Renoviction and Resistance in the Capitalist City
Cole Webber author Philip Zigman author
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Between the Lines
Publishing:31st Aug '26
£16.00
This title is due to be published on 31st August, and will be despatched as soon as possible.
There is a lot of money to be made through eviction. That is why landlords draw from a playbook of legal and extra-legal tactics to renovict tenants—claiming to improve units, only to kick existing tenants out and jack up the rent for new ones. Now, displacement has become a harrowing reality plaguing urban landscapes.
How do we explain this phenomenon?
How did we get here and how do we organize to stop evictions?
What strategies can renters use to hold their ground?
Countering the narrative that the renovicting landlords are just a few bad apples acting in bad faith, Cole Webber and Philip Zigman expose the structures of displacement enabled by the state and perpetuated by rental housing reforms.
The system hasn’t broken down, it is working as intended to increase landlord profits at the expense of the working class. As tenant organizers themselves, the authors have seen firsthand that knowledge of the law alone will not protect tenants from renoviction. Rather, tenants must organize collectively to fight back and stay in their homes.
“At a time when discussions of the housing crisis are dominated by the state, non-profits, and legal decision-makers, Renoviction and Resistance in the Capitalist City rejects reformist efforts as a failed experiment and urges tenants to count on themselves. Clear-eyed and unsparing, Webber and Zigman expose the systems that protect landlord profit and make clear that organized resistance, and not bureaucracy, is the way forward to defend against displacement. An important and timely intervention in one of the defining struggles of our time.” – Kevin Laforest, community legal clinic lawyer
“Renoviction and Resistance in the Capitalist City offers an alternative and critical understanding of the increasingly violent practice of renoviction based on tenants’ real life and experiences. It reminds us of how Canadian policy facilitates state-sanctioned displacement, serves private interests, and aims to increase landlords’ profit.”– Collectif de Recherche de d’Action sur l’Habitat (CRACH), Montréal
“A crucial guide to the class struggle that exists in the home, not just the workplace. Renoviction and Resistance in the Capitalist City is an accessible and indispensable handbook on the strength of autonomous tenant organizing and the weakness of relying on legalistic and non-profit approaches.” – Mike Gouldhawke, contributor to Briarpatch and the Yellowhead Institute
ISBN: 9781771136990
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
176 pages