Rent control and other tenant protections have profound and positive impacts on individuals’ and communities’ lives. Lauren Everett’s Fortunate People in a Fortunate Land shows how rent control impacts the lives of the renters themselves. Everett interviews residents about their experiences in low- and middle-income households in rent-controlled private market housing in Santa Monica, CA, a city where Everett was born and raised but can no longer afford to live.

Everett seeks to understand the extent to which individuals feel at home or not at home and what factors contribute to those experiences. She also explores the nexus of Santa Monica’s tenant protection policies, infrastructure, and resources and the extent to which they inform stability—both perceived and actual—and life decisions.

The first scholarly book to take a tenant-centered approach to examining the benefits and problems of rent control, Fortunate People in a Fortunate Land examines the residential experience in this specific local context and explains how it relates to policy and other externalities in cities where homeownership is not financially viable for most renters.

In the series Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy

Lauren E.M. Everett is an independent scholar, artist, writer, and community organizer, and public servant. Her work has appeared in the journal, Metropolitics, as well as other publications.