Narrator: On the Fourth of July in Los Angeles, the sky erupts not just with sanctioned fireworks, but with a city-wide spectacle of illegal pyrotechnics. From rooftops, hundreds of thousands of people participate in a mass act of collective disobedience, a beautiful and chaotic display that overwhelms any attempt by authorities to control it. For authors Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis, this moment was a revelation. It symbolized a powerful truth: if people can collectively defy the law to celebrate, what if they could harness that same power to defy a system that denies them a fundamental human right?

This question is the driving force behind their book, Abolish Rent. It reframes the conversation around housing, arguing that what is often called a "housing crisis" is not a glitch in the system, but the system working exactly as designed. The book is a polemic and a practical guide, exposing the exploitative nature of rent and offering a roadmap for a tenant-powered movement to reclaim sovereignty over the places they call home.

Narrator: The book begins by dismantling the common narrative of the "housing crisis." The authors argue this term is misleading because it suggests a neutral problem of supply and demand, obscuring the fundamental power imbalance between those who own housing and those who need it. The real issue is not a lack of housing units, but that the system is designed to extract maximum wealth from tenants for the benefit of landlords, developers, and speculators. Rent, in this view, is not a fair price for a service; it is a "fine for having a human need."

To illustrate this, the authors point to the business model of corporate landlords like Invitation Homes. After the 2008 financial crisis, the company began buying up single-family homes, eventually amassing a portfolio of over 80,000 properties. Their strategy was simple: maximize profit by systematically raising rents while simultaneously cutting costs on maintenance. Between 2014 and 2016, average rents in their portfolio increased by over 12 percent, while yearly maintenance spending per unit shrank by 16 percent. For tenants, this meant paying more for deteriorating conditions. For Invitation Homes and its investors, it meant record profits. This case reveals that the system is not broken; it is a highly efficient engine of inequality, transferring wealth from the working class to the asset-owning class.

Narrator: The current power imbalance is not an accident; it is the result of a century of deliberate policy choices. Abolish Rent traces the history of what it calls "the war on tenants," a systematic assault waged by the state and real estate industry to benefit property owners. This war has always been intertwined with race. During the New Deal, the government created the modern 30-year mortgage, making homeownership accessible for millions. However, through racist practices like redlining, these benefits were almost exclusively reserved for white families, while Black and other minority communities were deemed "hazardous" for investment. This trapped them in rental markets, creating a captive population for landlords to exploit in neglected neighborhoods.

This political agenda was laid bare in a 2022 scandal in Los Angeles. A leaked recording captured three city councilmembers discussing how to redraw district maps to consolidate their power. In the recording, then-council president Nury Martinez is heard saying it would be a bad idea to give another councilmember a district with too many renters, because "that solidifies her renters' district, and that is not a good thing for any of us." This shocking admission reveals a core truth of the book: politicians often see organized tenants not as constituents to be served, but as a political threat to the real estate interests that fund their campaigns. The war on tenants is fought not just with historical policies, but in the back rooms of power today.

Narrator: If the system is a class struggle, the authors argue, then tenants need a weapon to fight back. The book identifies the rent strike as the most powerful tool in their arsenal. A rent strike is more than just a refusal to pay; it is a collective action that disrupts the flow of capital to landlords, exposes their dependence on tenants, and builds lasting solidarity. It transforms a group of isolated individuals into an organized force capable of making demands.

The book provides a powerful case study with the story of the "Los Mariachis" tenants in Boyle Heights, Los Angeles. In 2017, the new owner of their building, an investment firm, tried to more than double the rent, which would have displaced the entire community of working-class, immigrant families. Led by a construction worker named Alejandro Juárez, the tenants organized. They formed an association, held protests, and when the landlord refused to negotiate, they went on a rent strike. For over a year, they weathered eviction notices and court battles, supported by the LA Tenants Union. Their campaign culminated in a protest outside the landlord's home in a wealthy neighborhood, making the conflict impossible for him to ignore. The pressure worked. In 2018, they signed a collective bargaining agreement that canceled their rent debt, limited future increases, and formally recognized their tenants association. The Los Mariachis' victory shows that even the most vulnerable tenants can win against powerful landlords when they are organized.

Narrator: A single rent strike can win a battle, but winning the war requires a sustained, organized movement. Abolish Rent outlines the structure for this movement: the tenants union. The authors detail five core strategies for building one, learned through years of organizing with the LA Tenants Union. These strategies are both practical and philosophical, designed to build power while prefiguring a more just world.

The first and most crucial pillar is building community. The story of the Flower Drive Tenants Association exemplifies this. When an investment firm bought their rent-stabilized block and began pressuring them with buyout offers, the tenants were isolated and afraid. An organizer helped them form an association, and their first realization was that their isolation was the landlord's greatest weapon. They began meeting, sharing food, and building trust. This simple act of community-building transformed them from a collection of victims into a unified front. When the owner showed up at one of their meetings, he was met not by individuals he could intimidate, but by an organized collective that refused to be displaced. The other pillars—organizing units of power, reclaiming space, experimenting and learning, and keeping the faith—all build on this foundation, creating a resilient and adaptable movement capable of challenging the real estate state.

Narrator: The ultimate vision of Abolish Rent is not just to make renting more affordable, but to move beyond it entirely. The struggle evolves from a housing struggle into a land struggle, aimed at achieving collective sovereignty over land and resources. This means challenging the very idea that housing should be a commodity. The book explores this through the fight of the Hillside Villa tenants in LA's Chinatown. Their building was constructed with public subsidies in exchange for a 30-year "affordable" housing covenant. When that covenant expired in 2018, the landlord announced he would double the rents, threatening to displace 124 families.

The tenants organized, demanding that the city use its power of eminent domain to buy the building and turn it into permanent social housing under their control. They went on a rent strike and waged a multi-year political campaign, eventually forcing the City Council to approve funding for the purchase. However, the landlord refused to sell, and the city has so far refused to force the sale. This ongoing struggle highlights the limitations of state-led "affordable" housing, which often enriches private developers with public money only to expire, leaving tenants vulnerable. The tenants' demand for collective ownership points toward the book's ultimate goal: a world where land is decommodified and housing is governed by community control, not by the logic of profit.

Narrator: The single most important takeaway from Abolish Rent is that the housing crisis is not an economic inevitability but a political choice. It is the direct result of a class struggle that has, for a century, been won by landlords, developers, and financiers. The authors argue that this struggle can only be countered by another: a mass movement of tenants organized to wield their collective power. The book is a declaration that housing is a human right, and rights are not given, they are taken.

Ultimately, Abolish Rent leaves the reader with a challenging and inspiring question. If, as the authors contend, the current system is not broken but is a war on tenants, then passivity means defeat. The book is a call to arms, asking not just what a better world would look like, but what we are willing to fight for to build it. It dares us to imagine a world without landlords and without rent, and then provides the tools to start making that world a reality, one organized building at a time.