Metropolitics

The Emergence of Transnational Queer Organizing Across a Hardening US–Canada Border

Elizabeth Hessek — 2025-09-30T05:00:00Z

LGTBQ+ refugees in the United States not only face the violence of the nation's immigration policy but are also constrained by international agreements that limit Canada's ability to offer refugee status to them. Elizabeth Hessek describes how these challenges have created opportunities for transnational networks to support queer refugees wherever they may be.
As migration control has surfaced as a barometer of national sovereignty in public debate, recent migration scholarship has rejected

- From the Field / LGBTQ+, queer, community organizing, refugees, United States, Canada, North America, borders, immigration, immigration policy, networks

The Fight for Community Ownership in Los Angeles Chinatown via the LA Chinatown CLT

Amy Zhou — 2025-07-08T05:00:00Z

Community land trusts are one strategy to stem displacement due to real-estate speculation in Chinatowns across North America. Yet, as Amy Zhou demonstrates through her work with the LA Chinatown Community Land Trust, these efforts must address multiple challenges to realize the potential of community ownership.
Over the past few years, the community land trust (CLT) movement has held a significant amount of attention across North America, and particularly in a number of Chinatowns, including

- From the Field / community land trusts, Chinatown, displacement, real estate, property ownership, United States, community organizing, Los Angeles

Unleashing Finance Capitalism in the City: An Interview with Isaac Rose, Author of The Rentier City

Jonathan Silver & Isaac Rose — 2025-06-24T05:00:00Z

Jonathan Silver interviews author and tenant organizer Isaac Rose about his book on housing financialization in Manchester, The Rentier City. They discuss the motivations for writing the book, how theory informs practice, and the influences that guided Rose as he wrote.
Isaac Rose, a tenant-union organizer in Manchester, recently launched a new book with Repeater, The Rentier City: Manchester and the Making of the Neoliberal Metropolis. In it, Rose unravels the causes of today's intensifying

- Interviews / housing, financialization, tenants, Manchester, United Kingdom, community organizing, gentrification, England, housing justice

Dusting off the Archives: Connecting Historical Renters' Activism to Contemporary Housing-Justice Efforts

Céline Drieskens — 2025-03-05T06:00:00Z

Drawing parallels between the first renters' union in Brussels and the contemporary efforts of WUUNE, a newly formed independent renters' union, this essay advocates for community archives as one (of many) tools in the pursuit of housing justice.
---- Series: Horizons in the Housing Struggle It is February 29, 2024, when I first ring the doorbell of Albert Martens' home in Schaerbeek, Brussels. The 84-year-old housing activist and sociologist invites me into his attic office, in the house he

- From the Field / housing, right to housing, right to the city, housing justice, community organizing, tenants, archives, Belgium, Brussels

Starve the Beast: Community-Owned and Community-Controlled Composting as an Alternative to Incineration in Baltimore

Nicole Fabricant — 2022-05-31T05:00:00Z

Nicole Fabricant documents organizing efforts in Baltimore, led by youth of color, against a trash-to-energy incinerator in one of the most environmentally unhealthy communities in the United States. In doing so, these youths created a movement for fair development. Fabricant shows the power of young people to create change in a city that, like most deindustrialized, impoverished, and majority-Black cities, caters to private developers and bankers, promoting a development model that does not

- From the Field / waste, waste management, Maryland, United States, Baltimore, community organizing, youth organizing

The Promises and Realities of Data-Driven Community Development

Austin Harrison — 2022-02-22T06:00:00Z

Tennessee nonprofit Innovate Memphis has spent nearly a decade designing the Memphis Property Hub, a public data platform for community development corporations (CDCs). Austin Harrison asks if this is a replicable way to democratize neighborhood- and property-level data, so as to level the playing field between community organizers and well-resourced state and market actors, and bring community organizing back to the fore of urban CDCs' activities.
Over the past decade, city governments and

- From the Field / data, open data, smart city, community-based organizations, community organizing, community development, housing, evictions, United States, Tennessee, Memphis

Reflections on Four Years of Housing-Justice Support Work with Mapping Action Collective

Sachi Arakawa & Tim Hitchins — 2021-04-13T05:00:00Z

Mapping Action Collective, based in Portland, Oregon, leverages mapping and data to support housing-justice organizing, using GIS to dismantle systems of oppression, and grounding its work in the needs of the communities and movements with which it works.
---- Series: Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research As the interwoven US crises of homelessness, evictions, displacement, and housing instability reach catastrophic levels, students, scholars, practitioners,

- From the Field / housing, housing justice, mapping, cartography, data, community organizing, Portland (Oregon), Oregon, United States, homelessness, evictions

“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

Fighting for Housing Justice: An Interview with Two Youth Organizers in Curtis Bay, Baltimore

Nicole Fabricant & Carlos Sanchez & Terriq Thompson — 2021-03-16T06:00:00Z

Two Baltimore youth organizers discuss the importance of community land trusts, for housing and beyond.
---- Series: Contemporary Housing Struggles: Crises, Activism, and Critical Research Free Your Voice began as an informal after-school program inside Baltimore's Benjamin Franklin High School. It has evolved into a powerful youth-led movement to end incineration, build community land trusts, and push for zero waste and just transition in Baltimore.
The group organized between 2012 and

- Interviews / community land trusts, community organizing, activism, mobilization, youth, youth organizing, housing, affordable housing, housing justice, Baltimore, United States, Maryland, land use, land rights

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