"What Do We Want? Housing! When Do We Want It? Now!" Building a Social Movement in the Context of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and Housing Injustice

Homelessness and housing insecurity are often isolating experiences in the United States, where housing and well-being are constructed as individual responsibilities. In this context, mobilization around housing injustice can be challenging. The authors argue that the intersection of the Black Lives Matter protests, the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic, and housing injustice created a powder keg for social action that was capitalized upon by a local tenant union and social movement organization called Kansas City Tenants. Through a real-time analysis of Kansas City Tenants, a grassroots organization with national reach, the authors explore how it managed to recruit diverse members to the organization, direct sustainable and impactful action toward the needs of those in crisis, and lay the groundwork for future policy and revolutionary initiatives both institutionally and extrainstitutionally.