Housing policy has long prioritized homeownership. As young Americans face the prospect of renting indefinitely, more tenants are seeking political clout.

In Mid Michigan, voter frustration about the high cost of rent has helped propel William Lawrence into a rare position: Polls show the affordable-housing advocate and Democratic candidate running for U.S. Congress has a strong shot at unseating a Republican member of the House of Representatives in one of the most purple districts in the country.

Lawrence, 36, made a career of activism before running for office as a progressive candidate. He co-founded Sunrise Movement, a youth climate-change initiative a decade ago. But when rents spiked after the pandemic, the East Lansing native watched longtime friends in the area move out of town. In some cases, their landlords were demanding 30% more. "They just couldn't make it work," said Lawrence, who also rents.

Seeing young adults trying to afford housing turned his focus to the high cost of rent, a problem that impacted their overall financial well-being. Lawrence began local advocacy for affordable housing through the Michigan Rent Is Too Damn High Coalition, a tenant union he founded in 2023. The group tried to push the state legislature to adopt bills aimed at stopping steep rent increases and protecting tenants' rights to organize. Now, he's hoping to bring his experience fighting for renters to Congress.

"We have a generation of young people who are increasingly pessimistic about the future because they're locked out of the market for homeownership and renting for a longer period of time," Lawrence told MarketWatch. "I think that's why it's becoming an issue at every level - because people need relief, and we need housing security."

Housing policy has long prioritized homeownership, with politicians and industry lobbying groups securing federal and state tax breaks, government-backed loan guarantees and subsidies, and favorable zoning policies to help people who own homes. But now, candidates across the country, like Lawrence, are trumpeting their experiences as renters and tenant organizers, fueling an emerging political movement focused on making renting more sustainable.

William Lawrence, right, a renter and affordable-housing advocate running for U.S. Congress, said housing security has become an urgent issue both locally in Mid Michigan and nationally.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who promised to freeze rent during his campaign, is the most well-known in this category, and there have been wins for renter-candidates in cities like Cambridge, Mass., and Seattle. In Los Angeles, Nithya Raman, one of the two leading candidates for mayor, is touting her record pushing for renter protections as a city councilperson and vowing to expand them if she's elected.

The political focus on renting isn't just limited to progressive, urban enclaves. In regions like South Carolina; Kentucky; Bozeman, Mont.; and Kansas City, Mo., tenants are increasingly organizing politically to secure collective-bargaining agreements with landlords and to push for broader protections like guaranteed access to counsel for renters facing eviction.

Even in these early days, the rental industry is taking note. "The proliferation of tenant unions across markets," as well as proposed laws to protect their rights to organize, may "have significant impacts on property operations," the National Apartment Association, the rental lobby, said.

The activity is a political response to the fact that more millennial and Gen Z voters are forced by the unaffordable cost of buying a home to rent for longer than ever. The median age of renters is now about 42, according to Census data. At the same time, elevated rents have made it difficult for many in this group to manage the rest of their finances.

"A lot of people really feel like they're locked into renting and they're not going to be able to make that shift to home ownership at a point when previous generations probably would have been doing that," said Jenny Schuetz, vice president of infrastructure and housing at Arnold Ventures, a philanthropic organization focused on research and policy. The "sense of being shut out of a possibility previous generations" had "is going to have some political implications," she added.

How renters lost their political voice, and the movement to bring it back

Grant Samms thought he would have been out of his rented apartment in Rockville, Md., and owning a home by age 30. But today, at age 35, he continues to face housing prices in the Washington suburb that put that dream just out of reach.

A $135,000 apartment he had been eyeing in 2019 was taken off the market during the early part of the pandemic, then relisted and eventually sold for $305,000. Meanwhile, his rent crept up from $1,850 in 2019 to $2,500 today. Samms is mentally exhausted by not knowing whether he will be able to afford the new rate every time his lease is up.

"I'm really sick of somebody having that power over me," he told MarketWatch.

After the Rockville city council refused to consider a rent-stabilization measure that the rest of the county had adopted in 2023, he helped launch Rockville Renters United, an organization that advocates for tenants' rights and renter-friendly policies in his city, a bedroom community transformed by the boom in renters, which have grown to 47% of the population, according to government data.

Samms connected with parents whose kids had to switch schools multiple times after rising rents pushed them out of their homes. He spoke with a neighbor in his mid-40s who lived in the same rental apartment for 16 years before being able to afford buying a home.

