Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis' new book, Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis, is both a polemic and a guide. Drawing on their experiences organizing with the Los Angeles Tenants Union, Rosenthal and Vilchis envision a world where tenants control housing – a liberatory horizon that legal scholars, lawyers, and law students alike have a clear role to play in reaching.

With tenant organizing on the rise across the United States, legal scholars have been drawn to the idea that tenant unions, backed by the right legislative framework, could serve a function akin to labor unions. But labor and tenancy serve different functions for capitalism. Housing is a commodity that tenants consume rather than produce, so tenants would be better served by universal protections, such as price controls and possessory rights, than by the right to good faith negotiation.