(Photo by iStock/Alex Potemkin)
Over the past few decades, three major narrative movements have emerged to shape the housing debate: Housing for All, Housing Justice, and Housing Abundance. Each has distinct origins, strategies, and contributions, and each has sought to reframe housing as a collective good, a moral imperative, or a policy necessity.
Analyzing these movements and learning from their strengths and weaknesses provides housing leaders a roadmap for how to build the public will necessary to advance equitable housing solutions at a moment when scarcity narratives, cultural polarization, and entrenched racist ideologies regularly undermine progress.
Three Major Movements
I have worked with hundreds of national, regional, and local housing leaders who have undertaken this work. Through listening, training, coaching, and advising, I have watched advocates evolve from avoiding certain “taboo words” that risked triggering backlash to developing sophisticated strategies for both narrative change and building will for systems change.
From small coalitions pressing for accessory dwelling units (ADUs) to national organizations advocating for sweeping reforms, housing leaders have often employed one of three narratives, each with its strengths and weaknesses: Housing for All, Housing Justice, and Housing Abundance.
Housing for All
This narrative frame emerged in the early 2000s as housing advocates sought to universalize the claim that housing is a basic human right. Rooted in international human rights discourse and domestic housing advocacy, the Housing for All movement sought to mobilize broad coalitions around the simple but powerful proposition that everyone deserves a safe, stable, and affordable home.
The Housing for All narrative mobilized large and diverse coalitions by offering an accessible entry point for organizations, policy makers, and the general public to rally around a shared moral principle. National organizations such as the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) have consistently framed their advocacy in these terms, emphasizing that housing must be recognized as a universal right rather than a commodity accessible only to those who can afford it.
Examples abound of local and state efforts adopting this universalist framing. In Massachusetts, CHAPA’s “Housing for All” campaigns have emphasized both moral and economic imperatives, linking housing stability to workforce readiness and regional competitiveness. In Minnesota, coalitions such as Homes for All MN have, since 2019, brought together more than 200 organizations to advocate for broad housing investments under the banner of universality.
Despite impressive gains, Housing for All has faced criticism for not addressing racial inequities head-on and reinforcing a colorblind approach that obscures the structural roots of housing inequities.
Housing Justice
Building on while also challenging the universalist language of Housing for All, the Housing Justice narrative movement emerged from grassroots organizing traditions that explicitly linked housing struggles to racial equity, reparative justice, and community control. It is the narrative framework for some of the largest housing organizations in the country today: Habitat for Humanity, NeighborWorks, Local Initiatives Support Corporation, Enterprise Community Partners, Reinvestment Fund, and more.
Housing Justice insists that the housing crisis is not a natural phenomenon or merely a function of market failure but rather the predictable outcome of policies that intentionally segregated, dispossessed, and excluded communities of color. Housing Justice is about not only the right to housing but also the right to remain in one’s community, to resist displacement, and to own and control housing resources collectively.
The Right to the City Alliance, founded in 2007, has advanced a Housing Justice platform that includes demands for rent control, eviction protections, and community ownership models. In Oakland, the activist group Moms 4 Housing brought national attention to the crisis of corporate ownership of single-family homes when a group of unhoused Black mothers occupied a vacant investor-owned property, sparking a wave of organizing that pressured policy makers to adopt new regulations. In New York City, coalitions such as Housing Justice for All have successfully advanced rent relief and eviction protections during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Many of the foundations that fund housing innovations have begun grounding their housing work in housing justice (see Funders Together to End Homelessness becoming Funders Together for Housing Justice). This evolution in how funders frame the conversation has also impacted how housing groups that rely on philanthropic funding have adapted.
The Housing Justice narrative centers the voices of those most directly impacted by housing insecurity, shifting the moral terrain of debate, and linking housing struggles to broader movements for racial and economic justice and redress. However, critics argue that Housing Justice frames, while powerful, sometimes struggle to gain traction with broader publics who may not share the same ideological commitments or who are resistant to explicitly racialized framings.
