 years to create over 12 million permanently and deeply affordable homes. This amount is needed to match the actual scale of our current crisis, where over 16 million households qualify for federal housing assistance but receive none. For an additional $230 billion, Congress could also repair and green our existing public housing. There is budgetary room to direct spending toward housing. Military spending, for example, is $850 billion a year—over eight times what movement leaders are recommending for housing.
“We all deserve a home. Fair housing is a right. A place to sleep at night, these are basic human needs,” says Jessica Torres, a lead tenant organizer at Action NC who is organizing fellow mobile home residents. “The federal government should be taking action now. We’re supposed to be one of the richest countries but have some of the highest homelessness. How can you punish people for finding a place to sleep and lay their heads?”
NOTE:
- Peter Marcuse, “A Useful Installment of Socialist Work: Housing in Red Vienna in the 1920s,” in Critical Perspectives on Housing, ed. Rachel G. Bratt, Chester W. Hartman, and Ann Meyerson (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), 563-4, 579.