Max Besbris is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He is the author of Upsold: Real Estate Agents, Prices, and Neighborhood Inequality and coauthor of Soaking the Middle Class: Suburban Inequality and Recovery from Disaster.
Climate change is making “natural” disasters like floods far more disastrous for Americans across classes — and our public protections for the victims of those disasters are nowhere near adequate to help them recover.
Under capitalism, housing is a commodity, which means it principally exists to make rich people richer rather than meet human needs. That gap between making money and making profit distorts a whole range of life outcomes for average people — and real estate agents play a critical role in that process.