Housing & Property – LPE Project

Prices and Supply, and How Landlords Control Them

Liz Brown — Tue, 17 Jun 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Housing is the heart of the American political economy. Renting is often a stopgap to homeownership, with countless Americans traversing this path before securing a place of their own. But as millions of tenants pay more of their income in rent than ever before, the promise of an affordable alternative to homeownership has dissipated. Solving unaffordability and restoring the American dream means...

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The Authoritarian Commons: An Interview with Shitong Qiao

James Brandt — Wed, 11 Jun 2025 11:00:00 +0000

In China, civic life tends to unfold beneath the watchful eye of a state wary of independent organization. And yet, in cities like Shanghai and Beijing, one of the most vibrant arenas for democratic participation—complete with elections, protests, and the occasional legal showdown—has emerged not from traditional dissident circles, but from homeowners’ associations. In his new book...

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From the Vault: LPE & Housing

James Brandt — Thu, 05 Jun 2025 11:00:00 +0000

This post is part of a series highlighting some of our favorite entries from the archives. Read the rest of the posts here. *** Twenty-two percent of renters in the United States currently spend their entire income on rent. More than 770,000 people sleep in homeless shelters or outside – the highest number recorded since tracking began. Meanwhile, one leading landlord industry group boasts that...

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Housing Justice and the Administrative State After Chevron

James Brandt — Wed, 28 May 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Over the past few years, the Supreme Court has developed several doctrines that empower judges to throw out regulatory actions with which they disagree. These decisions, most notably the abandonment of Chevron deference in Loper Bright, represent a fundamental shift in both political and economic power. They also threaten to undermine the use of administrative rulemaking to promote social justice.

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Some of the Best New LPE and LPE-Adjacent Scholarship

James Brandt — Thu, 22 May 2025 11:00:00 +0000

With summer just around the corner, are you looking to indulge in some juicy, page-turning scholarship? As always, the Blog has you covered. So throw those Capri-Suns in a cooler, grab your favorite e-reader, and load up some of our favorite forthcoming LPE and LPE-adjacent articles for your next trip to the beach, park, or (let’s be real) library. ** ** ** Sahil Agrawal, Melissa Barber...

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Six Biden Administration Officials on Reimagining a Progressive Future

Liz Brown — Mon, 24 Feb 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Last week on the blog, Luke Herrine suggested that on the other side of the Trump-Musk hellscape – whose reforms might be so broadly unpopular as to “serve as a catalyst to productive mobilization” – there could be an opportunity for a more fundamental, ambitious rebuild of our policies and institutions. “A time of unpredictable politics is a time for non-reformist reforms,” he argued...

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How Antipoverty Advocates Can Go On The Offensive

Liz Brown — Thu, 13 Feb 2025 11:00:00 +0000

In the last half of 2024, more than 100 cities “banned people from sleeping outside even if they have nowhere else to go.” The timing was not random. Earlier in the year, the Supreme Court decided, in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson, that local governments can criminalize homelessness despite the Eighth Amendment’s bar on cruel and unusual punishment. The Ninth Circuit, in Martin v. Boise...

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A Dignity-Based Approach to Debt

Eve Zelickson — Thu, 23 Jan 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Many Americans have no choice but to take on debt to survive: to access necessary medical care, a basic education, essential transportation, and to cover other basic needs in the midst of a housing affordability crisis. And once they’ve fallen into debt, many find it nearly impossible to claw their way out of it. One out of every three adult Americans has a debt that has been turned over to a...

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Organizing In The Shadow Of The Law

Liz Brown — Wed, 15 Jan 2025 11:00:00 +0000

Tenant unions organize in the shadow of the law. I say, “in the shadow of the law,” because unlike for labor unions, there is no extensive federal, state, or local legislative scheme that defines the rights, responsibilities, structure, or acceptable strategies tenant unions can employ. Not even the legal definition of a tenant union is fixed. However, that does not mean there is no tenant union...

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Rent Strikes as a Righteous Form of Resistance

James Brandt — Tue, 10 Dec 2024 11:00:00 +0000

Tenants in Kansas City have been on strike since the start of October. The strike, which is larger in scale and scope than any seen since peaks in tenant action in the 1920s–30s and 1960s, comes on the heels of years of organizing against their landlords’ neglect. After dealing with broken plumbing, faulty HVAC, pests, mold, and general disrepair, residents of two buildings formed unions with the...

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