Metropolitics

“Every Eviction is an Act of Violence”

Tara Raghuveer & Joshua Akers — 2021-03-23T06:00:00Z

Josh Akers interviews researcher, organizer, and activist Tara Raghuveer about her work with KC Tenants in Kansas City, Missouri, and with the Homes Guarantee. They discuss housing issues and activism in Kansas City and at the national level, and what the Covid‑19 pandemic has meant for housing struggles and the future of housing movements.
---- Series: Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research In early December 2020, Metropolitics editorial board member Josh

- Interviews / activism, video, housing, rental housing, tenants, community organizing, evictions, Covid-19, coronavirus, pandemic, United States, Kansas City, Missouri

Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research

Joshua Akers — 2021-03-12T07:00:00Z

In this series, Metropolitics focuses on the intersection of organizing, technology, politics, and policy in urban rental housing struggles. It seeks to place the increasing salience of contemporary housing struggles in the context of the transformation of urban housing markets following the financial crisis and the additional precarity induced by Covid‑19.
---- ▼ Jump to the list of articles ▼ The US federal eviction moratorium will expire at the end of March. The original moratorium, issued

- Series / housing, activism, community organizing, Covid-19, crisis, financial crisis, housing crisis, coronavirus

The Actually Existing Markets of Shrinking Cities

Joshua Akers — 2017-04-18T05:00:00Z

In a bid to halt urban decline, Michigan's state government sought to create incentives for the creation of urban homesteads by accelerating the tax-foreclosure process. But what happens when city and county administrations don't play ball—and what are their motivations for doing so? Joshua Akers examines the adverse effects of a market-centric public policy.
---- Series: Shrinking Cities In the late 1990s, the state of Michigan bet on markets and urban pioneers to reinvigorate its struggling

- From the Field / housing, Chicago, housing policy, Los Angeles, real estate, public policy, foreclosure, Detroit, evictions, Michigan, shrinking cities, urban decline, urban homesteading, housing markets, Flint, homestead

Contesting Economies of Displacement and Dispossession

Joshua Akers — 2017-01-13T06:05:00Z

Joshua Akers describes Detroit's housing crisis, characterized by speculation, displacement, and increasingly violent evictions; and resistance through direct action, mapping, and the production of new data sets.
There is a housing crisis in the city of Detroit. This has quickened over the past decade. What emerged in the aftermath of the financial crisis is an economy of displacement and dispossession clawing away the homes and livelihoods of poor and lower-middle-class residents. It is

- From the Field / housing, crisis, displacement, Detroit, housing crisis, evictions, speculation, foreclosure