The Tenant Class
What if we told you there is NO housing crisis?
The author of The Tenant Class, Ricardo Tranjan joins hosts Santiago Helou Quintero and Jessa McLean to talk about the housing market, its purpose and the use of policies that don't challenge the narrative of shelter commodification and land ownership.
Tranjan presents the landlord / tenant divide as a more useful class analysis for our times. He encourages us to reframe our approach to housing advocacy, in ways free from the confines set by Capital.
-----------------
All of our content is free - made possible by the generous sponsorships of our Patrons. If you would like to support us: Patreon
Resources:
Transcript
Greetings, friends. My name is Jess McLean, and I'm here to provide you with some blueprints
Speaker:of disruption. This weekly podcast is dedicated to amplifying the work of activists, examining
Speaker:power structures, and sharing the success stories from the grassroots. Through these discussions,
Speaker:we hope to provide folks with the tools and the inspiration they need to start to dismantle
Speaker:capitalism, decolonize our spaces, and bring about the political revolution that we know
Speaker:we need. Ricardo, welcome. Please introduce yourself to the audience. So I'm Ricardo Tranjan.
Speaker:I'm a political economist and a senior researcher with the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives,
Speaker:a think tank that has been around for some 40 years. We're known as number crunchers. We're
Speaker:also described as left leaning. We have had very strong relationships with the labor movement
Speaker:and other social movements for many, many years. Before working at the CCPA, I did a gig within
Speaker:government for four years at the City of Toronto. I was helping to develop the poverty reduction
Speaker:strategy. And before that, I was hired in academia for a few years. What caught my attention was
Speaker:obviously your book, The Tenant Class. And our audience will know that we feel really strongly
Speaker:about tenant organizing as a solution to many of the woes that... face us outside of labor
Speaker:organizing. So we definitely want to get into this a little bit more. But I think we're guilty
Speaker:sometimes of doing what you describe in your book as focusing on policies and government
Speaker:funding as points of pressure and as avenues for at least a modicum of change. And we often
Speaker:frame people's inability to afford a home and the amount of unhoused people there are as
Speaker:a housing crisis. I'm sure you're cringing as I say that. You really want to refocus the
Speaker:discussion there, because your book is primarily about challenging that narrative. You argue,
Speaker:amongst many other things, that what we often see in meme form, that capitalism is broken,
Speaker:it's working as it's intended, that also applies to... the housing market for many, many reasons
Speaker:that we will gleefully get into here. It is in fact designed and working exactly as it's
Speaker:supposed to, right? Extracting wealth from the working class and pushing it upwards. So what
Speaker:was your impetus in writing that, that in dedicating that book to the tenant class? Yes. The idea
Speaker:for the book started at the same time than the COVID pandemic, in fact. Back in March 2020,
Speaker:when the pandemic hit and there were all sorts of necessary lockdown measures put in place,
Speaker:one interesting thing that happened then was that all the pundits and think things and researchers
Speaker:that spend their entire life criticizing government and arguing that we need less of it and pushing
Speaker:for budget cuts and all of that. They were nowhere to be seen. My theory is that they were hiding
Speaker:in their basements and then the media start calling us, the Canadian Center for Policy
Speaker:Alternatives, quite a bit because you guys are the ones that always think that government
Speaker:should and could step in and that we do have the resources. And so what should governments
Speaker:be doing at this point? So... Back at the CCPA, we had a big meeting and saying, okay, all
Speaker:hands on deck, what are we gonna do? This is an opportunity to step in and shape policy.
Speaker:And then immediately my reaction was, I'm gonna start writing about housing. Tenants cannot
Speaker:make through this. I've done a lot of research on low and moderate income households. I know
Speaker:how little savings they have. I know how reliant they are on employment income. I know they
Speaker:work for the exact jobs that have been just. shut down. So that was my reaction. There was
Speaker:also a personal angle there. I grew up in Brazil in the 1980s. Really tough kind of economic
Speaker:situation. I was in a low-income family. We got two renovations that sort of marked my
Speaker:childhood and there's pretty strong and painful memories to this day. And so somewhat that
Speaker:context brought me back to that. that space too. So I said, like, I'm going to do housing.
Speaker:So I started doing more work on housing, on rental housing specifically, which I hadn't
Speaker:been doing much before. And then the tenant movements start providing me with positive
Speaker:feedback and say, Oh, there's something different about the way you write about this. We don't
Speaker:hear that perspective as often. And it's been more useful than other stuff that we have access
Speaker:to. And then with the York Southwest and Tenant Union, they even start asking me. you know,
Speaker:actually, you know, if you had time to do this kind of analysis on this specific thing would
Speaker:be helpful to us. And I was like, okay, I can find time. And then that's where my relationship
Speaker:with the movement started. And at some point I wrote a two pager and I said, if I were to
Speaker:sink my teeth on this, this is what I would write. I would do a class analysis of this,
Speaker:which I think would be just in a way capturing the perspective that you already, you're clear.
Speaker:I. view of this by the time I spent not only with the York Southwestern Union, but with
Speaker:other tenant groups. And I circulated, I circulated, you know, to six, seven groups across the country.
Speaker:And the basic question was, would this be useful? And then it was an enthusiastic yes, as a reply.
Speaker:And then I was like, okay, so if, you know, I'm not an organizer, I don't know how to organize
Speaker:people. I know only how to organize semi-columns and decimal points. But if I can be of... of
Speaker:help that way that I'm glad to. So that's how the book came about. And then throughout the
Speaker:process, I reached back to some of these groups and asked them to read drafts and provide feedback.
