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The Tenant Class by Ricardo Tranjan. Between the Lines, 2023. 148pp. ISBN-10-1771136227
As a legal academic who collaborates with housing rights and tenants’ rights organizations, I
am always looking for new books that address housing systems and the struggles that tenants
face in securing places to call home. This is why I was very happy to pick up a copy of The
Tenant Class (Between the Lines Press, 2023) by Ricardo Tranjan. This book is a short yet
powerful contribution to the literature on housing in Canada. It will be of great interest to
anyone seeking a highly readable and forceful critique of Canada’s inequitable housing markets
as well as a prescription for an alternate approach.Tranjan is an analyst for the Canadian Centre
for Policy Alternatives, an organization that seeks to bring progressive research and analysis
into Canadian policy debates. He brings his own positionality and experiences into his book.
As a child growing up in the context of the tumultuous political struggles of 1980s Brazil, he
observed first-hand the ways that those with power work to construct narratives that naturalize
the status quo. He also witnessed how social movements and organizing are fundamental
prerequisites for real changes to inequitable conditions.
Tranjan argues that the ubiquitous language of “crisis” deployed in debates about housing
obscures the real problems and power relations within Canada’s housing markets. This is
because the language of “crisis” suggests a state of temporary emergency that could be fixed
by technical solutions. This distracts people from paying attention to the ways the system
itself is designed to entrench fundamental inequality between landlords and tenants. Tranjan
points out that for most landlords, real estate investment firms, and property developers, there
is, in fact, no crisis. Rather, these landlords operate within a “stable and lucrative business
environment” that is designed as a “permanent state of affairs”. This market actively tolerates
and even encourages exploitative practices and allows many landlords to amass wealth while
creating ongoing precarity for tenants. Thus, while dominant discourses frame high rents
and housing insecurity as the result of a glitch in the system that could be fixed with the right
technical solutions, Tranjan disagrees. Instead, he argues, it will take organizing and “political
power to move the needle.”
The book is divided into six short chapters. Following an introductory chapter that
outlines the core arguments of the book, chapters one and two advance the argument that
tenants comprise a social class that is subject to economic exploitation by landlords. Tranjan
points out that tenants, as a group, earn less income and are more likely to work in precarious
and low-paying jobs than homeowners. He also points out that for increasing numbers of
tenants, and historically for many groups, being a tenant is not simply a “phase” on the road
to becoming a homeowner. Meanwhile, landlords extract ever greater shares of tenant income,
and rent increases have far outpaced increases in tenant wages and income over time. This
part of the book opens some key insights, including a critique of the ways that “affordability’
discourses are consistently framed in mainstream media as a problem of tenants not having
enough money to pay rent. Rather, Tranjan argues, the questions should be (1) Why are
landlords charging such high rents, and (2) Why do governments allow this to continue?
Chapter three is entitled “But what about the landlords?” This chapter directly confronts
and deconstructs common arguments about landlords. Tranjan notes that media and policy
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Engaged Scholar Journal: Community-Engaged Research, Teaching, and Learning
makers often portray landlords as a sympathetic group, commonly deploying the trope of the
“mom and pop” operation who are themselves struggling to get by. This narrative cultivates
sympathy and suggests that landlords and tenant have commensurate interests to balance
out. While Tranjan is clear that some landlords in Canada certainly fit the struggling “mom
and pop” image, most landlords do not in any way fit this description. Rather, most private
landlords are wealthy families, businesses, large corporations, and financial investors. They are
in the business of building equity, making profits, and, in many cases, “squeezing” as much
money as they can from their properties. Tranjan forcefully makes the case in this chapter
that large corporate landlords benefit substantially from mainstream depictions of landlords as
sympathetic “mom and pop” operations. This narrative conceals the massive power disparities
that exist in most landlord-tenant relationships in Canada, depoliticizes discussions about
landlords and tenants, and thereby helps sustain the status quo.
In chapters four and five, Tranjan turns to historical and contemporary stories of tenant
organizing in Canada. He concisely summarizes some key examples of tenant organizing,
noting that knowledge about the history of tenant struggles helps us understand the dynamics
of the longstanding inequities in our housing markets and adds new insights into current
policy discussions. These chapters constitute a valuable compendium of examples of tenant
organizing in Canada.
Finally, chapter 6 returns to the book’s central arguments and sets out some prescriptions
for change. According to Tranjan, the solutions to the current problems with housing are not
technical, but political, and require challenging the entrenched interests of those who benefit
from the current system. We must, Tranjan writes, work to move as much housing as possible
out of private markets; tightly regulate market provision of rental housing, and “organize
tenants to ensure quality and access.” These solutions require the building of political power,
the rejection of status quo narratives, and the commitment to focussing on “stretching the
realm of the possible”.
Tranjan’s focus on the power dynamics and political underpinnings of the current
system and the ways that it benefits landlords is a valuable insight for tenant advocates, as
is his clear demonstration of how the way we frame issues dictates the types of solutions we
generate. Despite its short length, the book is filled with helpful statistics and information
about landlords, tenants, and housing, and, as mentioned above, compiles important and
often-neglected histories of tenant organizing in Canada. The book is clear, passionate, and
constructively polemical.
However, perhaps because of its pocket-sized length and practical focus, there are some
gaps in the book. Notably, the book does not really situate itself in conversation with the
relevant literature. Absent, for example, is reference to David Madden and Peter Marcuse’s
2016 book, In Defence of Housing: The Politics of Crisis, which makes some very similar
arguments. For example, Madden and Marcuse write in their book: the “housing crisis is
not a result of the system breaking down but of the system working as it is intended.” (p.10).
Likewise, Tranjan does not mention the work of scholars like Matthew Desmond who have
written extensively about exploitation in landlord-tenant relationships. The book also says
very little about international examples of jurisdictions that have adopted some of the types of
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proposals and approaches it argues for. I also wondered why there was not more emphasis on
the role that co-operative housing might play in building housing security. Finally, the book
also says very little about the human right to housing. This is a notable omission given that
Canada recognized housing as a human right in its National Housing Strategy Act because of
grassroots pressure and organizing, and there is significant ongoing energy and organizing in
Canada and internationally centred on the human right to housing. However, these omissions
do not significantly detract from the value of the book. Indeed, the book’s brevity and clarity
mean that it will be more accessible and useful busy advocates and organizers in their work to
create equitable and just housing for all.
Reviewed by
Sarah Buhler
University of Saskatchewan
Email: sarah.buhler@usask.ca