rent control Archives -

Protect Renters: Vacancy Control Now

February 16, 2023Jean Swanson

This article first appeared in the Tyee. Jean Swanson is a lifelong campaigner for renters and the working class. She was a Vancouver Councillor from 2018 to 2022. Although Jean is not a member of Socialist Alternative, we energetically supported her successful election in 2018 and worked hard trying to get her re-elected in 2022. […]

Vancouver Rent Control Victory!

January 25, 2022Martin LeBrun

After years of hard campaigning by tenants, the SRO Collaborative and Vancouver City Councillor Jean Swanson, a victory! In mid-November 2021, Vancouver City Council approved real rent control for the private single-room occupancy (SRO) hotels that house many of the city’s most vulnerable people in the Downtown Eastside. SROs are usually small single rooms, about […]

How Socialists Defeated Amazon’s Bid to Buy Seattle’s Elections

November 12, 2019Socialist Alternative US

Kshama Sawant Re-Elected Despite Corporate PACs Spending $4 Million to Buy City Council Despite big business and Amazon going all-in behind corporate candidates in all seven city council races, Seattle voters rejected Jeff Bezos’s bid to flip the council to the right. In Seattle’s most-watched, most expensive, and most polarized council race in decades, Socialist […]

Amazon vs. the Socialists in Seattle

October 1, 2019Kshama Sawant

Originally published CounterPunch.org on 9/23/2019. In what may turn out to be a preview of the U.S. presidential election, with the ruling class hell-bent on stopping Bernie Sanders at all costs, big business in Seattle is carrying out an unprecedented assault of corporate PAC money against socialist and progressive candidates in this year’s elections. The […]

Socialist Alternative councilwoman Kshama Sawant leads a protest march in Seattle, WA

Seattle and the Socialist Surge in the U.S.

July 28, 2019Ty Moore

Ty Moore is a member of Socialist Alternative in the US. Seattle’s Socialist City Councilmember, Kshama Sawant, is in the midst of a major fight for re-election. U.S. elections are long and expensive compared to most of the world. Seattle city elections are in two parts: a primary that runs through August 6 and then […]

Historic Victory for New York’s Housing Movement – Real Estate Defeated but Democrats Block Universal Rent Control

July 20, 2019Brian Grady

Brian Grady is a member of Socialist Alternative in the US. The real estate lobby threatened to sue. Headlines in the mainstream press foretold mass disinvestment in rental properties. Landlords invoked the bad old days when the Bronx was burning and all but promised to stop repairing their buildings. But standing up and down the […]

Seattle’s Housing Crisis Fuels Polarization in City Council Elections

May 10, 2019Ty Moore

Ty Moore is a member of Socialist Alternative in the US. In the four years since city and county officials declared a “State of Emergency” on homelessness, the situation has gone from bad to worse. Unfortunately, the dangerous, right-populist ideas animating “Seattle is Dying” are likely to gain growing support in the absence of any […]

Vancouver – Jean Swanson for “The City We Need”

June 9, 2018Pete Marlowe

Vancouver’s political revolution is rolling forward. Jean Swanson is running again for City Council! This follows from the political earthquake she caused in last November’s city by-election. On June 9, at a rally at The Crescent in Shaughnessy, a Vancouver neighbourhood so tony it should be called Anthony, Jean Swanson announced she is a candidate […]