We believe that everyone should have a safe, accessible, and truly affordable place to live. Currently, our cities' policies often treat housing as a commodity – something to be rented, bought and sold on a private market. But prioritizing private property and profits always comes at the expense of providing housing for all, leaving our gente struggling to keep a roof over their heads. Since 2019, home prices have increased more than 54% and rents have jumped at least 30% – yet wages only increased 20%. Nearly 25% of all renters spend more than half their income on housing. Alongside unaffordable rents, tenants also face unfair leases, neglected and unsafe housing conditions (think: mold and lead), and eviction notices from predatory landlords and property owners. Many people face life-altering conditions of displacement and have been priced out of their childhood homes or communities by new luxury apartments and gentrification. In rural areas, manufactured/mobile home residents are also often at the whim of land owners who can charge them exploitative lot fees or sell the land under their home, forcing people to move or lose their homes. While renters struggle to get by, landlords rake in profits from exorbitant rents and reap the benefits of government subsidies.

Housing discrimination and displacement targets Black, Latine and Indigenous folks most of all. Compounding the unaffordability of housing overall, our communities also face discrimination in access to housing based on race, immigration status, ethnicity, language, sexual orientation, gender and income. For example, as homeownership remains one of the key pathways to wealth accumulation, housing remains one of the main contributors to the racial wealth divide. In 2022, the homeownership rate for white households was 75%, compared to only 45% for Black households and 48% for Latine households. In 2020, the Black-white gap in homeownership was the same as in 1970, two years after the passage of the Fair Housing Act. 

In the midst of this dire landscape of housing access, cities and communities are coming together to provide shelter for people experiencing homelessness, to push for equitable housing legislation, to take over vacant buildings, and to overturn regressive rent control bans. Organizations are partnering with renters to protect renters from unfair lease agreements and evictions through policy changes and legal guarantees. Tenants are building collective power, leveraging solidarity with neighbors and community groups, and securing more stable, affordable housing for those who need it most.