Grant Samms is organizing tenants in Rockville, Md., where the renter population has grown rapidly.

"We have a huge group of people here that are all vulnerable and all in the same way," Samms said. "Having a collective voice to be able to put pressure on our elected leaders and to bring things to the attention of the public ... is really, really important."

Tenant groups like Samms's are trying to bring "tenant power, and tenant political engagement, more in line with home ownership," Mallory SoRelle, associate professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, told MarketWatch. In the mid-20th century, homeowners gained political power and renters lost it, a dynamic that hasn't really shifted since.

Renters became a larger part of the U.S. population after the Great Depression, with 56% of households renting in 1940. Following a wave of tenant-organizing over living conditions in urban areas in the 1920s, federal rent control was passed to contain inflation during World War II, placing a ceiling on rent, until it was gradually lifted in the late 1940s.

Yet after the war ended, renters' needs fell out of focus with lawmakers. Homeownership boomed as the economy grew, home building increased, and financing became easier for veterans through the G.I. Bill. The share of renters declined to 38% of households by 1960, and is 35% today.

Another wave of tenant advocacy followed in the 1960s and 1970s, when workers faced stagnant wages and high inflation and rising energy prices, "a lot of the same sort of things that are happening right now," SoRelle said. Many cities adopted rent stabilization and other controls, however, no "big gains" were won nationally for tenants as the real-estate industry fought back against these efforts.

"With a few notable exceptions, like during the war, generally speaking, it has been the case that federal policy in the U.S. is focused on home ownership, and states and cities have done most of the policymaking around rental properties," she added.

As the renter population shrank, their political voice also weakened as they voted at lower rates than homeowners. In 2024, 52% of eligible renters voted compared to 70% of homeowners, resulting in "housing policy that is skewed toward homeowners," according to a report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Looking ahead, it's possible "over the longer run, we will see a narrowing of that [voter] turnout gap" as affordability hurdles make the average renter older and higher-income - characteristics that are typically associated with greater political engagement - Chris Salviati, chief economist at Apartment List, told MarketWatch.

When renters do turn out, they have tended to vote for Democrats, although Salviati noted the party's lead with renters has narrowed in recent elections, in line with broader political shifts among young men, working-class voters and non-white voters.

Renters fighting for protections - and for candidates

After moving into a roach-infested apartment in Hartford, Conn., Rhett Tock came across the Connecticut Tenants Union, a group that organizes tenants in buildings across the state and advocates for renter-friendly policies with state and local lawmakers. The organization, which has 2,000 members, has 28 chapters, up from nine when it launched in 2023.

Tock, an audio engineer and teacher, has distributed flyers and talked to tenants about organizing. He's also attended protests and other events focused on housing at the state capitol building. This past legislative cycle, the union worked to expand just-cause eviction protections to younger renters, which bans landlords from evicting tenants without citing specific reasons, like property damage or not paying rent. Currently, Connecticut's just-cause eviction laws only cover senior citizens and people with disabilities in buildings with more than five units.

"When we're thinking about how costs rise, part of the problem is that you can just cycle out tenants," Tock, 32, said. "Every time you get someone out you just raise the rent. You should be able to have a living space and not be thrown out on a limb."

Rhett Tock came across the Connecticut Tenants Union after moving into a roach-infested apartment.

MW Locked out of home ownership, renters are rallying voters for affordable housing policies

By Jillian Berman and Venessa Wong

Housing policy has long prioritized homeownership. As young Americans face the prospect of renting indefinitely, more tenants are seeking political clout.

In Mid Michigan, voter frustration about the high cost of rent has helped propel William Lawrence into a rare position: Polls show the affordable-housing advocate and Democratic candidate running for U.S. Congress has a strong shot at unseating a Republican member of the House of Representatives in one of the most purple districts in the country.

Lawrence, 36, made a career of activism before running for office as a progressive candidate. He co-founded Sunrise Movement, a youth climate-change initiative a decade ago. But when rents spiked after the pandemic, the East Lansing native watched longtime friends in the area move out of town. In some cases, their landlords were demanding 30% more. "They just couldn't make it work," said Lawrence, who also rents.

Seeing young adults trying to afford housing turned his focus to the high cost of rent, a problem that impacted their overall financial well-being. Lawrence began local advocacy for affordable housing through the Michigan Rent Is Too Damn High Coalition, a tenant union he founded in 2023. The group tried to push the state legislature to adopt bills aimed at stopping steep rent increases and protecting tenants' rights to organize. Now, he's hoping to bring his experience fighting for renters to Congress.

"We have a generation of young people who are increasingly pessimistic about the future because they're locked out of the market for homeownership and renting for a longer period of time," Lawrence told MarketWatch. "I think that's why it's becoming an issue at every level - because people need relief, and we need housing security."

Housing policy has long prioritized homeownership, with politicians and industry lobbying groups securing federal and state tax breaks, government-backed loan guarantees and subsidies, and favorable zoning policies to help people who own homes. But now, candidates across the country, like Lawrence, are trumpeting their experiences as renters and tenant organizers, fueling an emerging political movement focused on making renting more sustainable.

William Lawrence, right, a renter and affordable-housing advocate running for U.S. Congress, said housing security has become an urgent issue both locally in Mid Michigan and nationally.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who promised to freeze rent during his campaign, is the most well-known in this category, and there have been wins for renter-candidates in cities like Cambridge, Mass., and Seattle. In Los Angeles, Nithya Raman, one of the two leading candidates for mayor, is touting her record pushing for renter protections as a city councilperson and vowing to expand them if she's elected.

The political focus on renting isn't just limited to progressive, urban enclaves. In regions like South Carolina; Kentucky; Bozeman, Mont.; and Kansas City, Mo., tenants are increasingly organizing politically to secure collective-bargaining agreements with landlords and to push for broader protections like guaranteed access to counsel for renters facing eviction.

Even in these early days, the rental industry is taking note. "The proliferation of tenant unions across markets," as well as proposed laws to protect their rights to organize, may "have significant impacts on property operations," the National Apartment Association, the rental lobby, said.

The activity is a political response to the fact that more millennial and Gen Z voters are forced by the unaffordable cost of buying a home to rent for longer than ever. The median age of renters is now about 42, according to Census data. At the same time, elevated rents have made it difficult for many in this group to manage the rest of their finances.

"A lot of people really feel like they're locked into renting and they're not going to be able to make that shift to home ownership at a point when previous generations probably would have been doing that," said Jenny Schuetz, vice president of infrastructure and housing at Arnold Ventures, a philanthropic organization focused on research and policy. The "sense of being shut out of a possibility previous generations" had "is going to have some political implications," she added.

How renters lost their political voice, and the movement to bring it back

Grant Samms thought he would have been out of his rented apartment in Rockville, Md., and owning a home by age 30. But today, at age 35, he continues to face housing prices in the Washington suburb that put that dream just out of reach.

A $135,000 apartment he had been eyeing in 2019 was taken off the market during the early part of the pandemic, then relisted and eventually sold for $305,000. Meanwhile, his rent crept up from $1,850 in 2019 to $2,500 today. Samms is mentally exhausted by not knowing whether he will be able to afford the new rate every time his lease is up.

"I'm really sick of somebody having that power over me," he told MarketWatch.

After the Rockville city council refused to consider a rent-stabilization measure that the rest of the county had adopted in 2023, he helped launch Rockville Renters United, an organization that advocates for tenants' rights and renter-friendly policies in his city, a bedroom community transformed by the boom in renters, which have grown to 47% of the population, according to government data.

Samms connected with parents whose kids had to switch schools multiple times after rising rents pushed them out of their homes. He spoke with a neighbor in his mid-40s who lived in the same rental apartment for 16 years before being able to afford buying a home.

Grant Samms is organizing tenants in Rockville, Md., where the renter population has grown rapidly.

"We have a huge group of people here that are all vulnerable and all in the same way," Samms said. "Having a collective voice to be able to put pressure on our elected leaders and to bring things to the attention of the public ... is really, really important."

Tenant groups like Samms's are trying to bring "tenant power, and tenant political engagement, more in line with home ownership," Mallory SoRelle, associate professor at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, told MarketWatch. In the mid-20th century, homeowners gained political power and renters lost it, a dynamic that hasn't really shifted since.

Renters became a larger part of the U.S. population after the Great Depression, with 56% of households renting in 1940. Following a wave of tenant-organizing over living conditions in urban areas in the 1920s, federal rent control was passed to contain inflation during World War II, placing a ceiling on rent, until it was gradually lifted in the late 1940s.

Yet after the war ended, renters' needs fell out of focus with lawmakers. Homeownership boomed as the economy grew, home building increased, and financing became easier for veterans through the G.I. Bill. The share of renters declined to 38% of households by 1960, and is 35% today.

