5 housing books that are on my TBR

In Defense of Housing by David Madden and Peter Marcuse changed my life. I’ve quoted it in a couple of other newsletters. Since reading it, I’ve made a much larger effort to read other books about the housing crisis.

I’ve been sick this week so working on this newsletter has been very low on the priority list and reading has been very high. So please enjoy this round-up of things that I’m looking forward to reading. (No we are not sponsored by Verso, they’re just a good publisher).

#5 Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American by Matthew Desmond

This book put the eviction crisis on the map and illustrates how eviction is a tool for state violence and maintaining segregation. An organizing comrade of mine has lots of opinions (both good and bad) about this book and I want to read it because she knows what’s up.

#4 Capital City by Samuel Stein

We know why the rent is too damn high. I left my copy of this book at work so I can’t remember what chapter(s) stood out to me, but I want to know more about how urban renewal + the real estate state are extensions of our settler-colonial state.

#3 Dispatches Against Displacement by James Tracy

James was a housing activist in the Bay Area before Google. Criticized by many as a sell-out and a fan of community land trusts, I’m interested in the meta-narrative, lessons learned and housing struggle history.

#2 The New Enclosure by Brett Christophers

A survey of land privatization post-Thatcher in neoliberal Britain. This is also happening in America, too, and the Landback movement is correct, land is important and valuable.

#1 Feminist City by Leslie Kern

I read her most recent “Gentrification is Inevitable and Other Lies” and loved it so I want to read Leslie’s other book because we can’t just critique things, we also have to imagine the future, too.