The Right to the City Alliance is a national coalition of over 90 left-of-center to radical-left advocacy groups involved in tenant organizing. The organization asserts that “housing is a human right” and supports intensive government regulation of the housing market to provide low-income housing. ¹

The organization opposes market-oriented policies to increase the housing supply, which it characterizes as benefiting the wealthy over the poor. The Alliance has also advocated for left-of-center policies unrelated to housing issues, including Black Lives Matter-aligned policing policies.  ^{2 3}

Background

The Right to the City Alliance was established in 2007 to coordinate low-income housing advocacy across the United States. ²

The Alliance opposes market-based solutions to provide more housing and lower housing costs, including efforts “developers and corporate landlords” to expand the housing supply. Instead, the Alliance supports major government interventions into the housing market to provide low-income housing, including permanent government-provided low-income housing, rent stabilization, and higher restrictions on evictions. ⁴

The Alliance asserts that “housing is a human right.” ¹ By extension, the Alliance supports a ban on all market-based land speculation so that housing policy would exclusively serve “the interests of community building, sustainable economies, and cultural and political space.” ²

The Alliance claims that the American housing market is discriminatory against racial and sexual minorities, and that Black Americans are entitled to reparations. The Alliance asserts that Indigenous Americans have a right to control their “ancestral lands,” and that illegal immigrants should have the same access to housing as legal immigrants and American citizens. ²

The Alliance asserts that residents have a right to environmentally “sustainable and healthy neighborhoods” and that as of 2025 they lack “freedom from police and state harassment.” ²

Activities

Principles Pledge

Organizations and individuals can sign the Right to the City Alliance’s “Homes For All Values and Principles Pledge,” which consists of six principles of low-income housing activism, including “grassroots democracy” and openness “to all races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, ages, immigration status, able-bodiedness, religious and spiritual beliefs, and who speak all languages.” ^{5 6}

Polling

The Alliance and the Right to the City Action Fund conduct polling on housing policy. For instance, in 2024, the Alliance conducted a poll with the Center for Popular Democracy and HIT Strategies of registered voters in Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina. The groups claimed that the poll found that most voters believed government housing policy was not sufficiently prioritized by politicians, and that “aggressive government action to address housing costs” was strongly favored over “market-based solutions.” The study concluded that “progressive solutions” were favored by moderates in these battleground states. ⁴

Opposition to Nuclear Energy

See also Opposition to Nuclear Energy

In May of 2021, the Alliance was one of 715 groups and businesses listed as a co-signer on a letter to the leadership of the U.S. House and Senate that referred to nuclear energy as a “dirty” form of energy production and a “significant” source of pollution. The letter asked federal lawmakers to reduce carbon emissions by creating a “renewable electricity standard” that would promote production of weather dependent power sources such as wind turbines and solar panels, but would not promote low carbon natural gas and zero-carbon nuclear energy. ⁷

Nuclear power plants produce no carbon dioxide or other greenhouse gas emissions, and as of 2021 accounted for 19 percent of American electricity production—the largest source of zero-carbon electricity in the United States. ⁸

Black Lives Matter

According to research by the Capital Research Center, the Alliance has close ties to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement and operates in parallel to numerous BLM organizations. BLM co-founder Alicia Garza chaired the board of the Alliance in 2011. The Alliance has explicitly endorsed BLM policies of defunding the police and redirecting police resources to housing and community development. ³

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Through its Take Back the People’s Bank campaign, the Alliance led protests against government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Though the Alliance supports government support for housing, it claims that the enterprises primarily served the interests of wealthy Americans. In 2012, the Alliance led protests in D.C., Chicago, Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New York against a bill proposed by Senate Democrats that would encourage Fannie and Freddie to help low-income homeowners refinance their mortgages. ⁹

Members

As of 2025, the Right to the City Alliance had over 90 members located across 26 states and Washington, D.C. Members included the Acre Center on Race and the Economy, the Alliance for Housing Justice, the Center for Popular Democracy, People’s Action, the Green New Deal Network, the Grassroots Global Justice Alliance, Rising Majority, the Indigenous Environmental Network, It Takes Roots, the Autonomous Tenant Union Center, and the United Frontline Table. ¹⁰

Leadership

As of 2025, Dawn Phillips was the executive director of both the Right to the City Alliance and the Right to the City Action Fund. In 2023, she earned a salary of $120,152. ¹¹ At the time, Phillips was co-director of programs at Causa Justa Just Cause, a San Francisco Bay Area-based left-wing community-organizing group. ¹²

1. “Homepage.” Right to the City Alliance. Accessed November 10, 2025. https://www.righttothecity.org/.
2. “Our Movement Story.” Right to the City Alliance. Accessed November 10, 2025. https://www.righttothecity.org/our-story.
3. Rufo, Christopher F. “Infiltrated: The Ideological Capture of Homelessness Advocacy.” Capital Research Center. October 10, 2025. Accessed November 10, 2025. https://capitalresearch.org/app/uploads/Infiltrated-Report-1.pdf.
4. “Poll.” Right to the City Alliance. Accessed November 10, 2025. https://www.righttothecity.org/poll.
5. “HOMES FOR ALL PRINCIPLES.” Right to the City Alliance. Accessed November 10, 2025. https://assets.website-files.com/61ccce7fbdaf706120c7c25f/62f596b7b44333767c0e8f1e_HFA%20Principles%20and%20Values.pdf.
6. “Take the HFA Pledge.” Right to the City Alliance. Accessed November 10, 2025. https://www.righttothecity.org/pledge.
7. Letter from Center for Biological Diversity et. al. to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Joe Manchin, and Rep. Frank Pallone. “RE: CONGRESS SHOULD ENACT A FEDERAL RENEWABLE ELECTRICITY STANDARD AND REJECT GAS AND FALSE SOLUTIONS.” May 12, 2021. Accessed July 25, 2023. https://www.biologicaldiversity.org/programs/energy-justice/pdfs/2021-5-12_600-Group-Letter-for-RES.pdf?_gl=1*1c9h3t8*_gcl_au*MTc3NjM3MTM1Mi4xNjg5OTU1MzAz 
8. “Nuclear explained.” U.S. Energy Information Administration. Accessed July 25, 2023. https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/nuclear/us-nuclear-industry.php
9. Burns, Rebecca. “Housing Activists Take Aim at Fannie and Freddie.” In These Times. September 12, 2012. Accessed November 10, 2025. https://inthesetimes.com/article/housing-activists-take-aim-at-fannie-and-freddie.
10. “Members.” Right to the City Alliance. Accessed November 10, 2025. https://www.righttothecity.org/members.
11. “Right to the City Alliance Form 990.” ProPublica. Accessed November 10, 2025. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/943462187/202422819349300212/full.
12. “Dawn Phillips.” Facing Race. Accessed November 10, 2025. https://facingrace.raceforward.org/speaker/dawn-phillips.