Corporate landlords drive Madison’s housing crisis, and it’s time to fight back

A successful tenant protest at one west-side complex holds bigger lessons for addressing our housing crisis.

Madison’s rent prices are out of control. Median rent in Madison climbed by a staggering 30.4% between 2020 and 2023—one of the highest rent hikes in the country—while median household income increased by only 12.5%. With rents becoming utterly unaffordable, tenants are fed up—and some tenants are demanding change. 

In February 2024, the tenants at Royal Arms Apartments across from the Hilldale Mall protested the predatory practices of their new landlord, Orosz Properties, which increased rents on new lease offers by a whopping 20% to 40%—as high as a $500 increase in monthly rent after new utility fees. To make matters worse, Orosz gave tenants only a few weeks to decide whether to accept their new lease offers or find somewhere else to live. The prospect of moving with only a few months’ notice was daunting to many tenants, especially elderly residents and families with school-age children. They felt like they were being strong-armed into accepting the new, more expensive leases, but signing them would put them at greater risk of extreme financial burden, eviction, and homelessness. 

Orosz Properties, a corporate landlord that manages several buildings in Madison, added the Royal Arms complex to its list of assets in 2023 following the death of the previous landlord, Randy Diehl, who only managed one property and never raised rent more than $100 from year to year. 

The rent hike and short signing deadline were certainly aggravating for me and my partner, who had lived at Royal Arms (formerly Karen Arms) for three years. However, to my 75-year-old next-door neighbor, Beth, these actions were more than aggravating: they were dangerous. Beth—who had lived at Royal Arms for over a decade—told me that she couldn’t afford the new rent offer, but she didn’t have the means to move out, either. She felt forced to accept the offer despite the devastating consequences it would have for her financial well-being. I knew she wasn’t alone—there were dozens of elderly people on fixed income who lived at Royal Arms, as well as low-income residents and families who could be at risk. I refused to sit idly by and let my neighbors suffer. I reached out to the tenant union Madison Tenant Power, and together we rallied the tenants of Royal Arms to fight back.

With my close friend and fellow tenant, I kick-started organizing efforts by posting Madison Tenant Power flyers at every building in the apartment complex. These flyers were attached with sticky notes that said, “Want to do something about Orosz? Call or text your neighbor, David. [My phone number].” Dozens of outraged tenants reached out to me, and I used that momentum to organize our first tenant meeting. On February 13, about a dozen tenants gathered in my parking lot to come up with a plan of action. We decided to write a letter to our landlord requesting (among other things) a reduction to our rent offers and an extension to our lease renewal deadlines. We also devised plans to get tenant signatures on the letter by talking to our neighbors, knocking on doors in every building, and sliding the letter with the aforementioned sticky note under the doors of people who didn’t answer. 

On the night of February 14, the letter was ready and we began knocking on doors. The energy was electric. Everyone we spoke with was angry at Orosz and excited that we were taking a stand. Although most tenants were eager to sign the letter, some were worried about Orosz retaliating against them if they signed. This retaliation would be illegal, but landlords hold excessive power over their tenants and can make their lives harder using subversive methods like delaying maintenance or refusing to extend a new lease offer—especially if tenants don’t have the capacity to take their landlord to court or file complaints with City Building Inspection or the state’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. Regardless, most of the tenants we spoke with recognized that there was strength in numbers and were emboldened to sign the letter. After all, Orosz couldn’t retaliate against everyone—that would be harmful to their business. 

In only two days, we garnered over one hundred signatures on the letter—roughly one-third of the entire apartment complex. Furthermore, by collecting the email addresses of the signees, we created a communication network with over one hundred tenants. On February 15, we sent the signed letter to our property manager via email with all of the signees CC’d to establish a public paper trail. Later that same day, a small group of tenants hand-delivered the letter to management, pressuring them to forward the letter to the owner, Les Orosz. This prompted Les Orosz to arrange a public meeting between tenants and management on February 20. We tenants raised awareness for this meeting via emails and flyers, and about sixty tenants showed up to the meeting with only a few days’ notice.

