"The Swamp" may have become shorthand for the White House, Congress, and the swarms of lobbyists that surround them, but the District of Columbia is a real city, with real residents, and real local concerns like keeping DC’s housing affordable. In this episode, Current Affairs associate editor Vanessa A. Bee sits down with housing attorney Amanda Korber, tenant organizer Rob Wohl, and historian Amanda Huron to talk about tenant strikes, displacement, and combatting landlord and developer greed.
Relevant reading:
An Example for All the Land: Emancipation and the Struggle over Equality in Washington, D.C., by Kate Masur: https://www.uncpress.org/book/9780807872666/an-example-for-all-the-land/
Home Rule or House Rule? by Michael Fauntroy: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780761827146
A Housing Crisis, a Failed Law, and a Property Conflict: The US Urban Speculation Tax, by Katie J. Wells:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/anti.12146
Carving Out the Commons: Tenant Organizing and Housing Cooperatives in Washington, D.C., by Amanda Huron:
https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/carving-out-the-commons
Nicholson St tenant strike coverage on WAMU :
https://wamu.org/story/18/10/15/northwest-d-c-residents-go-strike-protest-decaying-buildings-rising-rent/
Irving St tenant strike coverage on Greater Greater Washington:
https://ggwash.org/view/71558/a-columbia-heights-rent-strike-highlights-abuses-tenants-face-in-dc
DC DSA's housing campaign:
https://www.thenation.com/article/democratic-socialist-campaigns-target-isnt-incumbent/