SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
corporate landlords
A Win for Mamdani Is a Win for Renters Everywhere
Mamdani is the antidote to the corporate landlord dominance we see in cities across the US. He doesn’t just speak on behalf of rent-stabilized tenants; he is one.
Nov 12, 2025
Zohran Mamdani, a tenant who lives in a rent-stabilized apartment and made affordable rent the primary issue in his campaign, has been elected mayor of New York City.
To be clear, a win for Mamdani is a huge win for renters—not just in New York, but across the country. Mayor-elect Mamdani has shown that a populist mayoral candidate with a bullhorn can ground a winning campaign in issues that impact constituents just trying to get by and have a decent place to live.
During the campaign, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo repeatedly attacked Mamdani for living in a rent-stabilized apartment and supporting a rent freeze. It was a display of character and courage that Mamdani never backed down. Instead, he doubled down. And the attacks against him continued through the last mayoral debate, where Mamdani stated emphatically, “You’ve heard it from Andrew Cuomo that the number one crisis in this city, the housing crisis, the answer is to evict my wife and I. He thinks you address this crisis by unleashing my landlord’s ability to raise my rent. If you think that the problem in this city is that my rent is too low, vote for him. If you know the problem in this city is that your rent is too high, vote for me.”
Mamdani understands the debate comes down to a very basic question: With rents so high, where are people supposed to live? The Starbucks barista, McDonald's worker, and Lyft driver are experiencing what most candidates are afraid to talk about—that they are one rent increase away from losing their apartment.
With over 2.3 million renters in New York City, it’s about time they elected a mayor who would put affordable rents front and center.
Too often, the dialogue around rent has been dominated by investors and corporate landlords. They seemingly have a bottomless pit of money to get their message out and line the campaign coffers of candidates who offer them carte blanche to raise rents and undermine tenants. As Mamdani stated during the race, “The same landlords who said they didn’t have enough money to freeze the rent, gave Cuomo $2.5 million dollars, the single largest check in this entire race.”
Mamdani is the antidote to the corporate landlord dominance we see in cities across the US. He doesn’t just speak on behalf of rent-stabilized tenants; he is one. And that makes all the difference.
Rent control is not new. It has been around since 1919. As real estate became more corporatized, multi-family buildings became a commodity—a line on a balance sheet. It’s less about the people and more about the building as an asset whose value is based on rents. In the 1990s, Apartment Associations led a nationwide campaign to curtail or ban altogether rent control. Currently, 37 states have banned it and states like California only allow rent control in buildings built in 1996.
Cash-strapped tenant organizations have done their best to move the needle on rent stabilization efforts, but they often face a deluge of money from the real estate industry, expensive lawsuits, and elected officials willing to reverse their progress.
Mamdani’s win as mayor signals new hope for campaigns that address the need to control skyrocketing rents. It sets in motion a new model nationwide centered on the needs of constituents, rather than corporate-dominated policies that have no tangible benefit to constituents and fail to improve the quality of life for low-income people.
With over 2.3 million renters in New York City, it’s about time they elected a mayor who would put affordable rents front and center.
Leaders across the country are watching what is happening in New York. The rents are so high that even someone working two full-time jobs can still be rent-burdened, paying over 30% of their income in rent. That is not sustainable.
New Yorkers reached a tipping point and found in Mamdani a leader who provided a platform of solutions, not more excuses for why they cannot get the relief they need. And hopefully, other cities will follow suit, attracting candidates that want to solve problems rather than kowtow to rich donors.
Let’s face it: Stabilizing housing costs is a reasonable practice, which is why most homeowners pay the same amount every month in mortgage payments. Mortgages don’t go up 17% every year to line the pockets of lenders. That would be ridiculous, and it is for renters too. Giving renters stability is not just a reasonable ask; it is a necessity.
As a lifelong renter, I believe we are on the precipice of policy change in the US. Renters and low-income communities are rising up to demand that the government acts in their interest.
Mamdani serving as mayor of America’s largest city, while living in a rent-stabilized apartment, is a game changer. More of this in other cities is desperately needed.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Landlord Doublespeak and the Rise of the 'Housing Provider'
What drives the preference of landlords to call themselves “housing providers” is a desire to euphemize the landlord-tenant relationship and to obscure some of its basic and most important features.
Jul 30, 2025
Landlords want to be called “housing providers.” Industry organizations in California, Washington, Rhode Island, and elsewhere are proudly claiming the label. Equal to this craving to be called “housing providers,” it seems, is the wish among landlords to no longer be called landlords. The term is antiquated, they say, and has a negative stigma that doesn’t reflect reality. The industry is not particularly secretive about these desires or the reasons behind them, which have to do with image and narrative.