At the meeting, Les Orosz’s indifference to the plight of tenants and his single-minded focus on generating revenue was on full display. Orosz emphasized how Madison had one of the “hottest rental markets in the country” and explained that he was just bringing the rents up to “market value.” Orosz tried to garner sympathy by talking about how the high insurance and maintenance costs would barely allow him to break even on the loan he used to purchase the property. Frustrated tenants pushed back, expressing how they shouldn’t have to pay for Orosz’s personal financial decisions, how their affordable housing was more important than a bank loan, and how management shouldn’t spend so much money on aesthetics and remodeling if they’re so concerned about finances. Orosz promised tenants that he and his team would reconsider the terms of the new leases and get back to us within a week.

The massive backlash from tenants caused Orosz to extend the lease renewal deadlines from a few weeks to at least one month. However, Orosz refused to budge on the rents. The apathy from Orosz only added fuel to the fire of the tenants’ outrage. We hosted subsequent meetings—some attended by over 20 tenants—where we discussed tactics and next steps. We wrote a second letter to management, warning that many of us would move out if rents were not reduced. This letter garnered over one-hundred twenty signatures. Tenants left a litany of poor online reviews for Royal Arms, and several media outlets picked up the story of the Royal Arms tenants. 

We tenants did not wait around for Orosz to change his mind—we took matters into our own hands and launched a fundraiser for three financially burdened elderly tenants, including Beth and two other tenants in my building who had cancer. The stories of these tenants resonated with the broader community, and we ended up raising over $5,000—beating our original goal by nearly $1,000. Meanwhile, the bad press and mass tenant exodus from Royal Arms left Orosz struggling to fill units. In September 2024, Orosz finally reduced the rent offers for most units by at least $100 per month. Now, instead of reduced rent offers, Orosz is offering one month of free rent to new tenants—saving renters upwards of $1,500 a year. Orosz Properties did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

The success of the Royal Arms tenants was enabled by the tight-knit community of neighbors and the use of effective strategies guided by Madison Tenant Power. Tenants at many other properties in Madison are facing similar issues to Royal Arms, but sadly, few are fighting back.

Madison is at the forefront of the national housing crisis 

Madison has seen some of the highest rent increases in the country since the pandemic. Out of the 100 largest cities in the U.S., Madison has been one of the top eight cities for year-over-year rent increases since September 2022. In fact, Madison was at the number one spot for rent increases from November 2022 through July 2023 and again from August through October 2024. Even before the pandemic, the rise in Madison’s rents had been driving gentrification for years. 

Since the pandemic, Madisonians have been priced out of their homes like never before. Dane County’s peak in homelessness coincided with the peak of the pandemic, with a record 855 homeless people in January 2021. Funding for rent assistance programs allowed homelessness in Dane county to fall to 624 people in January 2023, but by January 2024 homelessness had risen again to 737 homeless people. The emergency shelter provider Porchlight attributes rising homelessness to rising housing costs. Indeed, landlords in Dane County filed record numbers of evictions in 2023 and 2024.

This issue is not unique to Madison; there is a national housing crisis. In 2022, the U.S. broke its record for the greatest amount of homelessness in the nation’s history. Even as inflation cools, the rise in homelessness is not slowing down. U.S. homelessness increased by 18% in 2024 compared to the 12% increase in 2023. Today, over 770,000 Americans are homeless, and more than half of Americans are one missed paycheck away from being homeless. Elderly people, who typically earn lower incomes and experience greater expenses like medical bills, are tragically the fastest-growing group of people experiencing homelessness. Looking at the state of the economy, this homelessness crisis is not surprising.

Home values have been growing astronomically for decades, causing historically low home ownership rates and record levels of home rentership in the 2020s. Frustratingly, rent prices have also been rising faster than inflation for decades, gradually depleting the amount of affordable housing in America. For many renters, post-pandemic inflation has been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Rental housing is now the least affordable it has ever been. Wages have lagged behind inflation since 2021, and rent hikes have outpaced inflation since 2022. Despite the dire straits for renters, the U.S. government prevented a rise in homelessness during the height of the pandemic using resources like rental assistance, unemployment benefits, and a national eviction moratorium. Sadly, these protections have since expired, leaving American renters at the mercy of their landlords—and mercy is not part of the corporate landlord business model. Evictions have nearly doubled since 2020, disproportionately impacting women and Black renters. With more people being kicked out of their homes and with scarce options for affordable housing, the consequence is unprecedented homelessness. Both the government and the private housing industry have failed to shelter Americans during this economic crisis.

