‘The rentiers reap what they do not sow.’

–Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)

In the struggle for housing in Vancouver, we tend to highlight issues such as social housing, SROs, gentrification, and affordability. But what about rent as such? The act of renting occurs between those who own, and those who do not. It is parasitic, a way of extracting any remaining surplus value from non-owners. Renting is a historically produced, not-inevitable practice that has become ideologically naturalised as being ordinary and unquestionable. It is a feeling of burden and fatigue, keeping us chained to our jobs, and offering us little time for mustering up a resistance. It is invisible, and if we are to stop paying for the catastrophic damage to our own daily lives, rent must be made visible.

The Rent Assembly will be a gathering for those who are not among Vancouver’s ‘players’ in the housing market. Many of us will never own property. We will always have to worry about our homes being sold out from under us, about being renovicted, evicted or rents inflating beyond liveability. Workers will continue to spend more of their paycheques on housing, leaving less for their families and their futures. Cultural producers will find it increasingly impossible to exist here, and will contend with their spaces and neighbourhoods being exploited by developers. Housing choices will largely be determined by the prejudices of property managers and landlords who, unlike most, can afford to say “no.”

"So preyed upon by their tyrannising landlords, so flayed and fleeced by perpetual exactions, that though they do drudge, fare hard, and starve their genius, they cannot live in some countries; but what they have is instantly taken from them, the very care they take to live, to be drudges, to maintain their poor families, their trouble and anxiety takes away their sleep, it makes them weary of their lives: when they have taken all pains, done their utmost and honest endeavours, if they be cast behind by sickness, or overtaken with years, no man pities them, hard-hearted and merciless, uncharitable as they are, they leave them so distressed, to beg, steal, murmur, and rebel, or else starve." - Robert Burton (1638)

‘The rentiers reap what they do not sow.’

–Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (1776)

In the struggle for housing in Vancouver, we tend to highlight issues such as social housing, SROs, gentrification, and affordability. But what about rent as such? The act of renting occurs between those who own, and those who do not. It is parasitic, a way of extracting any remaining surplus value from non-owners. Renting is a historically produced, not-inevitable practice that has become ideologically naturalised as being ordinary and unquestionable. It is a feeling of burden and fatigue, keeping us chained to our jobs, and offering us little time for mustering up a resistance. It is invisible, and if we are to stop paying for the catastrophic damage to our own daily lives, rent must be made visible.

The Rent Assembly will be a gathering for those who are not among Vancouver’s ‘players’ in the housing market. Many of us will never own property. We will always have to worry about our homes being sold out from under us, about being renovicted, evicted or rents inflating beyond liveability. Workers will continue to spend more of their paycheques on housing, leaving less for their families and their futures. Cultural producers will find it increasingly impossible to exist here, and will contend with their spaces and neighbourhoods being exploited by developers. Housing choices will largely be determined by the prejudices of property managers and landlords who, unlike most, can afford to say “no.”