The dictionary definition of landlord is precise enough, however, and, in fact, couldn’t be plainer: “The owner of property (such as land, houses, or apartments) that is leased or rented to another,” according to Merriam-Webster.com. The definition identifies the essential feature of any residential landlord—that they engage in a financial transaction to lease living space. This seems straightforward enough and noncontroversial. The motivation of the industry is thus not related to any mismatch between our common understanding of the word and its most essential attribute.
Instead, what drives the preference of landlords to call themselves “housing providers” is a type of Orwellian doublespeak intended to euphemize the landlord-tenant relationship and to obscure some of its basic and most important features. What does the phrase obscure? For one, it elides the basic extractive nature of landlording, the fact that landlords expect, in fact, rely upon the relationship to be monetarily profitable to them. This is the critical fact of landlording, that it is done in the main to make a profit.
Granted there are some instances of landlords renting to family members or others without expectations of profit, but these exceptions are merely that—exceptions. The English language routinely makes distinctions between services rendered for a fee and those provided on other bases. The difference between “housing provider” and landlord is the difference between a date and a paid escort or sex worker, it is the difference between the volunteer and the mercenary, between a financial gift and an interest-bearing loan. The English language is not unique in containing words that make clear the monetary exchange and profit that define some relationships. We use these words because the information they contain is consequential.
If the landlord industry truly wants to do something to burnish its public image, it might consider publicly rejecting or sanctioning members of its community who hiked rents in Los Angeles County by 20% in the aftermath of the fires of January 2025.
This attempt to obscure the profit motive in landlording is all the more problematic because those who would call themselves “housing providers” in one breath, will, in the next, argue against rent stabilization, tenant protections, and other regulations on the basis that these policies make their business unprofitable, or less profitable than they would prefer. This is wanting it both ways—attempting to hide the profit motive while simultaneously insisting on it.
“Housing provider” is also meant to conceal the power dynamics of the landlord-tenant relationship, one in which landlords hold the privileges associated with property ownership, the ability to define the terms of acceptable behavior and limits of property use available to tenants, and the ultimate power of eviction. Moreover, at a time when corporate landlords are extending their reach into the market, and we see the spread of price-fixing algorithms to maximize rents and profit, AI-driven tenant screening algorithms to perform background checks, and greater concentration and market power at the industry scale, the insistence on the phrase “housing provider” is an obvious attempt at happy-faced distraction.
Just as important as the attempt to disguise profit motive and landlord power is the effort to dodge whatever negative connotations attach to the term landlord. “Housing provider” is meant to avoid images of rapaciousness and greed, or to conjure images of benevolence and even charity, or to do both. The use of the phrase is, in other words, an attempt, acknowledged by the industry, to control a narrative. As such it is a political act, an effort to persuade and to establish a particular understanding of who landlords are and what they do, all in the service of influencing public debate and public policy. This is not to argue that tenants don’t also try to influence the public narrative; of course they do. It is merely to note that this phrase, “housing provider,” is a calculated bid to construct meaning in a highly contested policy area and it needs to be recognized as such. Those who choose to adopt the phrase choose to adopt the narrative.
If the landlord industry truly wants to do something to burnish its public image, it might consider publicly rejecting or sanctioning members of its community who hiked rents in Los Angeles County by 20% in the aftermath of the fires of January 2025. It might help to police property owners who evicted tenants during the pandemic in violation of federal and local laws. It might take action to address sexual harassment of low-income women by landlords, or address any of a number of discriminatory or exploitative practices that haunt the industry. Those wishing to hide behind the “housing provider” label will argue that not all landlords are bad, which is of course true. They will say only a portion of landlords engage in the practices that give landlord its stigma. But, if the only response by the industry is to stop using the word landlord, it betrays a self-serving concern that does little to improve negative public perceptions and, in fact, largely confirms them.
We don’t call Exxon an “oil provider,” nor do we call GM an “automobile provider.” We don’t even call the corner mom-and-pop store a “grocery provider.” There is no reason to accept the kind of politically motivated doublespeak behind the rise of “housing provider.”
Keep ReadingShow Less
'We the People—Not the Wealthy Few': Voters Target Greed of Landlords, Insurers, and Gas Giants
"We deserve a government that uses our money to fund our care, not one that uses our money to line the pockets of corporations," said one protester.
Feb 26, 2025
After meeting with their members of Congress, working-class voters on Wednesday marched to the Washington, D.C. offices of three companies behind the nation's housing, health, and climate crises that are set to cash in on federal Republicans' planned tax giveaways.