What is causing the housing crisis?

Corporate landlords—who own dozens of units or more at multiple properties, sometimes in different states or even different countries—are buying up more and more of Madison’s housing supply. In fact, corporate landlords have a stranglehold on the housing markets of several metropolitan areas in the U.S., and there are no federal limits to how many units landlords can own. Corporate landlords are the only ones with the means to manage high-occupancy apartment buildings—which Madison city officials want to build more of to cope with the rapidly growing population. Small landlords, or individuals who own a few units, currently own the majority of 2-to-4-unit apartment buildings in Madison, and they tend to charge lower rents than their corporate counterparts. However, financial pressures from inflation are forcing small landlords to rapidly sell off their buildings, and corporate landlords are ready to buy them. Madison’s low vacancy rate forces renters to take what they can get, and the likelihood of renting from a corporate landlord is growing. Corporate landlords are taking over rental housing in Madison, and it is reflected in the rents. 

Housing in Madison is in very high demand due to the rapidly growing population, and the low vacancy rate for rental units means supply is limited. When demand is high and supply is low, prices increase—these are the rules of the free market that corporations abide by to maximize profits. Although some cities and states have rent control to protect tenants from being exploited by their landlords, Wisconsin state law explicitly outlaws rent control, rendering local governments unable to intervene when tenants face outrageous rent hikes like at Royal Arms. 

In this unregulated rental housing market, one of the only mechanisms to keep rent prices in check (at least in theory) is competition. Corporate landlords emphasize keeping rents in pace with the “market value” to remain competitive and to justify rent hikes. However, the problem is that the “market value” is actually set by those same landlords that own a growing share of the rental housing market, causing the market to look less like a competition and more like an oligopoly.

When corporate landlords take advantage of the market conditions by gouging tenants with higher rents, the “market value” for rental units in the area increases. In turn, nearby corporate landlords raise rents to match the new market value, which raises the market value even more. This market manipulation is driving rent prices through the roof, both in Madison and in cities nationwide. In fact, the property management software company RealPage is being sued by the Department of Justice for its computer algorithm YieldStar, which is alleged to facilitate collusion between corporate landlords to match each others’ prices on units throughout the country. Six major landlords were recently added to this price-fixing lawsuit, including Greystar, which owns and manages hundreds of thousands of units nationwide, including The Hub in Madison.

Inflation is the perfect cover for landlords to experiment with price fixing and price gouging because they can simply blame the rising rents on inflation. This explains why corporate landlords have raked in record profits despite inflation. On the other hand, landlords increase rents out of necessity during inflation due to the raised costs of building materials, utilities, and insurance. Even the most ethical landlords pass these costs off to tenants to avoid losing money. No matter the reason, post-pandemic inflation has been a perfect storm for landlords to raise rents, causing widespread housing instability.

Although raising rents reduces the number of prospective renters, corporate landlords won’t lose money as long as they can fill their units. With the limited supply of units in Madison and high demand for them, corporate landlords can rely on two demographics to fill units despite the rent hikes: high-paid workers and students. Companies like Epic Systems and Exact Sciences have thousands of high-paid employees in the Madison area and are hiring even more. UW-Madison is also hiring more staff and faculty at competitive pay rates. While most students are not paid (much), some can live beyond their means by sharing space with several roommates, receiving financial support from their parents, or taking out loans. High-paid workers and students are Madison landlords’ saving grace, providing higher demand and affording higher rents.

