A Political Roadmap to Social Housing: How Do We Win?

It’s becoming increasingly hard to find a housing justice organizer who hasn’t been to Vienna or extolled the virtues of its social housing sector, and wants to do something similar in the United States.

What’s harder to find is a political strategy to achieve as much. That, however, may be starting to take shape in some states through the organizing, narrative change, policy, and institution-building work of housing justice coalitions as they expand upon their grassroots organizing to build allies, resources, and power.

The lessons from these organizers are developing, and a strategy is progressively emerging, whether recognized or not.

What is Social Housing?

Social housing is housing that is publicly owned or under democratic community control—permanently affordable, and off-limits to profiteers. It encompasses co-op, community land trust (CLT), mutual, and public housing, and can include a host of new and existing publicly supported models.

While specifics may vary, social housing provides all households—low-income, working-class, and middle-class—quality housing that is affordable to their income level. Some social housing developments might be mixed-income, where higher rent levels offset lower ones. This “cross subsidy” model is one of a number of ways to keep rent affordable while covering rental operating costs. Social housing is often called “de-commodified” housing, where a home is not a speculative asset. This is housing as a means of shelter, not an investment to “flip” and profit from.

Social housing proposals currently are being considered in at least eight states or localities. California is required to produce a social housing plan for state legislative review by 2025. Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts, New York, and Rhode Island; and the cities of Atlanta and Seattle have considered proposals. While there are supporters and proposals in Congress, a federal framework may be years away.

The political roadmap to social housing involves far more than determining who to serve first or its principles, though these are essential. It requires determining a framework for political decision-making, examining the political forces in that decision-making as they relate to housing, and then calculating an approach that can produce lasting political wins.

As such, it involves dealing with the tensions between homeowners and tenants, the influence of money in politics and housing, and the public resistance to higher taxes and fees. All of this, of course, occurs within a sector historically marked by racism and classism, which still exist in various forms today.

Why Housing Justice Coalitions Must Be Broad

Social housing is supported by many tenant-dominated housing justice coalitions, but tenant mobilization alone will not achieve a significant social housing sector at any level.

The math clearly illustrates the need for some homeowner support. As of 2023, 65.7 percent of all US households live in homes they own. Homeowner interests and votes influence state legislatures far more than those of tenants, and the public price tag of a scaled-up social housing sector is beyond what many tenant-dominant localities can afford, so state support is required. State legislatures have already reversed or attempted to weaken significant tenant victories in cities.

This is due, in large part, to the fact that homeowners outnumber tenants in every state. But there are a number where margins are smaller and securing some homeowner support may be easier.

For example, New York, California, and New Jersey have statewide tenancy rates near or above 40 percent. Six other states—Nevada, Colorado, Hawaii, Oregon, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island—exceed the national average of 34 percent tenancy and similarly have large populations of people of color and labor union rates above the national average. The District of Columbia has a tenant majority of 60.3 percent. Including labor, faith, and racial equity groups can help increase homeowner participation in housing justice coalitions, and several are reaching out to homeowners facing housing precarity and involuntary displacement.

Of course, securing a significant bloc of potential votes is only part of the battle. Politicians are influenced by money as much as or, frankly, often much more than votes, and public policy is the product of calculating trade-offs between the two. Real estate monied interests influence politicians and manipulate voters at city, state, and federal levels.

The strategy to capture and convert the rental housing sector into social housing is already in motion.

However, there is a tipping point where potential or actual votes will overcome money—witness profit-seeking housing developers’ inability to overcome exclusionary zoning and “not in my backyard” (NIMBY) opposition despite the potential profit opportunities offered in many communities.

Outspending real estate money in campaign battles is possible but rare, so the primary tools of change necessary involve organizing—mobilizing, narrative change, policy, and institution building. These all are interconnected and dynamic.

Part of this work involves connecting people with lived experiences of homelessness, precarious rentals, and manufactured housing with homeowners fearing gentrification and displacement. Adding people involved in organized labor, faith, and racial justice institutions, and others who are politically aligned can grow this voting bloc. Securing a share of homeowner support, however, is even more powerful, as it will force state legislators to choose between the votes that keep them in office and the monied interests that contribute and cater to them.

