Welcome!

My name's Renz and I use they/them pronouns. Here's what I'm up to as of Spring 2024:

Renz smiles with their first crappie catch
My first crappie catch. Photo credit to Matteo Cleary

About me

I owe who I am to my geographies. My heritage traces to the Philippines's Central Luzon - from there comes my skin, tongue, and culture. I am rooted in Florida's Lake Wales Ridge, where hyperendemic scrub mints, the citrus collapse hinterland, and an odd Filipino enclave, all collide. My stints across the US - longest in Seattle and Gainesville (where I am now) - have taught me how to see the world through geography - of place, of flux, of conflict, and of course through endless critique.

What occupies me most is studying flows of capital. Currently I'm exploring the growth of the US single-family rental market as a function of crisis and increasingly institutionalized and financialized everyday landscapes. My most recent work, Who owns our homes is the first of a series that explores data methods of mapping the growth of institutional (shadowy hedge fund managers and their capital - once in the board room but now everywhere) investment in housing.

I'm also interested in the role of crises - natural disaster, financial collapse, and the Long Crisis - in shaping capital's movement. I'm interested in the geography of rent and how rent slowly becomes the only frontier for overaccumulated capital.

Ultimately, I want to map this landscape's meaning for us. I see our horizons dwindling as it becomes harder and harder to live - because of a state that withdraws care and protection, because of capital's increasing empowerment over everything, and for a bleak climate future. (Because I can't draw pictures,) I hope that through data, research, and synthesizing narrative, I can create pictures - mappings - of the landscapes of conflict and flux we find ourselves in, and how capital and ecology shapes both. From this map, I hope to (help) create an agenda for the genesis of the world whose future shines for us.