Why young renters are running for office and winning

Aparna Raj knows what it feels like to be a neglected tenant. In her twenties, the now 32-year-old lived in a Washington, D.C. group house where the landlord refused to fix anything; after a company bought the building, the repairs never came either, and Raj and her roommates were pushed out. The house later became condominiums. Now Raj, a tenant organizer, has won the Democratic primary for a city council seat in a ward that is about two-thirds renter, and she is part of a wave of young renters running for office and winning.

The numbers behind the wave are striking. Run for Something, the group that recruits and trains progressive millennial and Gen Z candidates for state and local office, has endorsed 178 renters in the 2026 cycle, or 37 percent of all its endorsements, as reported by MarketWatch. The organization launched its renter-recruitment push in early 2025, and its own August tally counted 451 endorsed candidates overall, including 163 renters and 93 Gen Z candidates, according to a post by the group.

September brought proof of concept. David Morales, one of the group's endorsees, won the Democratic primary for mayor of Providence, Rhode Island, campaigning as a renter on affordable housing and renter-friendly policy, according to Run for Something. Amanda Litman, the organization's president and co-founder, said the result showed voters want leaders who understand their lives, adding that this new generation of leaders is proving "when they run, they win."

Young renters lead with their leases

Raj says campaigning as a renter was an asset, not a liability. Renters told her they were glad she understood their problems firsthand, an identity she says "is really resonating with people more, especially my generation." She ran in part to add a renter's voice to a council where homeowners hold the majority.

Litman says that candor is the strategy. "If you're only talking about making it easier to buy a home, young people are going to tune you out," she told MarketWatch, so the pitch flips the script: renting becomes a credential. "It's a way to signal 'I'm one of you, I get it, I live life the way that you do,'" she added. For young renters whose paychecks barely cover the rent, the message lands because it is lived experience rather than a talking point. One renter interviewed for the story said housing costs swallow almost an entire biweekly paycheck, leaving homeownership feeling permanently out of reach.

Not everyone is sold. While campaigning, Raj heard from some homeowners who believe renters are transient by nature and should not take part in local government. But renting is no longer a brief phase before buying for millions of young renters. Raj hopes to restore tenant protections the council recently weakened, expand rent stabilization, and push for more homes big enough for families.

Why young renters vote when renting is on the ballot

There is evidence the strategy moves young renters to the polls. Research from Cornell University's Buffalo Co-Lab found renter turnout ran five to seven percentage points higher in New York races where candidates backed tenant protections such as just-cause eviction, and the pro-tenant candidates won those races. "Putting tenant issues and tenant concerns on the ballot can motivate tenants to go out and vote," said Russell Weaver, the lab's research director.

The pattern is not new. In 2021, an upstart candidate rode a wave of renter support to defeat the incumbent mayor in Buffalo's Democratic primary. In 2023, Johnathan Duncan won a Kansas City council seat with help from the city's tenants union, saying rent affordability "is a unifying issue, a galvanizing issue" that cuts across party lines. In Maryland, community organizer Grant Samms describes neighbors who do not want their children changing schools several years running because rent hikes keep pushing the family out of town.

A movement, not a moment, for young renters

Tenant unions are building on the momentum. The Tenant United Federation, a national network launched in 2024, is drafting a legislative agenda aimed at cities, states, and the federal government, its director Tara Raghuveer said. In Connecticut, the state tenants union plans to push for just-cause eviction in the 2027 legislative cycle, encouraged by support from the governor. The National Low Income Housing Coalition, meanwhile, runs a nonpartisan Our Homes, Our Votes campaign that helps tenants learn what is on their ballots and clear obstacles to reaching the polls, such as child care and transportation.

The stakes go beyond any single race. About 60 percent of young people say they intend to vote in the midterms, and researchers at Tufts University's CIRCLE put the eligible 18-to-29 population at nearly 50 million. Cost of living, health care, and housing top their issue list, according to Tufts Now, and Leela Strong, the center's director, warns that "candidates ignore them at their peril."

The midterms are weeks away, and many local races are decided by a few hundred votes. For young renters, Raj's win is a template: the lease itself can be the platform. If the renter-candidate wave holds through November, tenants will have gone from a demographic that campaigns talk about to the candidates those campaigns are built around. For more on how young renters are coping with the affordability crunch, see the playbook young renters are actually using, and find more young voices on the Voices topic page.