Samuel Stein's "A Right to Housing?"

About this episode

The writer and housing policy advocate Samuel Stein joins Kate Wolf to speak about his new book,  A Right to Housing? It lays out how housing could indeed become a human right, accessible to all, through things like the decommodification of the real estate market, the construction of—and conversion to—more social housing, federal regulation, and continued tenant organizing. The second half of the book, meanwhile, contends with just how distant many of these steps seem in the present, and even throughout history. Stein talks about the oversimplification of YIMBY versus NIMBY, the fix against public housing from its inception, how cities are contending (or not) with climate change, and the small victories that keep activists going in the face of an uncertain future.