Forging a Politically Viable Policy Vision

With the above in mind, it seems clear that “de-commodified housing” faces numerous political hurdles, not the least of which is that for many existing homeowners—or even aspiring homeowners historically shut out from homeownership wealth by racial discrimination and bias—market-based homeownership is seen as the most reliable way to build wealth.

Fortunately, community land trust (CLT) homeownership appears more successful than most government programs for first-time, low-income homebuyers—both due to demonstrated increased housing stability for residents and a participatory board model that includes both resident and nonresident community representation. This model offers political education opportunities that can produce lasting homeowner voter support. Housing justice coalitions such as Housing NOW! California and New York’s Housing Justice for All, as well as those in Massachusetts, Maine, Florida, and Philadelphia, wisely include CLT groups.

The strategy to capture and convert the rental housing sector into social housing is already in motion. Tenant mobilizations that enhance resident protections, rights, and due process—when combined with rent or affordability controls (where authorized by state law)—create a profit crisis for landlords.

If profit margins for rental housing decline, homeowner-landlords are likely to feel the squeeze first and exit the landlord business. IRS data shows that roughly 7 percent of all homeowners are landlords, but 70 percent of all small-unit rental properties (one to four units) are owned by individuals. In short, not many homeowners are landlords, but many landlords are homeowners.

Weeding out smaller landlords may seem counterintuitive, but small landlords often cause havoc politically. In state legislative battles for tenant rights, these landlords frequently include legislators themselves, and many officials give undue weight to so-called “mom and pop” landlords. In New York, the real estate industry recently appealed directly to small landlords of color, warning that “just cause” evictions and other tenant protections are a new form of “redlining” designed to strip them of wealth.

While circumstances vary, homeowner landlords are part of a class that realized $6.9 trillion in equity gains last year, far surpassing developer and corporate investment earnings, and they are increasingly adopting corporate landlord practices. Challenging this group of landlords has its risks, but politically it will reduce the voting constituency with the self-interest to vote against tenant-centered policies.

Pushing out smaller landlords certainly leaves the field open to larger corporate entities and others with the financial cushion to handle decreased returns on rental investment. But while these moneyed interests have political power, they are more vulnerable to attack. Proposals to ban or limit corporate landlord ownership are multiplying in states and nationally, and success has occurred already through local legislation, litigation, and/or shareholder-related action.

What becomes critical here is to capture these rental units for public use by implementing tenant and community right of first refusal options and prioritizing access for nonprofits (such as community development corporations).

Policy changes without accompanying operational support and infrastructure are like trees without roots.

Nonprofit housing groups, in short, can be movement allies, not opponents. Their mission is to keep housing affordable, so they need public operating subsidies, not exemption from rent controls (which could make their housing less affordable). Joint advocacy with nonprofit groups for these subsidies lays the political and financial foundation for a scaled-up and sustainable social housing sector.

Paying for this conversion and supporting a social housing sector is a heavy lift. But again, strategies are already at play. There is a natural nexus between using taxes to limit real estate profits and paying for affordable housing with tax revenue collected at the time of property transfer or sale. Several states and localities already have done as much.

Some homeowners may balk at such transfer fees; in some instances, “safe harbors” for working-class homeowners may be needed to maintain and grow their support. For example, in Baltimore and California, transfer taxes were imposed only on sales above $1 million and $5 million, respectively.

Building the coalition is not easy, but it can be done. Campaign narratives must do more than resonate with housing justice coalition members and allies; they need to motivate political mobilization with shared values and concrete action that attack the root causes of our housing crisis. They must be able to expand to address the needs of homeowners who risk losing their homes. Real estate money, profits, and political influence are central to this, and coalitions might follow New York’s example of continually calling it out.

Institution Building and Ongoing Operational Support

Policy changes without accompanying operational support and infrastructure are like trees without roots. That is, implementation must also be a component of policy vision and creation.