Speaker:And that's how the tenant class came about. Okay, I'm gonna get you to explain to our audience
Speaker:what I meant by the fact that you're probably cringing at the term housing crisis. I'm sure
Speaker:if I did a search and find of our transcripts, I have used that term an embarrassingly amount
Speaker:enough. times now that I have read what I read. So I agree, like, I didn't, I'll admit, like,
Speaker:I haven't read the entire book, but from the excerpts that I have read, I have shifted some
Speaker:perspective or at least reminded myself of the givens that are being taken for granted when
Speaker:we have these discussions. But the fact that calling it a crisis is kind of one of them.
Speaker:Can you kind of unpack that? for our audience, because I'm sure they use the term and don't
Speaker:understand. They understand that language is important, but perhaps they haven't caught
Speaker:this one. Sometimes I use that term too. It's inevitable and it's there. And my problem with
Speaker:it is that when we talk about a housing crisis, it depicts the situation that we're in as something
Speaker:that is unexpected, as something that impacts everyone, or at least most people, equally
Speaker:and negatively, and most importantly, it depicts us as something that would all have an interest
Speaker:in solving. And I think that characterization is not very accurate first, and definitely
Speaker:not useful. We have had the same structure for our housing system for decades and decades
Speaker:and decades, more than a century, depending on the type of housing we have. how you count
Speaker:it. It has always been that we are gonna try and get the middle class to buy homes and they
Speaker:will achieve both housing security and long-term financial security in that way. Those who can't
Speaker:buy a house, they will fend for themselves in the rental market. And good luck. Sometimes
Speaker:we put some regulations when things get really bad. But as soon as things get a little bit
Speaker:better, we remove those regulations and we allow profit to go wild. For those that are very,
Speaker:very poor, we're gonna provide a small number of social housing units, just as kind of a
Speaker:residual thing. This has been the structure of the housing market for so long. And in all
Speaker:of these different moments where we kind of, we face some increased levels of hardship and
Speaker:there are more and more... the larger numbers of people who were being able to meet rent
Speaker:and so on, there were proposals for doing things different. And you couldn't go back to like
Speaker:the early, like as early as L'Orillet, that's like 1911, 12, 13. And people saying, well,
Speaker:maybe we should remove a larger share of the housing units out of the market, have a larger
Speaker:share of homes that are not for profit. And the Canadian state has always answered the
Speaker:same way, which was, that's a great idea, but now we're just gonna throw money at developers
Speaker:instead and see if they can get us out of this. That has been repeatedly the way we chose to
Speaker:go. So to call it as a crisis, we suggest that the outcome that we see now wasn't expected,
Speaker:is expected, where it's not only expected, but it was seen many times before. And then to
Speaker:the other point is when we call it a crisis, we tend to think that everyone's gonna get
Speaker:around the table and bring the really good ideas and great intentions and trying to solve this
Speaker:because the crisis, right? This notion of crisis is like, we all want to get rid of this. And
Speaker:that's not, that couldn't be far from the truth. We have people who immensely benefit from the
Speaker:way things are. Not only they don't want things to change. they are actively involved in keeping
Speaker:things the same way. So that's one of the things that I've been emphasizing even more than that.
Speaker:I wish I had emphasized more in the book is that it takes a lot of resources and energy
Speaker:to keep things the way they are. And there's a lot of energy spent on it every single day.
Speaker:And there's even lobbying to making things slightly worse from the tenant's perspective. So that's
Speaker:why I don't like the language crisis. We are in a class struggle immensely benefiting from
Speaker:this and those who are paying the price. Yeah, it's incredibly frustrating for me, all of
Speaker:the discourse around housing, because it just feels like we're constantly being gaslit. We
Speaker:talk about how developers are the most powerful people in municipal politics, that they own
Speaker:our municipal politics, not just in major cities, but in smaller municipalities as well. Given
Speaker:the power that they have, if they wanted to make sure that there was an adequate housing
Speaker:supply. They could do that easily. And the fact that they don't tells you everything you need
Speaker:to know about that. And then the other part that's really frustrating for me is instead
Speaker:of, you know, conversations, systemic conversations about how we came to this, what's wrong, well,
Speaker:what's the conversation right now? Oh, it's migrants' fault. We have too much migrants.
Speaker:It's the international students. who are all living eight people in a basement in Brampton
Speaker:crammed together because they don't have any other alternative. And so everything around
Speaker:the public discourse feels incredibly far away from actually talking about any solutions whatsoever.
Speaker:And we're all just kind of blaming and looking in the wrong places, right? I just want to
Speaker:jump in because that reminds me of one of, I think, the most important. points in that framing
Speaker:of a crisis discussion that you have in the book is it's assumed it's like of unknown origin.
Speaker:The crisis, it has that natural disaster language around it as though it came from nowhere and
Speaker:you know there's got to be some magical formula solution and we're very rarely naming the problem.
Speaker:I think you've got a line in there. that something like rents don't rise, landlords raise rents.
Speaker:And I read it a couple of times before it, all of the implicate, probably not all, many implications
Speaker:sunk in. And one of them is what Santiago is talking about, that scapegoating, when you
Speaker:just say rents rise, it implies there's so many factors at play, inflation, cost of lumber.
Speaker:migrants, right? Like there can be all these talking points surrounding this crisis. And
Speaker:the reality is there is one problem. And there are individuals and companies that are using
Speaker:their land ownership to extract as much of the working class's income as they can possibly.