Essentially, Madison’s corporate landlords are engaged in a game of monopoly, buying up greater portions of the housing supply and repeatedly raising rents with no mechanism for the government to stop them nor any market incentive for them to stop. As a result, affordable rental housing for financially burdened Madisonians—families, low-income workers, retirees, etc.—is rapidly disappearing, causing more and more of us to become homeless. Clearly, Madison’s free market approach to housing is failing.

The solution being pushed by many politicians–including Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway–is largely to build more rental units to increase supply, which would drive prices down and provide more housing opportunities to displaced renters and new residents. Although this could help alleviate the housing crisis in the short-term, it would not prevent landlords from jacking up rents once those units are filled. Also, there are only so many units that can be built in population-dense cities like Madison—where the housing crisis affects the most people—and with short notice during times of crisis. The environmental impacts of development must also be considered, especially in Madison, where the state law limiting building heights downtown to the height of the Capitol Building incentivizes horizontal construction over vertical. Furthermore, state law prohibits inclusionary zoning, or prescribing a certain number of units to be dedicated to low-income tenants during development. Therefore, property-developing landlords in Madison must elect to provide affordable housing to low-income tenants. The city offers some incentives for this, but most landlords opt to make more money in the free market.

Although Madison has a below-average vacancy rate with about 3,000 vacant rental units, it is important to note that Madison has about four times as many vacant rental units as homeless people in Dane County. Madison could eliminate homelessness without building a single new unit if the necessary funding, strategies, and policies were implemented—for example, if the government could simply place homeless people in vacant units and subsidize their rents until they were back on their feet (this is called the Housing First approach). The same is true at the national level. Over 3 million rental units sit vacant in America, meaning there are about four times as many vacant rental units as there are homeless people in this country. The problem is that these units are simply too expensive for a growing number of renters. The root cause of the housing crisis is not a lack of units—it is the fact that Americans are underpaid, overcharged, and not protected by the government. Landlords are pricing renters out of their homes, and our government hardly lifts a finger to help us. When we examine the relationship between landlords and the government, a disturbing fact comes to light that explains the government’s inaction on the housing crisis: landlords are manipulating our government, both from the outside and from the inside.

Landlord legislature

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in 2019 that one in five members of the Wisconsin State Legislature at that time were landlords themselves. The lawmaker with the most rental properties was none other than current Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester), who owns 29 buildings in Wisconsin, has a reputation for being a shady landlord, and has overseen the passage of over 100 pro-landlord changes to state law. Landlord legislators like Vos are literally profiting from their self-serving policy decisions, and Wisconsin renters are paying the price. It’s no coincidence that so many state legislators are landlords when the real estate industry helps its own people get elected. The Wisconsin real estate industry contributed over $2 million to elections in 2022, the fifth-largest Wisconsin donor by industry. As of 2022, no state legislator received more campaign money from real estate than Robin Vos, who received at least $12,690 from real estate industry donors (possibly more when accounting for the $174,317 of dark money he received). 

The real estate industry also helps non-landlord politicians gain power, hedging their bets that politicians will return the favor. The information immediately available on OpenSecrets.org shows that 49% of Democrats and 76% of Republicans in the 2022 Wisconsin State Legislature received campaign donations from the real estate industry. Even Francesca Hong (D-Madison), one of the Wisconsin Democratic Party’s more leftist politicians, accepted nearly $2,000 from real estate donors and nearly $60,000 in dark money for her 2020 election campaign. Big donations from real estate provide a powerful incentive for politicians to legislate in favor of landlords—after all, politicians need donations to get elected, and the more pro-landlord their policy decisions are, the more money they can expect from real estate donors. The fact that real estate is in the pockets of so many state politicians makes it unsurprising that Wisconsin is considered one of the most landlord-friendly states in the country. Regulations like rent control and inclusionary zoning could be viable options to address Madison’s housing crisis, but because they cut into the profits and power of landlords, they are non-starters for our corrupt state government. The impact of real estate money is also felt at the local level. The 2023 Madison mayoral race featured hefty donations from corporate landlords to both candidates. Corporate landlords have undue influence over politics in Wisconsin.