Housing Abundance
This movement has more recently gained prominence, emphasizing supply expansion, zoning reform, and the dismantling of regulatory barriers as critical strategies for addressing the housing crisis. Housing Abundance emerged primarily from the YIMBY (Yes In My Back Yard) movement of the 2010s, which sought to counter NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) opposition to new housing development and advance zoning reforms that would enable denser, more affordable housing supply.
While early YIMBY activism was critiqued for being dominated by younger, white, and professional-class advocates, the Housing Abundance movement has increasingly focused on equity. The movement has also been broadened by the contributions of groups such as Strong Towns, a national nonprofit that reframes the conversation around local development, redefining abundance not only as a matter of supply but also as a matter of long-term community health and resilience.
In California, the passage of SB 9 and SB 10 in 2021, which allowed for lot splits and greater density in single-family zones, was facilitated by abundance-oriented advocacy that emphasized both the supply crisis and the moral imperative to undo exclusionary zoning. At the federal level, the Biden administration’s Housing Supply Action Plan used abundance language to justify new investments in production and zoning reform.
Lately, the abundance framing has entered broader public discourse through popular works such as Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein’s 2025 book Abundance. Abundance narratives build public energy by reasserting that we can and should commit to building more housing, infrastructure, and opportunities as part of a collective project of national renewal. This narrative bridges partisan divides and appeals to constituencies across the ideological spectrum by framing housing supply expansion as both an economic necessity and a moral imperative. At the same time, abundance frames have been criticized for downplaying the historical injustices emphasized by the Housing Justice movement.
Blending the Best of All Three
Housing for All offers a universalist entry point, Housing Justice foregrounds racial equity, and Housing Abundance emphasizes supply expansion and policy reforms that address exclusionary zoning and production barriers. All three of these narratives offer a compelling diagnosis of the problem and a powerful case for action, with each potentially appealing to different audiences. Rather than insisting on one particular narrative, housing advocates should consider how we might integrate these movements into a unified case for equitable, affordable housing. Here are six suggestions to start:
- Adopt a universalist frame anchored in justice: Begin with the accessible language of Housing for All to engage broad audiences, but anchor that universality in the historical realities emphasized by Housing Justice. “For all” must mean especially for those historically excluded.
- Link supply expansion to anti-displacement protections: Pair Housing Abundance reforms with Housing Justice safeguards, ensuring that zoning changes, density increases, and production incentives are coupled with tenant protections, affordability mandates, and community ownership models.
- Harness the energy of abundance narratives without neglecting power and equity: As Derek Thompson and Ezra Klein argue in Abundance, narratives that emphasize possibility, ambition, and national renewal can galvanize public energy to take on massive, long-term challenges—including dismantling regulatory barriers that slow housing production. Advocates should harness this aspirational momentum while resisting the temptation to frame abundance as simply a matter of growth.
- Build bipartisan narratives without diluting equity: Use the pragmatic, bipartisan appeal of abundance frames to widen coalitions, while ensuring that equity and redress remain at the center of policy design.
- Elevate community ownership models: Highlight the successes of community land trusts, shared equity housing, and cooperative housing as examples of abundance strategies that also advance justice.
- Invest in adaptive leadership: Provide local leaders with the training, coaching, and resources needed to build will for housing equity, respond to disruptions, and build broad-based partnerships that can withstand political headwinds.
Conclusion
Through deliberate retelling of different stories rooted in history, data, and lived experience, housing advocates have been working to reshape the terrain of public understanding during a period when housing has become less affordable and thus a more contested commodity. In communities across the United States, they’ve shifted narratives, built will for change, and made meaningful progress—a process I call “casemaking.” When leaders are equipped to make powerful cases, forge broad-based alliances, and fast-track pragmatic solutions, they can win consequential housing policy victories.
While polarization, retrenchment, and scarcity narratives threaten to erode hard-won gains, a close look at the narratives driving housing advocacy movements demonstrates the field’s dynamism and creativity. Synthesizing the three movements offers the most powerful path forward: one that broadens coalitions, centers justice, expands supply, and builds the public will necessary to achieve transformational change.
Read more stories by Tiffany Manuel.