November 14, 2024
In the final event of this fall’s four-part series on housing, land, and the policies that shape our country, we turned from land ownership to the precarity renters face amid an ongoing housing crisis.
We are proud to have welcomed writers and organizers Leonardo Vilchis, Tara Raghuveer, and Esteban Girón for a panel discussion led by Tracy Rosenthal. Rosenthal and Vilchis are the cofounders of the L.A. tenants union—the largest union of its kind in the United States. Their new book, Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis, served as a springboard for the panel’s conversation about the power dynamics renters face as housing prices continue to spike.
Abolish Rent is a deeply reported account of the resurgent tenant movement that centers poor and working-class people who are fighting back, staying put, and remaking the city in the process. The authors take readers through trilingual strategy meetings, raucous marches against gentrification, and daring eviction defenses where immigrants put their lives on the line. Throughout, Rosenthal and Vilchis explain how efforts like these sow the seeds of the revolutionary movement needed to truly make the world our home.
Featured Book
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Abolish Rent
By Tracy Rosenthal & Leonardo Vilchis
Published by Haymarket Books
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 unsparing analysis and striking stories of resistance, it shows us how tenants can, through organizing and collective action, harness our power and win the housing we deserve.
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.
In Conversation
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Leonardo Vilchis
Leonardo Vilchis
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 and the L.A. Tenants Union in 2015, now the largest dues-funded tenant union in the country. He is the co-author of Abolish Rent (Haymarket, 2024).
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Tara Raghuveer
Tara Raghuveer
Tara Raghuveer is the founding director of KC Tenants, the citywide tenant union in Kansas City, Missouri, and the national Tenant Union Federation, a union of unions set to launch in August 2024.
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Esteban Girón
Esteban Girón
Esteban Girón has been organizing his neighbors as a member of the Crown Heights Tenant Union for over 10 years. He spends his days bringing misery to slumlords, developers, politicians and the shady non-profits that enable them.
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Tracy Rosenthal
Tracy Rosenthal
Tracy Rosenthal is a co-founder of the L.A. Tenants Union, a frequent contributor to the New Republic, and the author, with Leonardo Vilchis, of Abolish Rent, forthcoming from Haymarket on September 24th. They are now on rent strike in New York City.