Organized by People's Action Institute, the protest targeted Blackstone, an investment company that has become the world's largest corporate landlord; UnitedHealth, the country's biggest health insurance company; and American Gas Association, which represents more than 200 energy companies that provide services to 189 million Americans.
The participants—who hailed from 60 congressional districts across 27 states—emphasized issues including unaffordable rent rates, housing insecurity, homelessness, denied medical treatment, unpayable healthcare costs, high utility bills, health harms from fossil fuels, and corporate lobbying for tax cuts that benefit companies and billionaires rather than working people.
"We're here today because we want to make the rich pay their fair share!" declared JJ Ramirez of People's Action Institute member organization VOCAL-Texas. "Blackstone is a private equity company that has over 300,000 rental properties across the country. They gobble up these homes, raise our rents, price gouge us, and then evict us when we can't afford to live in their places. We're here today because Blackstone has conspired with other corporate bad actors so they can gobble up everything that we have."
While the protesters gathered outside Blackstone, they stressed that corporate landlords in general are an issue. Ann Kiesling of Progressive Maryland, which supported tenants at the Enclave Silver Spring apartment complex, said that "I will never forget a woman with a disability telling me about the time she had to hop up, with the help of a neighbor, 15 flights of stairs to get to her apartment because the landlords refused to fix the elevators. I will never forget the parents of a four-year-old telling me how they had to heat up water on their stove to give their kid baths because their landlord refused to fix their hot water for over a month."
"An out-of-state private equity landlord, Hampshire Properties, is raking in massive profits by charging luxury rent prices while letting the building fall apart and leaving tenants with the consequences," Kiesling continued. "And while we are here fighting for basic living conditions against mold, broken elevators, pest infestations, corporate landlords like Hampshire Properties, like Greystar, like Blackstone, are pouring our rent money into lobbyists and elected officials' campaigns instead of fixing their buildings."
Hannah Peterson, a disabled veteran, seminary student, and member of the People's Lobby in Chicago, pointed out Wednesday that "just last night, House Republicans passed their budget resolution to cut millions from Medicaid."
That resolution
sets the stage for cutting not only $880 billion from the healthcare program that serves low-income Americans, but also $230 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly called food stamps. Elected Republicans, who control both chambers of Congress and the White House, want to gut safety net programs to fund an expansion of tax giveaways to the rich that GOP lawmakers passed and President Donald Trump signed in 2017.
"Republicans are already funneling our tax dollars out of programs our communities need and into pockets of private corporations and billionaires," Peterson said. "We deserve a government that uses our money to fund our care, not one that uses our money to line the pockets of corporations."
As Medicare for All advocates often highlight, although the United States has Medicaid and Medicare, which serves seniors, it is the only developed country in the world without universal healthcare. Instead, the U.S. has a for-profit system that often leaves patients unable to access or afford necessary care, including because of denials from insurance companies.
"To the folks at UnitedHealthcare... if you really care about people's health, why don't you publicly come out and oppose the cuts to Medicaid?" asked Citizen Action of New York's Amelia Bittel—who has dysautonomia, a disorder that led to a heart surgery at age 35 and requires weekly blood draws.
"In my city of Syracuse, New York, 48% of the population relies on government-funded programs to get their insurance," said Bittel. "You don't need the $1.3 billion that you stand to profit from these cuts. Your company routinely reports the highest profits. Why not give back to the patients?"
At the American Gas Association, Gloria de Graves from Citizen Action of Wisconsin explained that in the Midwestern state, "if you're not familiar, we hit negative 30°F sometimes, and that means that people can freeze to death in their homes if they do not have a way to heat their homes."
"So all I'm saying is We Energies and Xcel Energy, who I have paid plenty of money to over the years, need to stop charging us so much money so that we can afford to feed ourselves, we can afford to stay housed, and when we are fleeing domestic violence, that there is a safe, electrified, and heated home to go into so that we are warm and safe in the winter," de Graves said.
Celebrating the multisite protest on Wednesday, progressive Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) said that "I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart, because there are people in my community that can't afford to come up here."
"It is so important to understand corporate greed and how it is embedded in environmental injustices, embedded in environmental racism," she said. "They want the federal government to continue to literally fund poisoning us, while we get sick here in our country. So they're making us sick, and we're subsidizing the fact that we don't have access to healthcare that supports our families."
In a dispatch earlier this week, People's Action executive director Sulma Arias wrote that her group "refuses to give up. We believe ordinary people have the power to rise and meet this and every moment, if we act together. We believe in the fundamental dignity of every person, without exception, and we believe government exists to serve all people—We the People—not the wealthy few."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular