Red Emma’s

In the early 2010s, San Francisco experienced a tech boom that created both great wealth and great inequality. The city became known for runaway gentrification, a major housing crisis, and an "eviction epidemic" of long-term tenants. Yet these changes also drove an inspiring housing justice movement that exposed gentrification as far from inevitable.

In Anti-Eviction, anthropologist and scholar-activist Manissa Maharawal tells the story of how residents built a powerful anti-eviction movement and how they fought—and sometimes won—a right to their homes and their city. Focusing on the stories of tenants facing eviction, Maharawal describes the different strategies for resistance that emerged as well as lessons for the broader national housing crisis, beyond California. This illuminating book offers not only actionable models for activism and resisting gentrification, but also a powerful study of how ordinary people came together to organize for housing justice and change their city.

Manissa Maharawal is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at American University in Washington, DC, and a member of the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project.

Amaka Okechukwu is an assistant professor of sociology at George Mason University.