Frances Goldin, a lifelong firebrand who never stopped fighting to safeguard her beloved Lower East Side from upscale developers, died May 16 in Manhattan, in the same rent-controlled apartment on East 11th Street where she lived for 40 years. She was 95.

She was an advocate for affordable housing and a staunch defender of the poor. She was a civic leader in a vintage neighborhood, and in a second career, a literary agent who represented progressive authors, including Susan Brownmiller, Martin Duberman, and Robert Meeropol, among others.

When she was nearing 90, Ms. Goldin said she’d had three goals: to preserve and improve Lower East Side housing, which she did; to free Mumia AbuJamal, who is still serving a life sentence for murder; and to publish Imagine Living in a Socialist USA, which she edited with Debby Smith and Michael Smith and which was published in 2014.