The keystone to implementing (or thwarting) policy objectives are institutions—public, private, or those in between. Public institutions such as housing development and/or finance agencies, housing trust funds, planning departments, zoning boards, and environmental agencies play dominant roles in policy implementation. They also have their own political dynamics, incentives, and influencers—and often appear immune to the political mobilization strategies and tactics that created the policy they are implementing.

Fortunately, there are allies and resources here. Equity assessment and governing tools developed by the Government Alliance on Race and Equity (GARE) initiative and Race Forward offer pathways for officials who take their public responsibilities seriously. “Co-governance,” where multiple and inclusive stakeholders manage public resources or decide policy issues collectively, is making its way into public discourse and policy implementation.

Prior social movements created private institutions such as CLTs and housing cooperatives that are experiencing a revival today and operate as training grounds for self-governance and democracy. Today, progressive activism has created real estate cooperatives and grassroots community engaged investment institutions that can play key roles in the land acquisition and housing development finance needed for social housing. All should be allies in housing justice coalitions, as should advocates for public banking.

Los Angeles housing justice mobilizers addressed implementation challenges in the successful 2022 ballot initiative “Measure ULA” (United to House Los Angeles). In addition to funding 11 housing program areas with roughly $250 million raised through a property transfer tax in the first year, money is being set aside for building tenant ownership capacity and an LA Housing Training Hub. The hub will educate and guide tenants to manage or own their own housing and support various resident and community governance structures. Additionally, it will train developers, property managers, and other owners on co-governance models. 

Meeting the NIMBY Challenge

“Not in my backyard” (NIMBY) attitudes are, perhaps, the greatest operational challenge to a scaled-up social housing sector.

Converting existing rental housing units to nonprofit ownership should not raise NIMBY concerns. Of course, public funds to assist nonprofit housing managers in renovation, operating, and capital repairs will be necessary to ensure quality and rent affordability. Los Angeles advocates are trying to operationalize such conversion on lower-cost rentals, euphemistically called naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH).

Social housing aims to address the root causes of the housing crisis. Contrary to popular belief, an insufficient supply of physical homes is not the culprit.

Construction of new rental social housing will be more challenging. Democratic governance models such as CLTs, co-ops, and mutual housing might mollify some community opposition, but policy change is imperative.

Fair housing litigation can force these changes, as can state “housing elements” and “fair share” laws that require local affordable housing assessments and action. Exclusionary zoning and local land use and planning practices have been increasingly under attack from corporate real estate interests. Forging connections with them, YIMBY (“yes in my backyard”) activists, and smart growth groups similarly aligned may be helpful politically. Policy innovations that reduce local control—which in practice most often means local control by wealthy homeowners—may be helpful. While forging these kinds of cross-class alliances can be tricky, NIMBY is a knot that warrants multiple strategies to untangle.

Addressing the Root Causes of the Housing Crisis

Social housing aims to address the root causes of the housing crisis. Contrary to popular belief, an insufficient supply of physical homes is not the culprit. For instance, a recent report found that Los Angeles, which has an estimated 36,000 unhoused residents, also has 93,000 vacant housing units. The cause of the housing shortage is not inadequate supply but the way profit-making disconnects people from the homes they need. Fix this latter problem and there will be sufficient housing for all.

But the roots of housing profit-making are intertwined with complex social, cultural, and political dynamics. As such, a political roadmap to social housing is far from simple but is possible.

Housing justice coalitions are mobilizing those with direct experience of housing precarity and building bridges to allies. States with higher-than-average rates of tenancy, diversity, union density, and faith-institution membership have the best opportunity to attract the homeowner support that can politically defeat real estate lobbyists, but the quest for social housing in any state must involve coalition building and maintenance, narratives and policy vision that motivate and have broad appeal, and new and existing institutional allies devoted to implementation.

Regardless, any campaign that increases the rights of tenants, supports community members fearing displacement, and helps unhoused residents and those in manufactured housing have stable homes are steps that begin to repair the harm generated by a profit-driven housing system. In the policy changes they enable, these campaigns and coalitions lay the foundation for a new housing paradigm—one that makes “housing for all” not just a slogan but a reality.