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Rethinking Housing: From Commodity to Community

My grandfather was, and at 94 still is, my greatest hero. Born poor and mixed-race in 1930s Nebraska, he seemed to bend the universe to his will through sheer charisma and grit. A championship wrestler, Eagle Scout, and later a Harvard-trained physician, he embodied the American promise: that determination can overcome exclusion. His ultimate measure of success, however, was real estate—owning physical ground. As a child of the Depression, he understood that people who looked like him had been systematically locked out of property ownership, the very thing that grants a voice in your own destiny. So he poured everything he earned into buying land. But without deep pockets or inherited connections, he was outmaneuvered by better-financed competitors and lost nearly everything.

His story is not unique. It exposes a core tension at the heart of the American Dream: we treat housing—a basic human need for shelter—as a financial asset, an investment vehicle whose primary purpose is to generate profit for owners. What if we refused to think of housing that way? What if, instead of allowing a few to extract maximum returns from a life-sustaining necessity, we dedicated ourselves to ensuring everyone had a safe, stable place to call home? How much human potential drains away when people must fight predatory housing markets rather than live fully?

The Disturbing Math: Empty Units and Unhoused Lives

On a single night in January 2024, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development counted over 771,000 people experiencing homelessness in the wealthiest country that has ever existed. Simultaneously, nearly 15 million housing units sat vacant across the United States. The contradiction is staggering: millions of empty dwellings and hundreds of thousands without shelter. This isn't a glitch; it's a feature of a system that treats homes as speculative commodities.

I felt this absurdity personally. In early 2010, during the Great Recession, my family had to move abruptly when the rent became unaffordable. I remember staring out the car window at a massive, newly built condo development—nearly finished but ghostly empty. Its developer had halted construction because the subprime mortgage crash had obliterated demand for luxury condos. To him, the project wasn't financially viable anymore. To my ten-year-old mind, it made no sense: news reports showed families losing homes while gleaming, unused apartments loomed right there.

When Home Becomes an Asset: The Trap of Commodification

Zoom out, and the picture crystallizes. Our housing crisis isn't about simple shortages; it's the consequence of turning shelter into a financial asset. When homes are treated as investments, well-capitalized corporations and investors are incentivized to buy up as much stock as possible—demand for a life-sustaining good is inelastic, guaranteeing returns. This creates a split incentive between tenants, who seek affordable, quality living conditions, and landlords, who aim to maximize returns by raising rents while cutting costs like maintenance and repairs.

Moreover, the market isn't a textbook equilibrium of supply and demand. Large-scale property owners with enough regional market share can unilaterally set rents and keep their units artificially scarce to drive up the value of what they already own. Tenants, in contrast, are forced into an impossible choice: pay more for less, gamble in a broader market increasingly devoured by predatory players, or face eviction. The knowledge my grandfather carried—that you lack fundamental control over your life if you lack control over your housing—now haunts tens of millions of Americans.

The Power Imbalance: Landlords vs. Tenants

It's crucial to distinguish between the local “mom-and-pop” landlord and the corporate giants. A responsible small-scale owner with a handful of units, who maintains properties, reinvests rent, and negotiates face-to-face, operates on a far more balanced playing field. The predatory dynamic emerges with large-scale landlords—often anonymized through layers of LLCs—who are unreachable when the heat fails but unmistakably present when rent is due. Their power comes from treating housing as a cash cow, not a home.

Yet, that rent is also the linchpin of the whole system. It's the investor's ROI, the mortgage payment on the property. And that's where tenants, following the legacy of labor unions, find their leverage. If workers can withhold labor to force fair wages, tenants can organize collectively to demand decent conditions. By standing together, they transform from isolated supplicants into a unified force that landlords—no matter how large—cannot ignore.

A Union of Neighbors: The Tenant-Led Solution

Tenant unions are not a hypothetical. In 2026, the International Tenants Union will celebrate its 100th anniversary, founded in Zurich to inspire such organizing worldwide. In Brazil, the Landless Workers' Movement (MST) pioneered autonomous agricultural cooperatives, influencing urban housing movements. In the United States, tenants from Connecticut to Montana, Missouri, Kentucky, and Illinois have formed a national federation to support and scale up these transformative organizations.

Here in Connecticut, I've witnessed the extraordinary metamorphosis that happens when neighbors unite. Elderly residents, between doctor's appointments and grandkids' visits, organized to force landlords to invest millions in repairs, turning dilapidated buildings into dignified homes. Over a hundred tenants spent five winter months picketing and holding press conferences after an electrical fire, ensuring every displaced person was safely rehoused. Tenant unions have prevented hundreds of evictions, saved members tens of thousands in rent and medical bills, and compelled landlords to negotiate in good faith.

These successes happen because tenants recognize their interconnectedness as a strength. A lease is a bilateral contract, but it's only equal when both parties have real power. A union transforms a group of vulnerable individuals into a collective capable of negotiating as equals, demanding maintenance, reasonable rents, and a voice in the conditions that shape their lives.

Envisioning a Better Future

Picture waking up in a community that has taken control of its own housing. You step outside to walk with neighbors to the garden or greenhouse you've planted together. Berries from that garden go into a blender powered by solar panels your union installed on the roofs. When something breaks, you know who to call—and it gets fixed. When challenges arise, you have a seat at the table to address them. Because you're saving hundreds in rent, you can spend at local businesses and participate in civic life instead of working three jobs just to survive. You can plan for the future with stability, even age in place, surrounded by a community that shares the load.

This isn't utopian fantasy. It's the reality tenant unions are constructing here in Connecticut and around the world. By taking housing out of the hands of speculators and slumlords and placing it back in the hands of communities, we cultivate conditions where everyone can truly thrive.

Key Takeaways: From Vulnerability to Collective Power

• Housing is a human necessity, not a commodity. Treating it purely as an investment drives inequality and instability.
• Vacancy alongside homelessness proves the market has failed; supply alone won't solve a problem rooted in power imbalances.
• Large corporate landlords maximize profit by minimizing costs and leveraging market control; individual tenants have little bargaining power alone.
• Tenant unions offer a proven, democratic alternative—neighbors organizing to demand fair leases, repairs, and dignity.
• Collective action shifts the dynamic: landlords must negotiate with a unified group, not isolated, intimidated individuals.
• The movement is growing nationally and globally, demonstrating scalable models for housing justice.

Comparing Housing Models: Market-Driven vs. Community-Centered

Aspect	Market-Driven (Commodity)	Community-Centered (Right)
Primary Goal	Maximize investor profit	Ensure safe, stable homes for all
Tenant-Landlord Relationship	Transactional, often adversarial; landlord holds overwhelming power	Negotiated, balanced through tenant unions; face-to-face accountability
Decision-Making	Landlord unilaterally sets rent, maintenance level	Tenants collectively bargain for fair terms, renovations, and community investments
Outcome	Rising homelessness, chronic housing insecurity, under-maintained properties	Stable homes, lower rent burden, empowered residents, thriving local economies

My grandfather was right: true control over your life requires control over your home. But the traditional path—individual homeownership—is increasingly out of reach. We must forge alternatives that embrace our interdependence. Tenant unions prove that by uniting with those who share our built environment, we can reclaim our homes, our lives, and build the world we deserve.

“If we take control of our rents together with our neighbors and demand the basic decency of direct negotiation, then our landlords, however large, however powerful, have no choice but to come to the table.”

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