What Makes Rent ‘Fair’

Should monthly charges be pegged to the cost of financing, developing, and operating housing, or to household income? Or are there other ways to design how rent is calculated? Susanne Schindler is a trained architect and historian and a research fellow at JCHS. In 2024, Schindler co-authored Cooperative Conditions, a book about Zurich’s long-standing model of non-means tested limited-equity cooperatives. Samuel Stein is a housing policy analyst and a trained planner and geographer. In 2019, Stein published the book Capital City about the power of real estate over American urban planning and housing politics. The two authors collaborated on a book launch for Cooperative Conditions, hosted by Julie Torres Moskovitz, during which they discussed the differences between cooperative housing in Zurich and the new social housing movement in New York City. Afterwards, Schindler and Stein decided to hold a longer, written discussion about the merits of different rent setting models.