
Housing disputes, struggles, art and resistance in a time of violence
Camila Cociña, Elara Shurety, Melissa García-Lamarca & Solange Muñoz
This issue of the Radical Housing Journal is published amidst growing authoritarianism and violence around the world, from the Israeli state’s continued genocide in Gaza to the unfurling fist of the Trump administration quashing immigration raid protests in Los Angeles. It seems we are experiencing what Nancy Fraser (2019)—paraphrasing Antonio Gramsci—refers to as an era in which “the old is dying and the new cannot be born”, where conservative authoritarianism is coupling with late-stage capitalism, advanced by wanna-be autocrats, tech-bros and military interests all in the name of absolute ethnonationalist power and profits. With this, we are also witnessing the rapid dismantling of an international model that touted and protected—however imperfectly—human rights and social justice. In short, we are in a moment of radical transitions and transformations in which basic needs, public demands, and what were seen as fundamental human rights are silenced, marginalised and openly neglected. This is the paradox of authoritarian regimes: they increasingly exert more control over people’s lives while also producing increased precarity, violence and exclusion in one form or another.
Housing, already a site of precarity, violence and exclusion, is not free from these dynamics. Indeed, at the heart of authoritarianism is a desire for absolute control over people, land and territory—a desire closely tied to questions of property and who has rights to dwell and inhabit what places. This points to the importance of collective structures and struggles from below to create communities of resistance and sites of care at different scales. To build popular power to fight back against repression and authoritarianism.
Despite and through these uncertain times, the articles in this issue demonstrate how tenants, social movements, and other housing organisers continue to fight for housing rights and justice through politically strategic and creative methods both locally and globally. This issue brings distinct perspectives of both critique and resistance to neoliberal, exclusive, classist and xenophobic housing markets and practices from Greece, the UK, the US, Canada, Switzerland and through international networks and coalitions. This issue also highlights how the use of art and design methods compiled within and for the struggle for housing provide methods and spaces to communicate and document housing struggles as a practice of resistance.
doi.org/10.54825/TPVI6477
Cover art: Housing Squeeze zine creators
Nick Clare, Joe Kearsey & Shaun French
Luisa Gehriger
Elliot Goodell Ugalde
Nikos Vrantsis
Brett A. Halperin
Tânia A. Cardoso
Brook Hill, Dominic Moulden & Judith Keller
Hub for Housing Justice’s Secretariat
Jessie Spears, David Madden and Housing Squeeze workshop participants