Decommodifying Urban Property – LPE Project

A Roundhouse is Not a Gazebo: Awkward Moments in Radical Real Estate Law

Ann Sarnak — Thu, 14 Jul 2022 11:05:00 +0000

This post concludes our symposium on decommodifying urban property. Read the entire series here. *** “Alienable?? The law says land must be … [client chokes and stares at us in disbelief] … alienable??” As legal workers practicing under the Radical Real Estate Law School at the Sustainable Economies Law Center, we’ve had many such awkward moments with clients. We’d like to share some here...

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Property Commodification as a Municipal Strategy, Property Tax Reform as an Imperative

Ann Sarnak — Thu, 30 Jun 2022 11:00:00 +0000

This post continues a symposium on decommodifying urban property. Read the entire series here. *** An immediate practical problem confronting proponents of urban property decommodification in the United States is the centrality of the real estate tax as a local budgetary resource. In a contribution to this symposium, Sheila Foster proposes that an enabling state should facilitate the transfer of...

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Collateral Cities

Molly Gordon — Thu, 23 Jun 2022 11:00:00 +0000

This post continues a symposium on decommodifying urban property. Read the entire series here. *** Episodes of institutional change shed light on the nature of property, that “ruling concept” of settler-colonial societies. In the late 1930s, the first redlining maps were produced by the Homeowners Loan Corporation (HOLC). At a time when mortgage records were stored on paper lists alphabetized by...

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Law and Countervailing Tenant Power in the Real Estate State

Ann Sarnak — Thu, 02 Jun 2022 11:00:00 +0000

This post continues a symposium on decommodifying urban property. Read the entire series here. *** In Constructing Countervailing Power: Law and Organizing in an Era of Political Inequality, Kate Andrias and Benjamin Sachs argue that combatting intensifying inequalities requires the creation of legal structures that facilitate deep and lasting power-building among poor and working-class people.

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Social Housing and Housing Justice: Pathways to Housing Decommodification

Ann Sarnak — Tue, 31 May 2022 11:00:00 +0000

This post continues a symposium on decommodifying urban property. Read the entire series here. *** We urgently need to transform our housing system into one that puts more emphasis on housing’s value as home and less on its value as real estate. This is particularly true for rental housing, where nearly half of all U.S. households making less than $50,000 annually live. The last three decades have...

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From Vacancy to Decommodification: Co-Cities and the Enabling State

Molly Gordon — Wed, 25 May 2022 11:00:00 +0000

This post continues a symposium on decommodifying urban property. Read the entire series here. *** At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, housing-insecure mothers across the country led a movement to occupy vacant or underutilized properties. The most visible of these “occupations” was Moms4Housing, a group of Black mothers in Oakland, California who occupied an empty house. They argued that...

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Taking the Market Off Land: Symposium on Decommodifying Urban Property

Molly Gordon — Mon, 23 May 2022 11:00:00 +0000

This posts introduces a symposium on decommodifying urban property. Read the entire series here. *** The call to “decommodify” land and housing has—like so many other previously unimaginable radical demands—entered some version of the mainstream political conversation. Rep. Ilhan Omar reintroduced her “Homes for All Act” this March, invoking tenant organizer Tara Raghuveer’s insight that “the...

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