Generation Priced Out is a call to action on one of the most talked-about issues of our time: how skyrocketing rents and home values are pricing the working and middle classes out of urban America. Randy Shaw tells the powerful stories of tenants, politicians, homeowner groups, developers, and activists in over a dozen cities impacted by the national housing crisis. From San Francisco to New York, Seattle to Denver, and Los Angeles to Austin, Generation Priced Out challenges progressive cities to reverse rising economic and racial inequality.
Shaw exposes how boomer homeowners restrict millennials’ access to housing in big cities, a generational divide that increasingly dominates city politics. Shaw also demonstrates that neighborhood gentrification is not inevitable and presents proven measures for cities to preserve and expand their working- and middle-class populations and achieve more equitable and inclusive outcomes. Generation Priced Out is a must-read for anyone concerned about the future of urban America.
"Randy Shaw is a rare combination: an astute housing policy analyst sitting inside the body of a passionate service provider who is also a clear, engaging, and focused writer. Generation Priced Out is a very important book that everyone concerned about housing affordability should read."—Michael C. Lens, Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy, UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs
"An inspiration for everyone concerned with the future of urban America."—Peter Dreier, E. P. Clapp Distinguished Professor of Politics and Chair of the Urban and Environmental Policy Department, Occidental College
"Generation Priced Out shows how African Americans, Latinos, and other tenants of color are battling displacement and gentrification. I urge everyone who is concerned about crafting local strategies to read Randy Shaw’s passionate book."—Donna Mossman, Founding Member, Crown Heights Tenant Union
"Working people across America increasingly spend hours commuting to jobs in cities where they can no longer afford to live. Shaw shows how people are mobilizing to reverse this trend and describes how urban areas can and must stop the pricing out of the working and middle class."—Deepak Bhargava, President, Center for Community Change
"Shaw provides concrete strategies for how this generational divide over housing can—and must—be overcome."—Kim-Mai Cutler, Operating Partner, Initialized Capital, and former contributor, TechCrunch
"Written in a lucid and engaging style, the book draws on extensive first-hand experience of tenant organising, activism, and policy-writing as well as interviews with a real who’s-who of housing activists in several high-cost US cities not only to make the case for urban policy to take housing affordability seriously, but also to outline concrete steps to get there."
