Abolish Rent
How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis
Abolish Rent takes aim at one of the foremost engines of inequality and injustice.
Through brisk, unequivocating analysis and striking stories of resistance, it shows us how tenants can, through organising 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.
Tracy Rosenthal is a co-founder of the L.A. Tenants Union whose writing has been published in The New Republic, The Nation, LA Times, and other outlets. Rosenthal is now on rent strike in New York City.
Leonardo Vilchis has been organising 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. He lives in Los Angeles.