Speaker:That's important. That focus in the conversation is pivotal because without it, we're all looking
Speaker:in many, many different directions and you need fish to all swim in the same way. Yes, I'm
Speaker:often asked to talk about policy solutions and my reaction often is, can I talk about political
Speaker:responses instead, right? So we, as Latin American and as someone who, my academic work was a
Speaker:lot of focus in the Latin American politics, one thing that... constantly surprises me is
Speaker:the space, it's how much space the policy conversation takes versus the political conversations. One
Speaker:of the things that the policy conversation does and the policy pundits do, and by all means,
Speaker:that's my J-job. I'm trying to point that out to you, Ricardo. Maybe they're looking for
Speaker:you to policy because you work for the policy. Center for Policy Alternatives. I know, I like
Speaker:every single day, I try to talk myself out of a job. Maybe the alternative isn't policy,
Speaker:that's a misread of the title. Yeah. These are alternatives to policy. Yeah, that's really
Speaker:good, I should try that. But yeah, every day I try to talk. talk myself out of a job one
Speaker:day, I think I will do it. But until I don't. So, but that entire language of policy, one
Speaker:thing that is it does, it removes agency from the conversation. You read entire policy reports,
Speaker:then don't have a single subject on it. Even the slightly more elaborate and in detail analysis
Speaker:of how we got here, what you will hear is government stop funding, you know, non-market housing
Speaker:in the 1970s. Yeah, I've had that conversation. I sounded very intelligent. And those are facts.
Speaker:So we say, well, rent controls have... weekend over time we haven't built enough house since
Speaker:the 1970s market and purpose built rental units like apartment buildings. We also haven't built
Speaker:enough social housing so no social housing not enough rental units, weak rent controls, it
Speaker:leads to what we're seeing right now. But what are the subjects on those sentences? Who stopped
Speaker:funding rental houses? Why? Who stopped funding or providing any sorts of incentives for the
Speaker:construction of purpose-built rentals? Who changed legislation to weaken rent controls? And also
Speaker:the agency on the other side, which, you know, half of the book is about tenant organizing
Speaker:since before confederation, because there's agency on both sides, right? There's agency
Speaker:from the part of those deliberate doing this, but there's a lot of good, you know, fighting
Speaker:happening to resist all of us. Hence that sentence, you know, like initially be a three part sentence.
Speaker:Like, you know, rents don't go up, landlords raise rents and tenants fight the shit out
Speaker:of it. I think that amendment is necessary. Yes. Let's hear about more of that history
Speaker:because for me, it feels really new. I feel like I live through a period of perhaps not
Speaker:enough tenant organizing. And so watching the rent strike. erupt in Toronto is refreshing
Speaker:to me, but you're looking at it from a more historical lens where there's perhaps hope
Speaker:in seeing previous victories. Because like a rent strike to most people sounds outrageous,
Speaker:which makes it so special that they're happening. Tenants often feel very powerless, so the more
Speaker:stories of victories we could share the better. So you say from the time of Confederation tenants
Speaker:have been fighting the shit out of this. Yes, so one of the most valuable assets that Capito
Speaker:owns is history. Capito's ability to tell history according to their own perspective and to name
Speaker:who are the heroes and the bandits and who led to what and who did what and how is extremely
Speaker:important for them. And so when... we learn history in this country. It's always from one
Speaker:Laurier to another McDonald's, back to some Laurier, back to some Trudeau, and it's always
Speaker:the history of some, you know, enlightened men in some chateau in Ottawa deciding the future
Speaker:of the country. And it's a very inaccurate and, again, unhelpful way of telling history. The
Speaker:history of this country and of other countries is full of resistance, it's organizing and
Speaker:fighting back. And the history of common people and popular movements is so much more interesting
Speaker:and so much more rich than it's portrayed it to be. So I think that it is part of movement
Speaker:building, it is part of our resistance. to recover that history, to share that history, to make
Speaker:that history part of what our children learn and growing up knowing, so that they do know
Speaker:that there are alternatives, there are people who will fight to this and always have fought
Speaker:this, and that when they get to the right age, it's gonna be their turn to fight until they
Speaker:can't and someone else is gonna take it over for them. So with all of that in mind, the
Speaker:first chapter of the second part of the book, looks at history of movements. They're not
Speaker:only in the big cities. My first account is of Prince Edward Island farmers fighting absentee
Speaker:landlords. And then you go to Nova Scotia and to BC and to Ontario. And there were many other
Speaker:examples that I could have given. I picked a few that I found kind of representative and
Speaker:for which some sort of data or account was available. And it's just to remind all of us that we have
Speaker:done this for a very long time. I'm assuming rent strikes are not the only tactic that have
Speaker:been employed to quote unquote fight landlords. What other tactics have been used that were
Speaker:successful that perhaps we're not employing right now? Absolutely.
Speaker:one form of collective action. And it might be the right one, the right place, but it's
Speaker:also a risk one and cannot be employed every time anywhere. Other forms include pressure
Speaker:in government, but not on in the next policy tweak and not in the next, you know, through
Speaker:a formal consultation process, but having enough broad support from movements. including labor,
Speaker:as labor used to be a lot more involved, rental housing fights, to put a broad political pressure
Speaker:on governments to act in some way. And sometimes it was to build more non-market housing, sometimes
Speaker:it was to enact rent controls, and so on and so forth. There are also forms of collective
Speaker:action that we see today is just resisting, resisting eviction, resisting demolitions,
Speaker:resisting... any process of displacement and getting on the way of it and bringing enough
Speaker:popular support and public attention to it as to change the course of the process. And we
Speaker:saw that like in the 1960s, 1970s, when we had a lot of those, I mean, we still do, but in
Speaker:the 1960s, 1970s, a lot of those. process of large scale gentrification or government sponsor
Speaker:through the kind of the ideology of urban renewal and movements got, you know, on the way of
Speaker:that. There's also processes of reclaiming public housing and trying to change the philosophy
Speaker:of it. And I'm thinking of particularly Habiltação Jean Mance in Quebec, where public house came
Speaker:with a lot of stigma. a lot of the philosophy was the philosopher disciplining the poor,
Speaker:right? We'll give you house, but you have to behave kind of philosophy. And and the tenants
Speaker:organized and resisted that kind of paternalizing approach and disciplining of the housing provider
Speaker:and trying to shift things around. So, yes. There are many forms of collective action.
