The CoVid-19 pandemic has worsened what was already untenable: millions of renters and homeowners are now facing increased housing insecurity, as making rent and mortgage payments has become difficult.

The pandemic has laid bare social fault-lines, the precarity of the lives of so many, and the fragility of our social safety net. As we face these social problems, can we think outside of the confines of usual policy proposals and the staid market orthodoxy they rely on?

Our Beyond the Pandemic Project explores urban policy contexts and alternatives that are both transformational and realistic. We take our lead from grassroots movements who imagining more just urban contexts where housing and the conditions for human flourishing are rights. To develop this work we rely on very many conversations with change-makers, organizers, and issue experts.

The project has been led by a collective. Gianpaolo Baiocchi is Director of the Urban Democracy Lab, Professor of Individualized Studies and Sociology at NYU, and author of We, The Sovereign. H. Jacob Carlson is a political and urban sociologist and postdoctoral research fellow at S4 at Brown University. Marnie Brady is Assistant Professor of Human Rights at Manhattan Marymount College. Ned Crowley is PhD candidate in Sociology at NYU. Sara Duvisac, a former Doctoral Fellow at the UDL, is an ACLS Public Fellow.

Our policy briefs can be accessed under the media section below.