Only government intervention can keep millions of Americans housed.
We must see real estate market for what it truly is: an institution rooted in settler colonialism that allows land (and the housing that sits atop it) to be distributed and controlled by those who have enough money for their preferences to matter.
After months of organizing that included the establishment of two protest encampments, Philadelphia’s unhoused people successfully pushed the city to agree to provide housing on a community land trust on October 14.
With fortunes inflated by corporate welfare, wealthy real estate owners can afford to cancel housing-related expenses and debts for millions of struggling American families.
As fewer people remain able to afford rent in big cities, more leave those cities for cheaper regions, or simply fall out of the housing market and into homelessness. Think tanks and activist groups are thinking outside the box with solutions.
The time for political games, half-measures, and brinkmanship has long passed. Without significant and sustained congressional action, 30 million to 40 million renters are at risk of being evicted by the end of the year.
“I just don’t feel that police evicting people is a way to ‘protect and serve.’”
History, Taylor writes, is not repeating itself with housing inequality, but cyclically proceeding as an inevitable effect of a racialized system perpetuated by capitalism.
To paraphrase Antonio Gramsci, what serves the class in power is viewed as the natural order and common sense, and what doesn’t is blasphemy.
In cities where people are desperate for housing, why are there still empty properties?
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