The same is true at the federal level. In 2021, at least 238 federal lawmakers were landlords—that’s 44% of the U.S. Congress. Our new President, Donald Trump, is a corporate landlord, and his cabinet is chock full of billionaires, including at least two other real estate magnates. The real estate industry is consistently one of the largest donors to elections nationwide, pumping at least $378 million into our elections in 2024. Landlords are generating massive amounts of wealth by exploiting renters, then using that wealth to line the pockets of politicians who protect their power to exploit renters. This is the result of America’s electoral system being so dependent on money; those with the most money have the most influence over politics. In fact, studies have shown that the U.S. government’s policy decisions mainly reflect the interests of corporate interest groups and ultra-wealthy elites—not the interests of the general population. As long as politicians from both parties serve their wealthy donors, we can expect them to allow corporations to manufacture the housing crisis and profit from it.

We can also expect government officials to cover up the issue of homelessness so that corporate landlords can continue exploiting Americans without facing major backlash. The Supreme Court’s June 2024 decision to allow states to criminalize homelessness is an example of this. As renowned scholar and civil rights activist Angela Davis said, “imprisonment is increasingly used as a strategy of deflection of the underlying social problems—racism, poverty, unemployment, lack of education, and so on. These issues are never seriously addressed.” Instead of addressing the root causes of homelessness—namely corporate forces driving housing unaffordability—officials throughout the country would rather make the issue invisible by throwing homeless people in jail. Not only does this help corporate landlords by obscuring the human suffering they cause, but it also helps line the pockets of corporate elites who own private prisons and utilize prison labor. Homelessness can be made invisible using less overt but equally insidious methods, like the order from California Governor Gavin Newsom—one of the highest-ranking Democrats—to clear homelessness encampments in California. This policy makes life harder for many homeless Californians as it causes their belongings to be taken, their only forms of shelter to be destroyed, and forces them to move to less visible areas. Experts say policies like clearing encampments often makes homelessness even worse. Even the federal government has opposed clearing encampments due to its role in exacerbating the spread of COVID-19. Newsom’s policy is more about appearances than helping homeless people, and it benefits no one but the very people causing homelessness. 

The willingness of politicians to 1. allow corporate landlords to spike rents nationwide and 2. cover up the resulting destitution is evidence that the main concern of our two-party political system is to help the rich get richer—not to protect and serve our country. This is evident in many other industries, from politicians allowing big pharma to overcharge Americans on life-saving medicine to allowing big oil to drive climate change and environmental disaster. By helping the rich get richer, politicians are also helping themselves. The highest decision-making bodies in our government—Congress, the Supreme Court, and the Presidential Cabinet—all have a majority of millionaires or billionaires. This is the unsurprising result of an electoral system that centers money. The financial quid pro quo between wealthy politicians and corporate donors explains why CEO pay has been skyrocketing for decades while everyday Americans have been struggling through unprecedented housing unaffordability and homelessness. Meanwhile, a mountain of evidence for how to solve the housing crisis is staring our corrupt politicians right in the face.

How to solve the housing crisis

One strategy that has reduced homelessness around the world is called “Housing First.” Housing First is when homeless people are provided with immediate access to housing with no strings attached. Unlike traditional programs that require psychiatric treatment or sobriety to receive housing, the Housing First approach acknowledges that it is difficult to maintain mental health or get sober without the base level of stability that housing provides. Housing First also entails providing tenant support services like psychiatric treatment, drug abuse rehabilitation, case work, and medical assistance, but these services are completely optional. The Urban Institute Initiative reports that Housing First is the best approach to end homelessness, and the successes of Housing First domestically and internationally back up this claim. 

The Housing First model was invented by psychiatrist Dr. Sam Tsemberis in the 1990s at the New York University School of Medicine. To study the effectiveness of this model, Dr. Tsemberis founded a non-profit Housing First program to get leases for homeless people and subsidize their rents. The Housing First program had an 88% housing retention rate over five years compared to 47% in New York City’s residential treatment system, demonstrating that people who go through Housing First programs are more likely to remain housed long-term than people who go through traditional treatment-first programs. The effectiveness of Housing First has since been validated by several U.S. cities, states, and agencies. In fact, Housing First programs are credited with reducing homelessness in Wisconsin for several years prior to the pandemic. Despite its American roots, many European countries have embraced Housing First on a greater scale than the U.S., making it their national policy to combat homelessness and corroborating its effectiveness. 

