A radical plan for mass housing meets a careful assessment of why we're not succeeding—from the best-selling author of D.C
In the struggle for housing, we find ourselves caught between the world we know and the world we desire. This book serves as both a roadmap and an accounting. Drawing on his practical experience in field organizing, Samuel Stein offers practical policies for operationalizing the right to shelter, the right to home, and the right to the city itself.With absolute honesty, the writer explores the reasons why these visions collide with the rocks of political reality. It exposes the forces holding us back, from the power of real estate capital to the limitations of our institutions, and captures the complex feelings of a left that has lost hope in the future.
Written in the exciting weeks surrounding Zahran Mamdani's historic election as mayor of New York City, Stein frames the book around the exciting possibilities and structural limitations of a socialist administration in the financial center of a faltering empire.It opens the way for action in the absence of hope. It is a study of life and politics at the intersection of optimism and pessimism, nihilism and naiveté, faith and skepticism—an essential book for activists, planners, and all who refuse to accept the housing crisis as inevitable or fixed.