Speaker:It's in the end of the day, as with other movements, it is decided locally and hopefully democratically
Speaker:what makes sense for the movement to do, given many, many different variables and what people
Speaker:feel is their strength and their need. But yeah, they all can be more or less successful depending
Speaker:on the context. One thing I want to ask about is, you know, when When I talk to people from
Speaker:my generation about housing, you know, I'm 25, you know, nobody has any ambitions of ever
Speaker:owning a house or owning an apartment. They've kind of dismissed that as an impossibility,
Speaker:but a lot of those that still hold onto it talk about, you know, bubbles bursting, right? They
Speaker:talk about housing crashes, and they're kind of holding onto that as hope that... when this
Speaker:overinflated market crashes, they'll suddenly be able to get into the housing market. What
Speaker:do you think about that kind of analysis and whether or not, because I mean it definitely
Speaker:is a short-term windows of a possible solution, but it doesn't seem to address at all any of
Speaker:these larger problems.
Speaker:What I hear when I say that is folks equating housing security with home ownership. In our
Speaker:culture in Canada and in other places, those two are very strongly attached. Because in
Speaker:many ways, it sucks to be a tenant. Right? It sucks. It doesn't need to, but it does presently
Speaker:because regulations are so weak that... that you enroll your kid for first grade in a school,
Speaker:and you don't know if by the end of the school year, they're gonna still be in the same school.
Speaker:You don't know if you're gonna be asked to move any time and how many months you're gonna give
Speaker:them to move and so on and so forth. In many places in Canada right now, there are absolutely
Speaker:no rent controls. So you can even budget for your next couple of years because you don't
Speaker:know how much rent we're gonna go up and buy. eviction is a purely administrative process
Speaker:that most often just goes through it without a hearing, without any other more stronger
Speaker:legal scrutiny. So it is very, it feels very insecure financially and emotionally, since
Speaker:you know community and roots are so important to be a tenant. So what's the alternative?
Speaker:You buy a place. And that's how we have trying to solve this problem. But ideally we would
Speaker:start thinking about what it would take to make renting a more viable long-term alternative
Speaker:that folks are not so desperate to get out of it, right? If you look at a lot of the co-op
Speaker:housing and some non-market... profit providers and a lot of social housing. One thing you
Speaker:see is not only lower rents, which obviously isn't important, but you see very long tenure
Speaker:compared to the private market, right? People go and they make it home and they make it for
Speaker:a long time. And they just kind of build a life around it. And it's possible for them to do
Speaker:so because they don't have anyone kind of aiming to increase profit at every single corner.
Speaker:up, you know, breathing behind, breathing under kind of behind their neck, whatever the expression
Speaker:is. So, yes, I think that's the key for me is that is that is the equating security from
Speaker:like, you know, people don't buy homes because they love spending the Sunday fix in the basement
Speaker:is because they, you know, one of their kids to go to the same school, you know, through
Speaker:JK to 12. I think it also is part it fails to challenge that very important narrative. one
Speaker:of those givens that just underlies all of these discussions is that owning property is the
Speaker:solution when we know the existence of private property is the problem. And so although that
Speaker:might be an individual solution, maybe not, right? Maybe they end up house poor or whatnot,
Speaker:but clearly that's not a systemic solution. That isn't a solution for everyone. And then
Speaker:it just reinforces that idea that there should, you know, our infinite... or our finite amount
Speaker:of land should be divvied up to some, even though we know it can't be to all, right? It would
Speaker:never erase that kind of divide that you talk about that tenant landlord class. I wanna talk
Speaker:about that a little bit because I know there's a lot of traditional Marxists listening, probably,
Speaker:considering the flavor of our show. And quite often class is described, and by us, as the
Speaker:working class and capital. There are other terms that we can use that Marx used, but to try
Speaker:to be as accessible as possible to people, you know, the owners of the means of production
Speaker:and the rest of us, okay? And you frame it a little bit differently for the purpose of talking
Speaker:about housing, and that is a tenant landlord class division. I'll let you explain it, because
Speaker:you'll do it much better than I. can, obviously, but also I have a question embedded in there
Speaker:for the friends of Santiago and all those people that are homeowners, but clearly part of the
Speaker:working class as per Marxist definition. So is there an in-between then? Is there tenants,
Speaker:homeowners, and then landlords? Because not everybody, are you a landlord as soon as you
Speaker:are the lord of the land? You don't necessarily have to charge someone rent. That's my definition
Speaker:of a landlord, like you have a renter, but there's people who just own a home, they're house poor,
Speaker:they're working two jobs, like clearly they're working class. So can you help me unpack that
Speaker:a little bit, Ricardo? Yes. Thank you. So the tenant class, as the title suggests, argues
Speaker:that landlords on one side and tenants on the other side is a... core class struggle that
Speaker:defines our times and that we should think about the housing question through those lenses of
Speaker:two classes with opposing interests, going at it. And there is no win-win policy solution.