Declaring Housing First as a policy position is not enough on its own, though. The policy must be backed up with sufficient resources and effective strategies to ensure that homeless people actually have sustained access to housing and support services. Cities like San Diego and countries like France have experienced the lackluster performance of Housing First policies without the proper implementation. For example, both France and San Diego over-emphasized funding emergency shelters as part of their strategies to combat homelessness rather than placing homeless people into permanent housing. As a result, their under-funded Housing First programs have not led to significant reductions in homelessness. Regardless, Housing First—when executed properly—remains the most effective known strategy to combat homelessness.

Housing First was founded on the principle that housing is a human right, and some countries, like Finland, actually have the right to housing enshrined in their constitutions. To provide this human right to its citizens, Finland has extensive public and subsidized housing to prevent tenants from being priced out of their homes along with a national Housing First policy to quickly place homeless residents into vacant units. On the other hand, countries like Japan and Switzerland do not have national Housing First policies or the right to housing, but they have robust social safety nets like universal healthcare, extensive welfare programs, and various tenant protections like rent control and eviction restrictions which, all together, largely prevent homelessness. Additionally, these countries have Housing First programs in big cities. According to the most recent data, the homelessness rates in Finland, Japan, and Switzerland are roughly one-fifth or lower than that in the U.S.

Expanding tenant protections and welfare benefits is a proven strategy to reduce homelessness, as demonstrated in the U.S. at the beginning of the pandemic. Federal aid for rent assistance, unemployment benefits, and stimulus checks—in addition to a national eviction moratorium—prevented many Americans from becoming homeless. Despite mass layoffs in 2020 and record inflation in 2021, the rise in homelessness actually slowed down from a 5% increase from 2018 to 2020 to a 0.3% increase from 2020 to 2022. Only after the expiration of pandemic-era federal aid and eviction restrictions did homelessness spike—rising a massive 32% from 2022 to 2024. Clearly, financial support and tenant protections from the government are a viable path to prevent homelessness. It should not take a pandemic for the government to keep its citizens off the streets.

America needs a change of priorities. The solutions to the housing crisis are plain to see—they simply require governmental initiative and proper funding. As the wealthiest country on Earth, we can certainly afford to fix our housing crisis. While we pour trillions of dollars into the military, and while billionaire CEOs rake in enormous profits, more Americans are starving and dying on the streets than ever before. Our government has no excuse for allowing—and often fueling—this humanitarian crisis. The biggest threat to the American people is not outside our borders, but within. Our corporatized economy and corrupt government are hanging Americans out to dry, causing more pain and suffering than any foreign adversary. We must start fighting for evidence-based solutions to the housing crisis like our lives depend on it; for many Americans, it does.

Solving the housing crisis requires diverse, comprehensive, and complementary solutions—no single policy is the silver bullet. First, we must create a safety net of permanent shelter for people who need it by implementing a national Housing First policy. This policy must be backed up with adequate funding, service staff, and evidence-based strategies like outreach to homeless people on the streets and in temporary shelters. Second, we must take action to prevent homelessness and preserve affordable housing. To do this, we should adopt policies like far-reaching rent control and eviction restrictions. We should provide ample rent assistance to tenants in need, and we should greatly expand the amount of below-market-rent public and subsidized units, e.g., using inclusionary zoning. Universal healthcare and higher minimum wages would also alleviate the financial burden on Americans, allowing them to afford housing more easily. Third, the government must change its attitude toward landlords. On one hand, the government should exercise more control over landlords by cracking down on price fixing, price gouging, and by capping the amount of units a landlord can own. In that vein, the government should prioritize the sale of apartment buildings to non-profits, small landlords, or convert them to public housing instead of allowing corporate landlords to buy up enormous shares of the market. On the other hand, as long as landlords own the bulk of the housing market, the government should assist landlords to sustain affordable housing. For example, the government should provide more financial support for landlords that offer lower rents and accept low-income or homeless tenants. Private landlords are not obligated by federal law to accept low-income tenants, even those receiving rent assistance, or tenants with bad credit or eviction history. We need more inclusive fair housing laws, but in the meantime, incentivizing landlords could encourage their acceptance of financially troubled tenants and facilitate the implementation of Housing First policies. This landlord support can also mitigate the potential downsides of rent control in the private sector like disincentivizing development, insufficiently maintaining good living conditions, or charging higher rent for new tenants. The government should also take responsibility for funding and staffing critical services to impoverished tenants instead of counting on profit-driven landlords to hire service workers. All in all, rental housing should be treated more like a public service—even a fundamental human right—and less like a money-making scheme.

