Peter Dreier

53 Posts

Peter Dreier is professor of politics at Occidental College and has contributed to Shelterforce since the 1970s. He served for many years on the board of the National Housing Institute and was a founder of the Massachusetts Tenants Organization in the 1980s and has worked with housing activist groups since then.

A Brief Triumph for Progressive Housing Policy

January 1, 1998 | Peter Dreier

Modern Housing for America: Policy Struggles in the New Deal Era by Gail Radford. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. 273 pp. Until the Depression, most American opinion leaders believed […]

Organizing

I’m a Tenant and I Vote!

July 1, 1997 | Peter Dreier and Winton Pitcoff

New York’s Republican legislators learned a lesson in June: Hell hath no fury like a New York City tenant scorned. Just when it seemed that rent regulations, which have protected […]

Organizing

Organizing the New Tenants Movement

November 1, 1995 | Peter Dreier

During the past year, the tenants’ movement has suffered major setbacks. Landlords in California and Massachusetts, once strongholds of tenant activism, succeeded in wiping out rent controls. In New York […]

Multi-story public housing apartment building of reddish brick against a whitish-blue sky, looming over a darker, lower building in the foreground
Housing

Public Housing: What Went Wrong?

September 1, 1994 | Peter Dreier and John Atlas

Public housing is not only high-rises full of drug dealers that should be demolished. It has been a successful way to create affordable housing that has suffered segregation, stigmatization and concentration of the very poor.

Policy

Start Your Engines: The Housing Movement and the Motor Voter Law

May 1, 1994 | Peter Dreier

The Motor Voter law, which associates voter registration with drivers licenses, can improve voter turnout and could have important ramifications for the housing movement.