Housing Struggles:
Opportunity for New Thinking
by League members active in the movement for housing
In America today, thousands of issue and site based struggles are growing in response to degrading and deteriorating conditions in communities around the country. Changes in the economy, an expansion of corporate power, and an increasingly punitive state are reshaping the parameters of these struggles. Despite all this social motion, these efforts are dispersed and lacking in any sort of political unity. These struggles are primarily about the preservation of specific communities or defending past reforms, and have met with little recent success.
Armed with a growing awareness of the roots of their problems, many leaders of these social movements are beginning to look for a winning strategy that is different from their current approach. In this time of massive wealth accumulation by the top two percent, growing impoverishment and destitution, a shrinking middle-income bracket, and wars of empire, these social movements are going to make little progress until their leaders have broken with the ideology of those who rule.
It is time for these emerging leaders to engage in a dialogue about strategy and visions for the future. Only those who see their interests as fundamentally different from those in power will be able to begin the long, complicated process of building a political movement for the transformation of society. This is going to involve challenging people’s basic assumptions about how the “system” works and what is possible in the future, learning how to use the opportunities presented by our work to develop a deeper understanding of who our enemy is, and “who,” in fact “we” are as a class. Only in this way will these emerging movements be able to take steps to move beyond defensive, reform-oriented activities and act to implement our class vision for the future.
The Housing Crisis
The issue of housing is an illustrative example. Americans are facing a myriad of housing challenges: the complete dismantling of public housing, the gutting of the voucher program, the rising cost of home ownership, rent as a percentage of household income, the swindling of millions by major financial institutions in the sub-prime adjustable mortgage crisis, and homelessness that grows daily. Many community members, organizers, and activists participate in housing related struggles, even if housing is not the central focus or purpose of their organization. Furthermore, these housing problems cut across issues such as immigration, union organizing, welfare, health care, and gentrification and affect people in cities, suburbs, and rural areas.
There is organized resistance in all of these struggles, but few clear-cut victories. People are now forced to accept bad compromises, such as only losing half of a public housing development, at a time when it is clear that we need to increase the amount of low-income housing. Winning becomes defined as not completely losing. In the current economic and political climate, struggles are not winning reforms within capitalism, but instead defensively attempting to hold on to gains from the past. At the same time, reacting to the underlying changes in the economy, the ruling class has seized the initiative. The capitalist class is actively taking steps to ensure its continued dominance in the future, as the industrial economy and its accompanying welfare state and prosperity for the average American fade into memory.
As capitalist speculators, the “market,” and the interests of private development tear through American cities and suburbs, leaving the lives of millions in their wake, popular response is going to increase. Opportunities are going to be presented to make clear to those affected by these changes that the ruling class cannot and will not solve the problem of housing and homelessness. Nor can they defend it morally.
Revolutionaries’ aim in our work in the various housing rights movements is to accomplish the political and intellectual development that will equip emerging fighters to resolve the problems they face. The political tactics to do that will have to speak to the American people and leaders of the emerging struggles in ways that reflect the ways in which they are experiencing this crisis.
Housing, Color, and Class
The politics of many cities and the battles over housing reflect a history of racial and national oppression that is integral to the class relationships of this country. Building toward a unifying class-conscious politics that moves the battles towards their solution has to take into account the intersection of multiple oppressions. They are the foundation for the way that the ruling class maintains political control and they shape the worldview of those battling for what they need.
The history of de facto and de jure segregation provided the context for depressed land values in urban African-American and Latino communities, making these communities particularly vulnerable to the land speculation and gentrification that mark the current wave of “urban revitalization.” In the rural areas and suburbs, several unfolding trends are defining new experiences.
The vast majority of Americans are facing the loss of good-paying jobs and incomes that are declining against the inflation rate. Housing costs are rising faster in the suburbs than in the urban core and affordable housing is no longer a given even for families with stable employment. The economic downturn and the speculative mortgage market have combined to put millions of families in danger of losing their homes. Homelessness is growing in communities of all sizes and many middle-income families find themselves working multiple jobs to stay afloat.
As housing vulnerabilities spread to new sections of the population, possibilities to develop class understanding and a response united around those class interests grow. The 2005 census reveals 25 million whites live at the poverty level alongside 19 million people of color. New sections of the population are experiencing the poverty and desperation that, in past periods, was concentrated among African-Americans.
But that does not mean the legacy of slavery and discrimination has evaporated. The ruling class has always skillfully manipulated the color card to achieve its political goals. To be ready for the battles ahead, our class and its leaders will have to understand that history and how it shores up the strategy of the ruling class at each stage of the development of its system.
The ruling class tactic today is to rely on the unity of the elite across color lines in order to suppress and isolate those most excluded from the system. This tactic stands on a weak foundation. An African-American CEO of a Wall Street investment company has no interests in common with the mass of African-American youth trapped in failing schools, McJobs (or no jobs), and substandard housing. We are presented with the opportunity – and the responsibility – to hit the enemy where it is weak. Housing is a decisive battlefield in this struggle to undermine the rulers' method of control.
New Opportunities
The spread of housing poverty to new sections of the population opens the way for revolutionaries on this front to expose the ruling class and its economic, political, and moral corruption. The current housing crisis gives us a chance to work strategically to develop political consciousness that was not possible when the effects of economic changes were mostly limited to inner city communities of color and the impoverished areas of the Rustbelt and the South.
The increasing failure of compromise is challenging more and more people to confront their assumptions about where their interests lie and what is possible to win within the current system. To step up to the opportunities of today we will have to begin an interchange of ideas and methods among those who have knowledge and experience in this struggle on how we can unshackle minds from the boundaries set by the past.
All who hope to create a better world out of the ashes of the old must commit to deepening a post-capitalist vision in the movement of housing for all and find ways to move the struggle toward making that vision a reality. The work we have already done has laid the groundwork to begin the process of more formally sharing our experiences with each other and learning from each other about what has worked and what has failed. We need to teach each other how to deepen the consciousness of leaders and build class understanding in the daily housing struggles of people all over the United States.
To get in touch for further discussion contact: rally@lrna.org