Abolir la renta ataca de raíz uno de los principales motores de la desigualdad y la injusticia.
La renta empuja a millones de personas a la deuda, la desesperación y la indigencia. El costo social de la renta es inaceptablemente alto.
Escrito para quienes están hartos de la crisis de vivienda permanente, los políticos cómplices y la avaricia del sector inmobiliario, Abolir la renta disecciona nuestro sistema de vivienda desde la perspectiva de quienes lo sufren. A través de un análisis implacable y conmovedoras historias de resistencia, nos muestra cómo los inquilinos, mediante la organización y la acción colectiva, pueden ejercer su poder y conquistar la vivienda que merecen.
De la mano de dos cofundadores del sindicato de inquilinos más grande del país, este relato exhaustivo sobre el resurgimiento del movimiento inquilino se centra en las personas pobres y de clase trabajadora que luchan, resisten y, en el proceso, transforman la ciudad. Los autores Tracy Rosenthal y Leonardo Vilchis nos llevan a reuniones estratégicas trilingües, marchas multitudinarias contra la gentrificación y valientes acciones para evitar desalojos, donde los inmigrantes arriesgan sus vidas. Estas son las semillas del movimiento revolucionario que necesitamos para que nuestras viviendas, nuestras ciudades y el mundo entero sean nuestro hogar.
Publication date: February 9, 2027
Introduction
Chapter 1: Rent is the Crisis
Chapter 2: The Return of the Rent Strike
Chapter 3: La Lucha Educa
Chapter 4: From Housing Struggle to Land Struggle
"Refreshingly confident, the authoritative work on tenant unionism in the U.S. today."
—The New Republic
“A thoroughly researched primer and a beautifully articulated guide. Based on a decade of community-based organizing and extending the growing demand for abolition of the prison industrial complex, Abolish Rent is a righteous call to reclaim sovereignty over the shared places we call home. It shows us how the struggle for housing as a human right is more than that: it’s a class struggle for land and power, so life can thrive. READ THIS BOOK.”
—susan rosenberg, prison and human rights activist
“The American dream of homeownership has turned into a nightmare of landlord and bank profits, unpayable mortgages, sky high rents, evictions, and unnecessary suffering. At once an insightful manifesto for a new housing paradigm that can provide shelter for every human being and a shrewd tactical guide, Abolish Rent can help us build a tenant-powered movement capable of winning the radical change we need. This urgent book is a rousing wake up call that can help snap us out of our collective slumber and into collective action.”
—Astra Taylor, cofounder of the Debt Collective and author of The Age of Insecurity
“A spectre is haunting landlords—the spectre of land seizures & rent strikes. Abolish Rent provides clear analysis and vivid stories of Los Angeles grassroots tenants, whose efforts offer a path towards abolishing commodification of land and housing. The authors situate tenant struggles as essential in today's worldwide movement to secure dignity, or as Isabel Garcia of Boyle Heights says in this book: ‘We fight because we have to continue living.’”
—Ruth Wilson Gilmore, author of Abolition Geography, and Craig Gilmore, co-founder of the California Prison Moratorium Project
"This essential book provides a concise history of racist, colonial housing policy and its central role in racial capitalism; an accessible analysis of the injustice and illegitimacy of rent; inspiring accounts of effective tenant resistance; and a crystal clear call for collective action that we can all take up right now. While rents skyrocket, police budgets bloat, wealth consolidates, and global temperatures rise, we need this book. Abolish Rent shows why we don't need more empty declarations of our rights, more policy reforms that keep things the same, or more efforts to appeal to the moral conscience of politicians owned by the rich, we need to abolish landlords and take over where we live."
—Dean Spade, author of Mutual Aid
“A riveting polemic and a convincing argument for why our housing system must be radically transformed. Their on-the-ground reporting is sure to persuade anyone angry at how much rent they pay that we all must organize for a better future. Abolish Rent goes deep into the history and theory of housing and provides tangible solutions to our housing crisis, ones that we can all take part in today."
—P.E. Moskowitz, author of How to Kill a City
"Inspiring and powerful, Abolish Rent is a passionate handbook of community organizing rendered through moving—even thrilling—case studies of tenants reclaiming their buildings and public space. The utopian vision of abolishing rent is potentially within our grasp."
—Lizzie Borden, Director of Born in Flames
“An essential primer on rent and the collective struggle required to liberate ourselves from its grasp on our lives. Rosenthal and Vilchis give us precise language for what we’re up against and equip us with deeply human stories that demonstrate how tenants might change our housing system and the world—if we take our own power seriously.”
—Tara Raghuveer, founding director, KC Tenants
"Across America today, the social crisis is in large measure a housing crisis, and housing crisis is in large measure a crisis of rent. This book is both an angry account of how the rental crisis came to be, and a loving paean to those at the sharp end who are coming together to take collective action and fight back. Don’t miss it."
—Brett Christophers, author of Our Lives in Their Portfolios
“Abolish Rent is a manifesto—but it’s more than that. It’s an archive of the lessons learned in struggle and the deepened analysis that comes as a movement grows. The LA Tenants Union has mapped the arduous path out of the housing crisis."
—Gabriel Winant, author of The Next Shift
“This is a transformative book, one that radically shifts our attention from the seeming ‘housing crisis’ to the crisis that is racial capitalism and its relations of extraction and domination. It is also a hopeful book, one that centers tenants as the collectivized subjects of a space-making/world-making history.”
—Ananya Roy, Professor and Director, UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy
"Abolish Rent makes the case against our system of real estate domination and for a world where tenants no longer dread the first of each month. Shifting our understanding of the crisis from one centering landlords and the state to one centering tenants, Rosenthal and Vilchis demonstrate the true toll of our extractive capitalist order and point us to the already-existing seeds of a better future—a future of liberation, solidarity, and convivencia."
—Samuel Stein, author of Capital City
"A manifesto and manual for tenant organizing, Abolish Rent is an invaluable resource for anyone with a landlord."
—Malcolm Harris, author of Palo Alto
"Abolish Rent is a fantastic little book that does two things. First, it reveals these contradictions at the heart of the political economy of the contemporary United States. And second, it provides an exhilarating guide to real-life organizing over the last decade."
—Vincent Bevins, author of If We Burn
"Abolish Rent is an accessible mix of tenant organizing history, instruction, agitation, and hope. It’s the perfect size to pass across the hall to your neighbor, along with a cup of sugar."
—Katie Prout, Chicago Reader