Organizing the Tenant Class w/ Ricardo Tranjan

In this episode, we’re joined by Ricardo Tranjan, political economist and author of The Tenant Class (2023).

Ricardo’s work reframes housing—not as a temporary crisis—but as a long-standing, for-profit system that deliberately extracts wealth from tenants to enrich landlords, developers, and investors. 

Ricardo dismantles the conventional supply‑and‑demand narrative embraced by policymakers and the real estate industry—where building more is assumed to bring prices to "equilibrium"—showing instead how incentives for private developers can fuel speculation and steadily drive prices out of reach, all while wages stagnate or grow at a slower rate than inflation. 

He argues that the very frame of housing as a technical problem obscures its political dimensions: the pressure should be on collective tenant power, class solidarity—especially strong partnerships with labor unions—and moving beyond for-profit delivery models toward universal housing security. 

Ricardo Tranjan works at the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Previously, he managed the City of Toronto’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Office and taught in universities in Ontario and Quebec.

His early academic work focused on the political economy of development in Brazil, his native country. His current research and commentary focus on Ontario public finances, and the economics of social policy, especially income supports, education, and rental housing. His book, The Tenant Class, published by Between the Lines in 2023, has become a national bestseller.

Important Resources:

• ​The Tenant Class;
• ​High Rises and Housing Stress;
• ​Vancouver Tenants Union;
• ​Syndicat de Locataires (MTL);
• ​Toronto housing rights FAQ;
• https://yellowheadinstitute.org/2025/04/16/alternative-approach-to-economic-development-in-inuit-nunangat/​