UCLA

What new progressive currents exist in the politics of housing? The ideas, projects, and policies profiled here promoted market-regulatory and redistributive agendas that can be termed progressive – stepping forward within, but pointing beyond, the neoliberal capitalist housing system. I compare multiple political processes in the housing system across the United States and Germany between 2008-2023, only one chapter being a direct comparison. Chapter one examines struggles over ideas, or how mass public discourse on social media illustrates policy under discussion before, during, and after peak-Covid-19. Chapter two analyzes struggles to collaboratively build new housing models, where people aspired to create broad participation, sustainable architecture, social spaces, in some cases decommodification. Chapter three directly compares struggles to create offensive policy change in Los Angeles and Berlin by tenant movement organizations and coalitions, to enact rent controls, expropriation of landlord property, and more. The cities provided representative examples of the radically inclusive and escalating influence of tenant power on policy in RALLY Cities (Renter, Activist, Large, Lefty). Finally, chapter four addresses struggles to take the policy offensive to the federal level, profiling a tenant network that created an innovative housing vision and built strategic partnerships with politicians, who advanced a new housing policy agenda in Washington DC. Since 2008 tenant organizations have mobilized offensively against the capitalist housing system. My findings suggest that shifting debate across the United States concentrated increasingly on policy tools that strongly intervene in markets and protect tenants, suggesting that trends in new housing politics may have implications beyond RALLY Cities. The case exploring the intricate path to US national housing reform also signals the potential for broader change. At scales local to national, tenants have built coalitions with new digital tools, leveraged outside and inside strategies, and worked with allies to challenge institutional alignments among parties, interest groups, and agendas. In parallel with policy campaigns, on the community level groups developed projects to live out their politics, illustrating a hands-on dimension to the new housing politics that involves building a parallel solidarity economy, however imperfect. In varying forms, progressive housing politics is resurgent.