Ronald R. Sundstrom, "Just Shelter: Gentrification, Integration, Race, and Reconstruction" (Oxford UP, 2024)
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What is the housing crisis and why does it require philosophical clarification?
Welcome to the new books network.
Hello and thank you for joining us for this episode of New Books in Philosophy, which is part of the New Books Network. I'm Robert Talise and I'm Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University. I co-host the program with Carrie Figger, Malcolm Keating, and Sarah Tyson. А гест тоді є Ронал Сунстром. Ron is professor of philosophy at the University of San Francisco. He specializes in social and political philosophy, philosophy of race, and philosophical issues that intersect with urban studies. His new book has just been published with Oxford University Press. Its title is Just Shelter. Now, listeners will no doubt be familiar with the claim that the United States is in the grip of an enduring housing crisis.
But it's less frequently acknowledged that this crisis amounts to more. than the lack of a sufficient supply of adequate shelter for American citizens. It rather is tied to a range of other forms of social and economic vulnerability. And many of these forms of vulnerability impede citizens' capacities to function as full members of a democratic society. What's more, the familiar terms that we deploy in discussion the housing crisis, terms like gentrification, integration, segregation, and so on, stand in need of philosophical clarification. In Just Shelter, Ronald Sundstrom draws upon tools derived from moral philosophy, political theory, and urban studies to provide the beginnings of a comprehensive analysis of justice in what he calls social spatial arrangements.
He proposes a liberal egalitarian and reconstructive, yet nonetheless pragmatic approach to addressing the challenges. the challenges posed by our country's legacy of unjust housing policy. Now, as usual, there's a lot to talk about, but as we normally begin, uh, we're going to begin this interview uh with our guest. Hey Ron, how are you?
I'm well, Bob. Thank you very much.
Uh I'm glad that you could make it on uh on to the program. Uh this is uh it was really a pleasure reading your book.
Well, thank you. It's a pleasure to be here and to talk um uh talk about uh the book with you.
Great. Um so before we get into the book, uh, you know, we normally begin uh with uh by me asking the author to say a few things about himself. How about that? Can you tell us a bit about yourself?
Sure, sure. I'm a professor at the University of San Francisco. I've been here for an awful long time, a god awful long time, uh since uh 2003. And before that, I taught at the University of Memphis, of course, on the other side of the state that you inhabit. It's a wonderful place, Memphis. Um, I left in um I left in 2003, we relocated in um to to the University of San Francisco with my partner, that my then partner and my now husband. Um, and uh quite enjoy living here. Um I have a long I have a you know a really, really tangled uh personal history with philosophy. Um I started um my philosophical and educational. journey actually while I was in the army, Bob. Um I was I I was like a lot of young people, um quite inspired by um the idea of politics in high school.
And I remember taking a political science class in high school, a wonderful um instructor, wonderful teacher, who uh talked about, well, of all things, of course, communism. And you know, it's either communism or uh, you know, Randian objectivism, right? That gets the attention of a lot of young men. And so it was communism for me. And then I wanted to read more about this. And the instructor mentioned a bunch of books. Because it turns out those books were books in philosophy. So while in the army, in my rucksack, quite literally, I would take copy, I would take a copy or copies of a copy of Plato's Republic or Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. And um even Marx's Marx and Engels Communist Manifesto. And while out in the field and in and back at the barracks, I would read those things on my own.
I became a very annoying soldier, asking people what the definition of lying was, whether there's a life after death, and so on. Um as I in my, you know, in my late teenage years, early uh early 20s, discovered the Socratic method.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the housing crisis and why does it require philosophical clarification?
0:01–6:34
2
How does Ron Sundstrom’s personal and academic background shape his view on housing justice?
6:34–17:19
3
What is “spatial justice” and why is it central to the book’s argument?
17:19–27:24
4
How does the book trace the historical roots of racial segregation in U.S. housing policy?
27:24–36:43
5
What are the main conceptual challenges in defining gentrification according to Sundstrom?
36:43–46:06
6
How does Sundstrom differentiate between integration, segregation, and reconstruction in urban policy?
46:06–54:47
7
What practical policy recommendations does the book propose to achieve “just shelter”?
54:47–1:01:45
8
How does the conversation conclude on the future of equitable housing and social‑spatial arrangements?
1:01:45–1:06:16
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