The government will not pass these common sense reforms on its own—we must be the ones to bring change. We must organize a movement that loudly calls for housing reforms, pressures politicians to comply, and achieves many small victories against landlords like the tenants of Royal Arms. At the same time, we must acknowledge that these reforms are not enough. As long as our government is beholden to wealthy elites, legal protections for the working class can be undone at any time by corrupt officials. In fact, after the first pandemic-related federal eviction moratorium expired in July 2021, Congress failed to extend the moratorium against the CDC’s recommendation, leaving Americans high and dry in the middle of a cost of living crisis. Ensuring their wealthy donors continued to profit was clearly a higher priority for Congress than keeping the American people in their homes. Fixing the housing crisis for good will require deep systemic changes to our democracy—changes that sever the puppet strings of corporate influence that control our politicians. While we call for housing reforms, we must also build a broader political movement to create democracy for the working class.

What has been done—and what must be done—in Madison

To its credit, the Madison city government has been open to some progressive housing measures. Madison experimented with Housing First projects at Tree Lane Apartments and Rethke Terrace. However, these properties were plagued by incompetent management—both by their landlord and by the city. For nearly a decade, both properties were managed by a Chicago-based non-profit, Heartland Housing Inc., and although the city government helped fund accompanying support services for residents, it was ultimately the responsibility of Heartland to hire service providers. In 2019, Heartland had employed only three service providers for its residents living in sixty units at Rethke Terrace. This lack of tenant support goes against the core principles of Housing First.

The high concentrations of poverty paired with inadequate support services led to a deterioration in the living conditions at these properties, and they experienced high-profile incidents of violence, high volumes of 911 calls, and were declared chronic public nuisances by the city. Heartland withdrew from these properties in 2022 and handed over management to a Chicago-based company, The Habitat. The properties ended up in receivership and were managed by a Milwaukee attorney as the city searched for another company to purchase the properties. At one point they were at risk of closing and tenants began to move out en masse. However, in May 2024, these properties were bought by a Michigan-based non-profit, Cinnaire Solutions. Now, Cinnaire is reducing the number of Housing First units from 105 units to just 26. The community development director for the city, Jim O’Keefe, says this reduction will make it easier to provide support services. Although this mixed-income approach might make managing the properties easier and might improve the living conditions for tenants, the glaring issue is that there will be less units to house homeless people. 

Another example of a progressive—but insufficient—effort to address the housing crisis in Madison is rent assistance. Madison landlords are not allowed to discriminate by source of income, allowing tenants with rent assistance to more readily find housing. Although the city’s rent assistance programs helped reduce homelessness in Dane County from 2021 to 2023, the expiration of pandemic-era federal aid is reducing the city’s financial resources to help renters. Additionally, the level of rent assistance offered by the city is being overshadowed by the prolonged heightening of Madison rents. Besides helping tenants pay their rents, the city also offers hundreds of subsidized units with reduced rents for low-income tenants—but these rent-restricted units also have a glaring issue. Restricted rents are adjusted to 30% of tenants’ pre-tax income, meaning tenants in rent-restricted housing are rent burdened by definition.

