Tony Roshan Samara

Tony Roshan Samara is the National Policy Organizer at the Right to the City Alliance. Tony has been involved with the Right to the City Alliance since its founding in 2007 and currently leads the process of building out a national policy program to support its members. He is the principle author of Rise of the Renter Nation: Solutions to the Housing Affordability Crisis, Right to the City’s 2014 report about the ongoing housing crisis in working class communities and communities of color.

Tony has a PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an MA from the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. Before joining Right to the City Alliance, he was the Program Director of Land Use and Housing at Urban Habitat, and previous to that position, he was an associate professor of sociology at George Mason University. His early research focused on Cape Town, South Africa and the reproduction of race and class inequality from the apartheid era through the democratic transition. Later he expanded his work to examine comparative urban development in South Africa, China, and India. His concern with this research was on urban inequality and the marginalization of low-income communities, with an emphasis on housing, gentrification, and displacement.

Tony runs the Cities and Globalization Twitter account and many of his publications are available here.