Jersey City made news last month when it topped a list of the most expensive cities in the nation to rent a home. Between June 2021 and June 2022, average rent shot up by 66 percent to $5,500, the New York Times reports.

New Jersey’s second-largest city, with a population just under three hundred thousand, is seeing a “spate of new luxury apartments luring New Yorkers across the Hudson River with more space and amenities than they could afford near their offices.” As a result, rent is skyrocketing across the board, and working-class tenants are beginning to feel the squeeze.

But the corporate-developer-driven agenda for Jersey City is facing pushback from grassroots organizers. If real-estate interests are trying to put Jersey City on the map as a shining example of a luxury commuter city, socialists and progressives are attempting to put it on the map as an equally shining example of what effective resistance can look like.