Another wave of tenant advocacy followed in the 1960s and 1970s, when workers faced stagnant wages and high inflation and rising energy prices, "a lot of the same sort of things that are happening right now," SoRelle said. Many cities adopted rent stabilization and other controls, however, no "big gains" were won nationally for tenants as the real-estate industry fought back against these efforts.

"With a few notable exceptions, like during the war, generally speaking, it has been the case that federal policy in the U.S. is focused on home ownership, and states and cities have done most of the policymaking around rental properties," she added.

As the renter population shrank, their political voice also weakened as they voted at lower rates than homeowners. In 2024, 52% of eligible renters voted compared to 70% of homeowners, resulting in "housing policy that is skewed toward homeowners," according to a report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

Looking ahead, it's possible "over the longer run, we will see a narrowing of that [voter] turnout gap" as affordability hurdles make the average renter older and higher-income - characteristics that are typically associated with greater political engagement - Chris Salviati, chief economist at Apartment List, told MarketWatch.

When renters do turn out, they have tended to vote for Democrats, although Salviati noted the party's lead with renters has narrowed in recent elections, in line with broader political shifts among young men, working-class voters and non-white voters.

Renters fighting for protections - and for candidates

After moving into a roach-infested apartment in Hartford, Conn., Rhett Tock came across the Connecticut Tenants Union, a group that organizes tenants in buildings across the state and advocates for renter-friendly policies with state and local lawmakers. The organization, which has 2,000 members, has 28 chapters, up from nine when it launched in 2023.

Tock, an audio engineer and teacher, has distributed flyers and talked to tenants about organizing. He's also attended protests and other events focused on housing at the state capitol building. This past legislative cycle, the union worked to expand just-cause eviction protections to younger renters, which bans landlords from evicting tenants without citing specific reasons, like property damage or not paying rent. Currently, Connecticut's just-cause eviction laws only cover senior citizens and people with disabilities in buildings with more than five units.

"When we're thinking about how costs rise, part of the problem is that you can just cycle out tenants," Tock, 32, said. "Every time you get someone out you just raise the rent. You should be able to have a living space and not be thrown out on a limb."

Rhett Tock came across the Connecticut Tenants Union after moving into a roach-infested apartment.

(MORE TO FOLLOW) Dow Jones Newswires

October 06, 2026 08:30 ET (12:30 GMT)

MW Locked out of home ownership, renters are -2-

The Connecticut Tenants Union plans to continue the push for just-cause eviction in the 2027 legislative cycle, said Luke Melonakos, the union's vice president. They're encouraged by support for the initiative from prominent state-level politicians, including the governor, Democrat Ned Lamont. Though the union's activism is on the state level, Melonakos said they'll be watching the midterm elections closely. How candidates across the country who have made renter priorities a part of their campaign fair could influence how Connecticut's Democrat-controlled legislature approaches the issue, he said.

For Tock, whose rent consumes almost an entire biweekly paycheck, "the idea of homeownership is anywhere from 'so far out' to 'I have given up,'" which fuels his activism as a long-term renter.

Political groups are harnessing this angst. In early 2025, Run For Something, an organization that recruits and trains progressive millennial and Gen Z candidates for state and local office, launched an initiative that aims to get more renters elected.

Historically, candidates focused on policies like down-payment assistance that can make buying a house more affordable, but today, more 20- and 30-somethings are staring down at years or even decades of renting. "If you're only talking about making it easier to buy a home, young people are going to tune you out," Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, told MarketWatch. "When you get renters into office, it changes the tenor of debate."

Litman and other Run for Something staffers first began noticing that candidates in their pipeline were identifying themselves as renters around 2023. In some cases, people interested in running weren't sure if renting would be detrimental to their candidacy. After the activity surrounding the 2024 presidential election died down, Run for Something decided it made sense to build off momentum from areas like Minneapolis, Cambridge, Mass. and Austin, Texas, where elected renters had some success shifting zoning and other policy to be more renter-friendly.

Now, recruiting renter candidates is a major part of Run for Something's strategy around the midterms, particularly given that housing affordability is top of mind for many Americans. So far in the 2026 cycle the organization has endorsed 178 renters - 37% of all of their endorsements.

One of the candidates they endorsed was Aparna Raj, a tenant organizer who recently won the Democratic primary for a city council seat in Washington, D.C. representing a ward of the city that is about two-thirds renter and Democratic.

