Book Review: Indefensible Spaces: Police and the struggle for housing by Kurwa, R. KurwaR. (2025). Indefensible Spaces: Police and the struggle for housing. University of California Press, 242 pp. $34.95 (paperback) or open access digital, ISBN: 978-0-5204-0175-4

Rahim Kurwa's Indefensible Spaces is certainly a book of these times.It is a policing book whose scope moves far beyond law enforcement officials.It provides a case study of historical housing policy intended to expand our understanding of racial capitalism.The multidisciplinary theoretical frameworks provide an important guide to understand how so many threads are tied together.He draws on interviews with 40 voucher tenants, 43 residents, landlords, housing authority staff, and local activists from Antelope Valley in Southern California and supplements them with historical archives and local newspapers.The book's goals are ambitious and will most likely be well received by those who read with a general understanding and agreement of the arguments that Kurwa intends to make.It is a lot packed into a relatively short book, however, which may leave some finding it underargued or underdeveloped.Overall, this is an important read that does well to show the complexity of "policing" and how it can refer "not just to the work of formal law enforcement and government agencies, but also in the practices of everyday people" (p.4).Using the story of the Black community in the Antelope Valley outside of Los Angeles, Kurwa tells of a place where the racial formations (Omi & Winant, 2014) are intentionally established in service of a bigger picture.He argues that places like his site of study, and space more broadly, operate as safety valves that can be used as a potential fix to resolve crises of overproduction.This can change shape over time.In this instance, housing discrimination and segregation kept Black people out of Antelope Valley.Then, housing vouchers for private rentals, as opposed to increased public housing, eventually alleviated some of Los Angeles' overcrowding by facilitating the move out of the city to the suburbs.This generally supported the status quo, maintained racial hierarchies, perpetuated inequality, and helped protect capital above all else.The transition required increased policing of new residents in the valley from the established locals and officers alike.The introduction covers the ways that these three threads-the peripheral space as a safety valve, the impact of policy on people's movement, and the punitive response to new arrivalsmanifest together in Antelope Valley.Chapter 1 covers the first wave of Black movement with a particular focus on the community of Sun Village.After its establishment, Antelope Valley generally thrived, as can be seen through the establishment of meaningful community markers and organizing groups such as the local chapter of the NAACP.Chapter 2 discusses the blowback that the Black communities on the periphery of Los Angeles experienced.It covers how the focus shifted from formally opposing fair housing laws to an expansion of policing in the name of property rights and fighting crime