With a severe lack of affordable housing, the city is building more homeless shelters to cope with the rising homeless population. These temporary shelters are not an effective solution for homelessness, and the city could save millions of dollars by investing in (and properly executing) Housing First programs. Furthermore, Madison homeless shelters have come under fire for not hiring enough service workers, reducing the effectiveness of temporary shelters as a potential solution to homelessness even more. Although the state-level bans of rent control and inclusionary zoning limit the city’s options, there are still common sense measures Madison could take to more effectively deal with the housing crisis.

One simple way to alleviate Madison’s housing crisis is for the university to stop admitting record numbers of students. Although university officials and the State Legislature desperately want more students to come to Madison to fuel economic growth, without drastic changes to state law and funding, this uncontrolled population growth will inevitably make our affordable housing crisis much worse. University leaders and politicians turn a blind eye to this glaring contradiction and allow our most vulnerable citizens to slip through the cracks.

The city’s housing policies are painfully inadequate, and the fault lies with both the state and the local governments. The city needs to do a better job at prioritizing Housing First, providing high-quality support services and rent assistance to homeless and impoverished residents. Madison’s accepted property tax referendum should be used to make these improvements and should not focus narrowly on increasing housing supply or building temporary shelters. The Madison Common Council also needs to have more backbone and call out crooked officials at the university and state government for exacerbating the housing crisis. Rather than shrugging at the fact that they are hogtied by state laws and budget shortfalls, the Common Council should be vigorously campaigning and organizing to raise awareness about the true causes of the housing crisis: corporate landlords and corrupt politicians. Madison has four times as many units as it needs to end homelessness, and Wisconsin has a budget surplus of $4.6 billion. We have all the resources we need to fix our housing crisis, but as long as the state allows landlords to make rents widely unaffordable, units will remain empty while more and more people are forced to live on the streets.

It is clear that the privatized housing industry left to its own devices will inevitably prioritize profits over people and—given the right market conditions—cause a housing crisis. The skyrocketing rents in Madison and record-breaking homelessness in America are living proof of that. Although the power of corporate landlords hinders political action on the housing crisis, we Madisonians have a legacy of formidable people power that can shake the government to its core and, with the right strategies, force its hand. 

Madison has a vibrant history of civil resistance, from the anti-war protests of the 1960s and 70s to the Wisconsin Uprising against Act 10 in 2011. This tradition is very much alive today, as demonstrated by the student pro-Palestine encampment last summer and the recent People’s March on the Capitol. The triumph of the Royal Arms tenants points the way forward for a broader movement against landlord exploitation. We must build meaningful relationships with our neighbors and support each other like family. We must organize in our communities and put public pressure on predatory landlords. We must rally disparate working class communities around united goals and mobilize the masses to demand housing reforms. We must point the finger at pro-landlord politicians and stand against the corruption of our two-party political system. We must demand that politicians embrace grassroots tactics to win elections and reject corporate donations. We must demand political reforms to get money out of our elections. Finally, we must fight for an economy and a democracy that works for the people instead of the wealthy. 

Most importantly, though, the Royal Arms protests showed that the only way to force landlords to listen is to put their profits in the crossfire. The same is true for corporations in general—and our government, which so deeply depends on corporations. We working class renters are the backbone of this economy. Our labor and our spending makes this country run. We have the power to hold corporate profits hostage using boycotts and strikes to get what we deserve—but we must be organized enough to act in unison. This is a lesson learned from the Wisconsin Uprising, which had all the makings of a successful movement but failed to escalate to strike action and, thus, fell short of stopping the passage of Act 10. With a resurgent labor movement—and recent legal victories against Act 10—now is the time to hit the streets and demand change. We cannot rely on politicians to do this work for us. We must be the ones to fight if we want to win a better future. We cannot sit back while corporate landlords and corrupt politicians force us into poverty. We must embrace our Badger traditions, organize in our communities, and fight for the future we deserve.

If you’re having issues with your landlord or would like to get involved with tenant organizing in Madison, contact Madison Tenant Power at mtp@madisontenantpower.org or visit their website to learn more. If you’re interested in helping promote tenants rights, Madison Tenant Power also has a change.org petition for a Tenant Bill of Rights that calls for many of the reforms proposed above.