Roundtable

When You Can’t Stay Home

People prepare places to sleep in a Las Vegas parking lot, marked with squares for social distancing, after a local shelter was closed due to a positive coronavirus case, March 30th, 2020. Photo: John Locher/AP Photo

THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC has escalated the ongoing housing crisis in the United States, putting countless people at risk of losing their homes, while also creating an opportunity to push for radical housing proposals. We asked writers, organizers, and a politician to weigh in on how the coronavirus is likely to shape the American housing landscape, and how the left can respond to the immediate emergency while building a just housing future.

On Redistributing Vacant Housing

It’s never been more urgent to turn our cities’ vacant living spaces into housing for the homeless.

Jenny Akchin and Lynn Lewis

On Preventing Pandemic Displacement

We must improve the housing that helps illness spread—without displacing the people who live there.

On Avoiding the New Foreclosure Crisis

Avoiding another foreclosure crisis means pressuring lawmakers to put the brakes on speculative behavior.

Oksana Mironova

On Homes for All

In the short term, we need to cancel rent and mortgages. In the longer term, we need to decommodify housing.

Read 1 letter to the editor about “When You Can't Stay Home”

Recently Featured

Ghosts of the Groves

In Israel and Florida, violent parallel histories of citrus cultivation have set the stage for a budding agricultural alliance.

Gavriel Cutipa-Zorn

Also in “Roundtable”

On Homes for All

In the short term, we need to cancel rent and mortgages. In the longer term, we need to decommodify housing.

On Avoiding the New Foreclosure Crisis

Avoiding another foreclosure crisis means pressuring lawmakers to put the brakes on speculative behavior.

Oksana Mironova

Editor’s Picks

Letter From the Editor

“We Cannot Cross Until We Carry Each Other”

The editor-in-chief of Jewish Currents on recommitting to our movements in this moment

Understanding Apartheid

Embracing a radical critique of Israeli apartheid is a precondition for bringing it to a just end.

Noura Erakat and John Reynolds

Sign up for our email newsletter, featuring exclusive original content