Speaker:One side has to give and time and time and time again, it has been the tenant class. And the
Speaker:only way to turn this around. is for the sanitary class to have more power and to build that
Speaker:power through organizing and take it away from the landlord class. So there are two ways of
Speaker:defending that argument, one that is a little bit more pragmatic and the other that is a
Speaker:little bit more theoretical. The pragmatic side is that Latin Americans have always felt very
Speaker:comfortable using Marxist terms loosely, as long as suits our political agenda. And then
Speaker:I, and you can see that. A Latino creative license? Yes, more than anything, the focus has been
Speaker:on the struggle at hand. And we use these concepts and this theoretical work instrumentally to
Speaker:serve our political projects, our emancipatory political projects. And there's this overall
Speaker:sense, at least on my part, that if you're doing so with the purpose of supporting an emancipatory
Speaker:project, in the end of the day, the Marxist gods will forgive you and you'll be fine. Oh,
Speaker:that's my hope. The Bernie bros might not, but history will judge you.
Speaker:So that's my hope. So if you go back a little bit and what we were saying earlier, how we
Speaker:talk a lot about policy versus, you know, political, policy solutions versus political responses.
Speaker:One of the side effects of that is that we break everything into little pieces, because that's
Speaker:kind of that's what policy discussions do. That's what government consultations do is to cut
Speaker:everything in little pieces. and to lose sight of the big macroeconomic picture and to divide
Speaker:people, frankly, between those who want childcare and those who want housing, those who want
Speaker:better income supports and those who want better jobs, because they're all in different tables
Speaker:in these government consultations and so on and so forth. So for me, it was really important
Speaker:when putting forward an alternative perspective or alternative framing on the housing question.
Speaker:to doing a way that unites instead of divides, that brings folks together, because us being
Speaker:divided, I think it's to their benefit. And so I found the class language of class very
Speaker:useful in that way. It bundles folks together, is a language that already exists in our vocabulary,
Speaker:folks intuitively understand what it is. And so I found it useful and that's why I used
Speaker:it because I thought, well, the heck of it. But I am a political economist by training.
Speaker:So I could also go in the rabbit hole and challenge that, you know, the classic perspective, that
Speaker:a class division only happens at the point of production. And the essays, the housing question,
Speaker:Ailes defends that housing, it's the point of consumption. and therefore it's not a fundamental
Speaker:division. It's just one more of the problems that the working class, the proletariat, it's
Speaker:faced with, and their power relations there and so on, but it's not the fundamental division.
Speaker:I think that needs revision. I think that needs revision for a number of reasons. I think it's
Speaker:a very gendered analysis to start with, like production versus reproduction. Yes, production
Speaker:happens at the factory floor, reproduction happens at home. And if you have no ability to control
Speaker:that environment because it's not yours, it makes reproductive work very hard. The other
Speaker:thing that I think has changed dramatically since then is access to capital. It used to
Speaker:be that you needed some physical plant or factory or something that you would or land, of course.
Speaker:that use them as collateral, you know, and to be able to borrow, and then you borrow, and
Speaker:you create yet another factory, and you employ more people, and then you kind of extract their
Speaker:surplus value of their work, and then you kind of go, use that as collateral, and so on and
Speaker:so forth. So you need it, like the production, as an anchor point for a lot of the financing.
Speaker:Today you don't. Today you can have like a mortgage that you like half paid mortgage, walk into
Speaker:a bank, get a loan, buy a condo and off you go extracting income from the working class.
Speaker:The level of financialization of capitalism right now and how much it no longer even touches
Speaker:production I think also kind of change, should a little bit change a little bit the way we
Speaker:think about this. And the other important. factor is the analysis of who are the most powerful,
Speaker:who is the leading the kind of hegemonic block here nowadays. And when you look at it, the
Speaker:enemy, yes, who is leading that, you know, that block of, you're going to find developers and
Speaker:the real estate industry right on the top of that block. And so if they're the ones having
Speaker:that much influence in the political landscape and in setting the kind of the hegemonic project
Speaker:according to their needs, I think they should be the ones kind of directly antagonized by
Speaker:the working class too. So I think there's room there for revision of that view that it's only
Speaker:the working class. But you're right, it complicates things because they complicate in fact that
Speaker:there's the homeowners who are workers, right? Of course. I wanna ask about the... the landlord
Speaker:class for a second, right? Because, you know, I've been told over and over again about these
Speaker:mom and pop landlords or, you know, the old retiree who is using it as retirement income
Speaker:or, you know, all of these different stories. I mean, it's very different than what I live
Speaker:because when I look out my door, I see every single building, there's four or five different
Speaker:companies who own all of them, but I'm being told that, oh no. It's not all landlords are
Speaker:bad. There's all of these kind, gentle old folk who are just using it as their retirement income.
Speaker:So, so I guess my question is like, who is this landlord class? And is there a truth to the
Speaker:mom and pop landlord? There is relatively small and shrinking share of landlords that own one,
Speaker:two, three units. or have small buildings. I think the size of the landlord is not actually
Speaker:that important. I think what's important is the relationship to the property and the fact
Speaker:that they are businesses and investors looking for high returns on their investment. If they
Speaker:own one condo, if they own 300 units, that fundamental... relation with the property and with the tenant
Speaker:with whom they extract income from. It's the same. And I go after the mom and pop landlord
Speaker:myth quite a bit because if we may use sort of Marxist terms and Cramsian terms specifically,
Speaker:we know that the sort of dominance at the material level is aided by a culture that supports that
Speaker:material dominance, right? So there's the kind of the two levels where it happens. And that
Speaker:at the cultural level, what we have in Canada is this romanticized, almost endearing notion
Speaker:of home, the landlords as you described, to the point that often the financial security
Speaker:of both is equated as equally important. And I tell this story in the book, when in the
Speaker:beginning of the pandemic, I wrote this report about the financial insecurity of tenants saying,
Speaker:you know, this was before Serb was announced, like tenants cannot stay two months without
Speaker:work. They will fall into arrears. There's not enough savings there. We need to talk about
Speaker:rent forgiveness. And I got a lot of radio interviews and almost all hosts asked me, but what about
Speaker:the landlords? And I was like, seriously? is a pandemic. We're talking about the tenants
Speaker:who don't have enough savings and your comeback is what about the landlords? And then in the
Speaker:beginning, I was kind of surprised and shocked that was the reaction. But then I started paying
Speaker:more attention to the narrative. And if you think the landlord is in fact, this old widow
Speaker:down the street, renting a room. to buy enough food and survive the retirement. Yes, that
Speaker:sentence, what about the landlord, makes sense. But if you look at who landlords actually are,
Speaker:which is an entire chapter of the book, it makes a lot less sense because there's a large part
Speaker:of them. There are just financial instruments. Then you have a big chunk of corporate landlords,
Speaker:quite large corporations. Then you have other smaller businesses that own one, two, three
Speaker:buildings. still quite large enterprises. And then you look at the individual investors and
Speaker:I looked at their financial, like their finances and their average wealth, is net wealth after
Speaker:that and taking into account mortgages. It's more than twice the average wealth in this
Speaker:country. So it is a very small number of landlords that fall. into that category and they should
Speaker:never be the ones that we portray as representative. Politicians love them because it's a fuzzy
Speaker:warm story, right? And it allows them to do exactly what you described. Small businesses,
Speaker:right? We hear the same for them, red tape for small business and it's all just really stuff
Speaker:that benefits corporations for the most part. It's like whenever we talk about increasing
Speaker:the minimum wage. Yeah. Right? Do you ever see Amazon come out and say, we build an empire
Speaker:on low wage workers. Please don't fuck that up. Like we really need workers to continue
Speaker:to earn very little. Otherwise our motto won't work. We never hear that, right? So what do
Speaker:we hear? We get, you know, we get Mary. Mary owns a bakery shop down the street, down Main
Speaker:Street. And if you increase minimum wage, Mary and John won't be able to meet their expenditure,
Speaker:their bills, pay their bills, and they might have to put their employees out of work. That's
Speaker:the narrative here. And it's kind of the same. It is the same because it's still reinforcing
Speaker:the idea that small or large scale, that this extraction and this exploitation is okay. Yeah.
Speaker:I mean, I hear all the time. the phrase landlords provide housing. Job providers. It's all the
Speaker:same language used back and forth. I saw a great quote the other day on Twitter where someone
Speaker:said landlords provide housing like scalpers provide concert tickets. It seems people are
Speaker:so resistant. So many people are resistant to the idea. They hold on to the notion that landlords...
Speaker:are providing housing that without landlords, we wouldn't have, there would be no tenant
Speaker:class. There would be, we would not have any other alternative. They've never heard of non-market
Speaker:solutions. They've never heard of community land trust or cooperative housing or whatever
Speaker:it is. Like that's just not in our vocabulary. Or, well, I mean, it's in our vocabulary, but
Speaker:you know what I mean. It's not in the common vocabulary. It's not in the discourse. No,
Speaker:we often let them get away with that, that framing of they're susceptible to things that make
Speaker:them bring the rent up, or that they will somehow be mediated by small policy changes or the
Speaker:market. And I really do love the way that you go after that in many ways, but my favorite,
Speaker:because I kind of want to call this episode, housing isn't bananas. Because Santiago, it
Speaker:drives them a little bit nuts that our essential goods are, that the narrative around essential
Speaker:goods is the same as it would be chewing gum, that there's a threshold to be met and the
Speaker:market will regulate itself. And you really kind of chew that up and spit it out. And I
Speaker:think Santiago would really appreciate that part of the discussion. So you wanna help bust
Speaker:that myth for us that somehow if we just build a- provide incentives for either more mom and
Speaker:pops, like Olivia Chow is proposing to do, allow people to get financial incentives to turn
Speaker:their home into a three story to create units as a solution to both the sprawl problem and
Speaker:the supply problem that Ricardo will talk about. So, cause that is one of the policy I know.
Speaker:We talk about policies not really being all that effective, but most of them revolve around
Speaker:creating more supply. And I think some politicians are trying to couch it in, they're marrying
Speaker:these two awful narratives, the mom and pop and the supply and demand, and as though this
Speaker:is a more progressive solution to the housing crisis. We talk a lot about housing, but we
Speaker:don't talk enough about land on which housing is built. Land has some particular qualities
Speaker:that it makes it very different from other types of goods that we talk about in supply and demand
Speaker:terms. Land is limited, land doesn't travel, doesn't move, and land appreciates in value
Speaker:over time. There's very different than most other goods that you can simply produce more
Speaker:and then you put in a container and you ship to the other side of the world. And that after
Speaker:some time, if it has been used or even if it hasn't been used, it's kind of worth less than
Speaker:it used to be. Land is very different. So the supply and demand argument doesn't quite apply
Speaker:as well to this, if it applies well to other things is even another discussion, but definitely
Speaker:not to land. and the housing built on land. And I'll give an example that for folks in
Speaker:Toronto in particular, we resonate quite well. It might be hard for us folks like us to think
Speaker:about this, but some people have too much money and they don't know what to do with it. They
Speaker:literally do not know where to put it. Poor things. And so they have all sorts of investments
Speaker:around. the world where they shovel money in different places. And then some of this is
Speaker:higher, like high risk investments, and some are moderate risk investments, and they wanna
Speaker:balance it out to the risk portfolio, so they need something that is really safe, just kind
Speaker:of literally like, something like a mattress where they can just kind of put their money,
Speaker:no one's gonna find it, no one's gonna take it away. And a condo downtown Toronto is the
Speaker:perfect place. It serves the purpose of a safety box. You just buy it, And so that's where your
Speaker:money is. And if one is not enough, it doesn't feed all the money. You buy three or four and
Speaker:you kind of just leave it there because it's kind of a safe place to park your money. So
Speaker:sometimes economists and geographers will call that like the role of real estate as a store
Speaker:of value, right? Just literally a safety box. So that fact alone. screws up the entire supply
Speaker:and demand, we'll build more houses, prices are going to go down kind of argument, right?
Speaker:And also important to talk about land because it reminds us of the fact that we're up against
Speaker:a lot of power, a lot of armed conflict, genocide, colonization. or fundamentally about land.
Speaker:The fact that we're in so-called Canada where it was exactly a project to take possession
Speaker:of land and therefore create markets for the exchange of land, the housing built on it,
Speaker:the financing of the housing built on it, and even more recently, a market for the financial
Speaker:instruments for the financing of the house that is built on that land. It reminds us of how
Speaker:far capital will go to take land, past and present, to this very day. We see genocides being committed,
Speaker:being carried out in order to take possession of land. So that's the point that you lose,
Speaker:kind of like it's lost on me, that we try and talk about housing as not being political.
Speaker:Like, are you fucking kidding me? Like, we're like watching a genocide that is intended to
Speaker:repossess folks, this place and entire people, and take over land. And as we have seen here,
Speaker:and as we have seen in so many other places, that's how Far Capital will go to take land.
Speaker:And we wanna say that there's some sort of policy win-win solution to the housing question. Yeah.
Speaker:What would you say to folks who, you know, there's a lot of leftists, Marxists, whatever label,
Speaker:I know folks don't like the labels, but people who understand this perspective, but still
Speaker:enter the discussion with the assumption that those folks own the land, that is done, there's
Speaker:not much we can do about the invention or the prevalence of private property. Are there mechanisms,
Speaker:do you believe that we can undo that? Is our initiatives like community land trusts or whatnot
Speaker:ways to move in that direction besides a revolution? Cause little policy bits and pieces aren't
Speaker:going to do it. I think this conversation has made that clear. If it hasn't, people need
Speaker:to go and get. the tenant class and read it themselves then. But that seems like even to
Speaker:someone who knows, who hates John Locke and understands just how awful the concept of private
Speaker:property is, my brain has trouble seeing beyond. Because like, maybe they operate from that
Speaker:because they're feeling like me, you know, they just, they're like, okay, well, we can't change
Speaker:that. What can we change? What is within the realm of possibility? And I hate thinking that
Speaker:way, but I know I've fallen into that hole here because of the way that I've looked at housing
Speaker:for the most part. So, I think before we get to the fundamental question of private property
Speaker:or no private property, we are unfortunately so far from it that the way I personally think
Speaker:about this is collective. Responses that move us towards more collective solutions rather
Speaker:than privatized individual solutions. So what I like about community land trusts is one,
Speaker:it reminds us that we're talking about land fundamentally. But second, that I think it's
Speaker:a move also in more. towards that collective response. That's what I like about co-ops as
Speaker:well. And that's one of the major problems with the focus on home ownership. Because home ownership
Speaker:is, you know, your individual ticket, supposedly, allegedly, arguable depending, you know, on
Speaker:the manufacturers, but. it is portrayed as to be your individual ticket to kind of housing
Speaker:security and to financial security more broadly. And so if we have more collective responses
Speaker:that take us to that collective versus the privatizing and individualized responses that now liberalism
Speaker:has really. emphasized, I think, our steps in a good direction. And the other problem is
Speaker:always my personal fear of getting too intellectual about this too, right? And remembering that
Speaker:some of those policy tweaks are definitely not the solution, but they could have an impact
Speaker:on... on folks ability to buy decent boots for their kids the next winter. And I'm talking
Speaker:about things like rent controls, for example, and policies that make evictions legal and
Speaker:things like that would operate within the existing state apparatus and even within some of the
Speaker:political consensus-ish. that we have right now, but it could have an impact on that. But
Speaker:again, it's how we go about it, I think that is important. If we all sort of think that,
Speaker:participating in the formal consultations is the way of going. Hopefully not all of us.
Speaker:Yeah, like no, exactly. We've got to free up some man, person power there. No, yes, and
Speaker:maybe all of it, I don't think that's the, like that's how you get. those things, you know,
Speaker:and it's a waste of time. So if you're building response capacity, if you're building, you
Speaker:know, if you're organizing and building capacity and ability to push politically, and you go
Speaker:and try to push for rent controls, as for example, as an example, and that say fails, at least
Speaker:that exercise, you know, you continue to build from that exercise and you still, that process
Speaker:wasn't wasted. If you put all your energy and participate in some official consultation as
Speaker:individual organizations, or as separated from each other and doing their own little submissions,
Speaker:and you send all of the submissions and the government absolutely ignores them and doesn't
Speaker:go anywhere, I think that was a huge waste of time. So if we push for some of these policy
Speaker:tweaks as part of a political project, And as part of, and as exercises that increase our
Speaker:capacity to fight for that and for other things, I think those fights can be fruitful one way
Speaker:or the other, but the trap is the formal channels of participation. I like how we've kind of
Speaker:come full circle back to the need for tenant organizing for its many purposes, whether it's.
Speaker:Public pressure, physical resistance, community building. I think as the last year has gone
Speaker:by and we've talked more about that, I think I'm slowly coming around to, it's almost the
Speaker:solution because it organizes us by neighborhood, by proximity, already by community, because
Speaker:workplaces, you don't even necessarily work. I mean, please still organize your workplaces.
Speaker:That is not off the table whatsoever, but nothing surely could be neighborhood unions throughout,
Speaker:and especially if they were interconnected with one another, because we're seeing the power
Speaker:of even the tenant unions that were in Toronto that are sometimes just like one building,
Speaker:two building, but they are working together quite a bit. And we're seeing a lot of progress
Speaker:really fast. So, you know, cause I know there's a lot of people listening that do many tactics,
Speaker:that are lobbying government for policy change, that do, that our policy wonks, right? And
Speaker:find a lot of purpose in that, but surely the act of organizing our communities has to take
Speaker:kind of priority over those resources. So two things there, first, collect their bargaining
Speaker:rights for tenants would be more important than rent controls in my perspective, because rent
Speaker:controls... Does that exist anywhere? Only in Sweden, to my knowledge. And in the 1960s,
Speaker:the NDP, NBC promised it, and then they were elected and then did implement it. But there
Speaker:has been, you know, ever now and then, term and some movement around it arises. But that,
Speaker:you know, that would be because the legislation, as many of you know, the legislation allows
Speaker:tenants to organize, but there's four standings to recognize, organize tenants as an official
Speaker:political interlocutor. So they don't have to negotiate and they don't. I think we've seen
Speaker:with the rain strikes in Toronto, a very concerted and deliberate effort to not recognize tenant
Speaker:unions as legitimate interlocutors with the tenants in those buildings. Because I think
Speaker:the landlord class understands the peril of the rising in organizing. what it would mean
Speaker:to have collective bargaining rights or what it would mean to have the tenant associations
Speaker:recognized. That's one point I wanted to make. The other point that you made about all the
Speaker:other folks who are not doing direct organizing, that includes myself. I think the conversation
Speaker:that I'm trying to have with colleagues is, yes, if you do policy or if you do research
Speaker:or if... like outside of academia or inside of academia. If you do other work that is not...
Speaker:Direct organizing. Can you shift the way you work to make sure that whatever you do is directly
Speaker:supporting organizing? How do we do that? How do we think about that? What would that mean
Speaker:in practice is some of the conversations that I'm having. So my colleagues in academia, I
Speaker:push them to do research that is for and not about tenant movements. I tell them you don't
Speaker:need to write another article about what tenet movement. So they know it. They did it. Like,
Speaker:you know, you don't need to go there and write a detailed description of how the strike came
Speaker:about. They organized it. They did it. They know all the details. That piece will not really
Speaker:help anyone that is on the ground. Right? So ask the movements. What is, where are you and
Speaker:where is your fight? What are the... the myths that you're facing, what's the narratives the
Speaker:media is pushing for that is not helpful, what can we do that would support you? And I think
Speaker:with some of the policy folks, it would be the same, it would be applicable too. We need to
Speaker:rechannel resources. There is an enormous amount of resources in this society, a time, money,
Speaker:working hours, that it's wasted in this futile conversations with government, and we need
Speaker:to move that money. and put more resources towards the organizing. That's like what our whole
Speaker:show's about, Ricardo. It's like, we've lost hope in politicians and the political system
Speaker:for personal reasons and through our experience, you know, talking to people and academia ourselves,
Speaker:but yeah, it's time that folks kind of refocus. I have great frustration with really good people.
Speaker:spinning their wheels or perhaps doubling up on work. And I love the idea of doing pieces
Speaker:for movements rather than about. And I think like Santiago, that could equally be applied
Speaker:to journalism because we've talked about, you know, fuck being unbiased, that doesn't exist
Speaker:anyway. So just don't even think about it and examine and write pieces and do work that we...
Speaker:do to that end. And I think we try, right? We want whatever our interviewees are trying to
Speaker:get across, we try to reinforce that as much as possible, but surely that's a noble way
Speaker:to apply a lot of the work that folks do, right? Not just academia, not just journalism, but
Speaker:whatever kind of day job you might be stuck in or whatever niche you've gained expertise
Speaker:on. And because, yeah, there's just so many roles to play here. Yeah, we'll end on the
Speaker:same note that the book ends, which I think is redundant to your audience. But it's always,
Speaker:I think, worth repeating that there is no win solution to this. And anyone engaged with the
Speaker:housing question has to pick a side. You are with capital and with the land. owning class
Speaker:or you are on the other side of this. There's no in between, there's no neutral. Pick a side
Speaker:and enjoy the struggle.
Speaker:That is a wrap on another episode of Blueprints of Disruption. Thank you for joining us. Also,
Speaker:a very big thank you to the producer of our show, Santiago Julio Quintero. Blueprints of
Speaker:Disruption is an independent production operated cooperatively. You can follow us on Twitter
Speaker:at BPofDisruption. If you'd like to help us continue disrupting the status quo, please
Speaker:share our content and if you have the means, consider becoming a patron. Not only does our
Speaker:support come from the progressive community, so does our content. So reach out to us and
Speaker:let us know what or who we should be amplifying. So until next time, keep disrupting.
