Shows
Urban Political Podcast100 – Looking Back, Looking Forward6 Years of the Urban Political Podcast
This episode is our 100th! We are delighted that we have reached this landmark and thank all our listeners and contributors since we started the Urban Political in 2019. To mark the occasion of this 100th podcast we have produced a special issue containing two parts, in which we look backwards and forwards on all things Urban and Political.
In the first part, Markus Kip and Ross Beveridge talk to Mathilde Gustavussen about the origins of the podcast, why they set up the podcast, how things have changed since the beginning and...
2025-11-281h 35
Urban Political PodcastRent Strike Series Episode 3The third in an ongoing series hosted by Mathilde Lind Gustavussen
This is episode three of the Rent Strike Series, focusing on the Veritas Tenants Association’s ongoing multibuilding rent strike in San Francisco to demand a say in the terms of sale of their buildings. In November 2023, the Prado Group assumed ownership of 20 Veritas-owned buildings, while on January 18, 2024, Ballast Investments and their partner Brookfield Properties took over the remaining 75 buildings in the largest-ever sale of rent-stabilized units in San Francisco. Meanwhile, the rent strike has expanded to six buildings, and some of the strikers have secured concessions through collective bar...
2024-02-0127 min
Urban Political PodcastRent Strike Series Episode 2The second in an ongoing series hosted by Mathilde Lind Gustavussen.
This is episode two of the Rent Strike Series, focusing on the Veritas Tenants Association’s ongoing multibuilding rent strike in San Francisco to demand a say in the terms of sale of their buildings. On August 30, corporate landlord Ballast Investments won the auction for Veritas Investments’ delinquent debt and will take over 75 Veritas-owned buildings. And on September 1 the strike expanded. In this episode, we get an update on these developments and the implications for the strike from Brad Hirn, lead organizer with the Housing Rights Committee of San...
2023-09-2124 min
Urban Political PodcastRent Strike Series Episode 1the Veritas Tenants Association’s (VTA) in San Francisco
Episode description: This is the first episode of the Rent Strike Series from Urban Political, a multi-episode series about the Veritas Tenants Association’s (VTA) on-going rent strike against San Francisco’s largest landlord, Veritas Investments, Inc. The episode brings in tenants and organizers from the VTA to discuss organizing against corporate landlords, organizing multibuilding rent strikes, and what happens when corporate landlords default on loans.
Bios:
Mathilde Lind Gustavussen is a PhD candidate in sociology at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her research focuses on housing...
2023-08-2548 min
Urban Political PodcastAre Community Land Trusts Transformative?
Community land trusts are proliferating across the globe, promoted as a potential solution to the ever-worsening affordable housing crisis. CLTs provide a mechanism for decommodification, collective ownership, and community control; however, those ideals are hard to operationalize, and many CLTs function more as traditional affordable housing providers than as urban commons. This episode discusses the causes of this tension as well as regional differences and issues of funding and scale framed around the question: are CLTs transformative?
The moderator of this podcast is Mathilde Lind Gustavussen. She is a PhD candidate in sociology at the Freie Universität...
2023-03-171h 00