Raj, 32, hopes to restore some longstanding tenant protections that the city council recently weakened.

As a longtime renter herself, Raj has experience with being a neglected tenant. In her 20s, she lived in a group house where the landlord refused to fix anything. A company later acquired the home but also didn't make repairs, pushing Raj and her roommates out. The house was later turned into condos.

When campaigning as a renter, Raj said she received positive reactions from renter voters. Many appreciated that she could relate to the challenges they faced as renters. Some homeowners, meanwhile, believed that renters are transient by nature and shouldn't take part in local government.

But "in this economic environment, when people are renters for longer and maybe renters for their whole lives, that identity is really resonating with people more, especially my generation," she said. Part of the reason why Raj said she decided to run was because she wanted to add a renter voice to a city council where homeowners are the majority.

As a city councilmember, Raj hopes to increase housing supply, particularly the supply of units that are big enough for families, and expand tenant protections like rent stabilization.

Even beyond policy prescriptions, having renter candidates embrace their tenant identity has been useful for connecting with young voters, Litman said. If a candidate rents, it may telegraph to a voter where they are on the class spectrum, what generation they're in and the kinds of affordability challenges they're dealing with, she said.

"It's a way to signal 'I'm one of you, I get it, I live life the way that you do,'" she added. "I feel that sense of instability. I feel that sense of lack of access to the American Dream."

The rise of tenant voting blocs

As renter candidates become more successful, tenant unions, which have often focused on pushing landlords for changes within their own buildings, expect to have more receptive partners in local, state and federal offices.

"We think a lot about what cities, states, and the federal government could or should do and about tenants as a political and economic class broadly," said Tara Raghuveer, the director of the Tenant United Federation. Her organization launched in 2024 as a federation of local tenant unions across the country.

Right now, they're in the midst of thinking about crafting a legislative agenda, knowing affordability, including housing costs, will be a core issue in the midterm elections, she said. At the local level, some of the unions affiliated with TUF are running their own candidates, Raghuveer added.

'If you're only talking about making it easier to buy a home, young people are going to tune you out.'Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something

Johnathan Duncan, won a city council race in Kansas City, Mo., in 2023 thanks in part to his work with Kansas City Tenants, the city's tenants union. "Missouri has some of the worst protection for renters anywhere in the country," Duncan told MarketWatch, and it impacts anyone whose earnings are not keeping up with the cost of living.

Tenants "are veterans. They are seniors. They are young folks. They are leftists. They are conservatives. Some of them are Trump supporters," Duncan said. Rent affordability "is a unifying issue, a galvanizing issue. And it cuts through all the noise of your political party."

While Duncan is a homeowner, he said he was only able to afford it with a 0%-down VA home loan as an Iraq war veteran. "You shouldn't have to fight in a war in order to be housing-secure," he said.

As this nascent political movement takes off, there's evidence that pro-renter policies are already resonating with voters.

Russell Weaver, the director of research at Cornell University's Buffalo Co-Lab, wanted to get a better sense of what was motivating renter turnout after an upstart candidate rode a wave of renter support to beat the incumbent mayor in the Democratic primary in the Buffalo mayor's race in 2021 (although she lost in the general election, when renters were a smaller share of the turnout pool).

Weaver and his team looked at other recent races in New York state. Not only was renter turnout about five to seven percentage points higher in races where candidates were backing tenant protections like just-cause eviction, the pro-tenant candidates also won those races.

"Actually going out there and putting tenant issues and tenant concerns on the ballot can motivate tenants to go out and vote, even though historically they voted at much lower rates" than homeowners, he told MarketWatch.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition, an advocacy group, is working to increase renter representation by working with housing provider councils, voting-rights groups and other organizations to inform tenants about the renter-related issues at stake through its nonpartisan Our Homes, Our Votes campaign. They also provide information on how renters can overcome obstacles to getting to the voting booth, including securing child care and transportation.

"They may not even know what might be on the ballot that might be important to them," said Chantelle Wilkinson, the coalition's vice president of strategic partnerships and campaigns. "When our voices get heard we can shape what our communities look like."

In Maryland, Grant Samms has found that the people who live in his community don't want people to be pushed out of town by rent-gouging landlords.

"They don't want their kids to have to go to a new school two, three, four consecutive years in a row, because they get priced out and keep moving," Samms said. "Everyone sees the damage that that does."

-Jillian Berman -Venessa Wong