The wealthy have enjoyed generations of post-scarcity, living as they do in self-isolated bubbles of private hoarding. But what about the rest of us? The billions of us who can’t afford the last three months of unpaid rent, or have to ration life-saving medications, who skip meals in order to afford college textbooks, or who are washed away in the floods of climate catastrophes? Our shared reality in this global society is one of planned scarcity imposed from above: the shimmering Poison Pyramid of a callous status-quo swarming like a rapacious daggered virus into each blood-chamber of our secret beating hearts. While 21st century Pharaohs ride dickships through the stratosphere for suborbital self-love, the rest of humanity is kept from the secret that the ruling class has always known: we could always-already live in a world of post-scarcity for all, if only our politics unveiled it; that is to say: if common sense dictated it. This much is certain: if our institutions were designed to expand, not constrict freedom, fulfilling the universal right to free housing could quickly become a simple everyday reality. As such, it’s time to remake the world according to a new social contract that is as easy, breezy and taken-for-granted as breathing the air that floats around us. To do that, we need an ecology of anticapitalist tactics that will uncover the urgency and achievability of The Golden Square. To accomplish this, Jesse and Matt attempt – in this episode – to trace some of the main avenues in the long, winding journey toward the full decommodification of housing as a guaranteed human right. In doing so, they’ll navigate across three different waterways: access, affordability, and finally, the ocean of our pacific dreams: full decommodification. They will make the direct case that we can truly create freely available, zero-carbon, safe, comfortable housing for all – and guarantee it to every person on the planet from cradle to grave. But we mustn't think of this demand as merely some far-fetched goal; but rather, we should think of this aim as a thrilling organizing tool leading us toward The Utopian Sphere. Calling out like a siren from beyond the cruel cul-de-sacs of rents, mortgages, and the cost of living, the rainbow light of decommodification beckons to us – toward the truly liberated and fecund future we so rightly deserve.
Mentioned In This Episode:
Erik Olin Wright’s How to Be an Anticapitalist in the Twenty-First Century. Published in 2019 by Verso Books.
Jacobin Magazine: ”Issue 33: “Home Improvement” (Spring 2019)
Ryan Cooper & Saoirse Gowan for People’s Policy Project: “Social Housing in the United States”
Ryan Cooper & Saoirse Gowan in Jacobin: “How to Solve the Housing Problem”
Oliver Wainwright in The Guardian: “The Truth About Property Developers: How They Are Exploiting Planning Authorities and Ruining Our Cities”
Emma Goldman’s My Disillusionment in Russia. Originally Published in 1923 and reprinted in 2006 by Red and Black Publishing.
Encampments:
Government-run homeless encampments in parking lots with 12'x12' spots for tents; as described by Anna Scott for KCRW: “New East Hollywood Government-Run Homeless Encampment to Offer Emergency Services, but It’s Not Cheap”
Austin’s decriminalization of encampments; as explored by Vice News: “Austin Residents Can’t Agree on How to Fix the Homelessness Crisis”
Ibram X. Kendi in Diverse: “Enslaving ‘Free Speech Zones’”
During the foreclosure crisis and the Great Recession in 2008, Portland & other cities finally had to acknowledge their community’s homeless encampments instead of just breaking them up with police violence; as reported by Evelyn Nieves for the Associated Press: “In Hard Times, Nation Sees Surge in Tent Encampments.”
Dan Levin in The New York Times: “Las Vegas Places Homeless People in a Parking Lot, 6 Feet Apart”
Encampments in San Francisco during the Covid crisis; as reported by Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez for National Public Radio (NPR): “San Francisco Shifts From Trashing Homeless Camps To Sanctioning Them Amid COVID-19”
Augie Martin for CNN: “San Francisco's Sanctioned Camp Sites for Homeless During Pandemic Spark Debate”
Temporary Housing:
Carla Green on the liberal limits of homeless shelters in The Guardian: “'Filth, Mold, Abuse': Report Condemns State of California Homeless Shelters”
National Alliance to End Homlessness: State of Homlessness: 2021 Edition
Doug Smith in The Los Angeles Times: “This L.A. Project Shows That Homeless Housing Can Be Done Quickly and Cheaply”
Christopher Weber for The Associated Press: “L.A. Opens Its First Tiny Home Village to Ease Homeless Crisis”
Lucy Wang in Dwell: “L.A. Is Taking On Homlessness With a New, Brightly Colored Tiny Home Village”
Pallet Shelter Company on “Pets and Homelessness”
Katy Steinmetz in Time Magazine: “One Approach to Fighting California's Homelessness Crisis: Make Room for Pets”
Cindy Baker (Communications Director for California Senate Leader Robert M. Hertzberg): “Majority Leader Hertzberg Introduces Legislation to Provide Care and Services to Homeless Community and Their Pets”
Housing First / Rapid Re-Housing / Permanent Supportive Housing
Housing First: A Wikipedia Exploration
Fanny Malinen in Equal Times: “Finland’s ‘Housing First’ Proves That Homelessness Is Avoidable”
Tiahat Mahboob for CBC Radio: “Housing Is a Human Right: How Finland Is Eradicating Homelessness”
A rare U.S. example of ‘Housing First’ policies; as reported by Kelly McEvers for NPR: “Utah Reduced Chronic Homelessness by 91%; Here’s How” (2015)
Bethany Rodgers in The Salt Lake Tribune: “Utah Was Once Lauded for Solving Homelessness — the Reality Was Far More Complicated”
Seizing Hotels and Empty Buildings:
Jane Cutter in Liberation News: “Tacoma, Wa. Activists Take Over Vacant School For Emergency Housing”
Amy Goodman interviews Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor on Democracy Now: “Philly Activists Reclaim 50 Vacant Houses, Creating a Model for Organizing as Mass Evictions Loom”
Amy Goodman interviews Carroll Fife and Misty Cross on Democracy Now: “Oakland Moms Who Occupied Vacant Property to Highlight Housing Crisis Celebrate Unexpected Victory”
California Department of Social Services: “Project Roomkey in CA/ Housing and Homelessness COVID Response”
Alissa Walker in Curbed: “California Could House Its Entire Homeless Population in Empty Hotel Rooms Right Now”
Adam Mahoney in Grist: “Occupy Hotel Rooms: Inside LA’s New Push to Solve Homelessness”
Graeme Massie in The Independent: “Seize the Hotels: Activists Call for LA Mayor to Open Hotels to Homeless as Five a Day Die on Streets”
Manny B. Sandoval in Inland Empire Community News: “San Bernardino City Council Refuses to House Homeless in Hospitality Lane Hotel During COVID-19 Crisis”
An academic study & proposal by Ananya Roy, Gary Blasi, Jonny Coleman and Elana Eden: “Hotel California: Housing the Crisis”
Banning Evictions
David Shepardson in Reuters: “CDC Rebuffs Biden Bid to Reinstate COVID-19 Eviction Moratorium”
Sylvan Lane in The Hill: “Biden Calls on Congress to Extend Eviction Ban with Days Until Expiration”
Amy Goodman interviews Cori Bush on Democracy Now: “‘Give Us the Moratorium”: Rep. Cori Bush Sleeps on Capitol Steps Demanding Eviction Protection”
Sarah Ruiz-Grossman in Huffington Post: “Rep. Cori Bush’s ‘Unhoused Bill Of Rights’ Calls On Congress To End Homelessness”
Carl Romer, Andre M. Perry and Kristen Broady in Brookings: “The Coming Eviction Crisis Will Hit Black Communities Hardest”
Hannah Black in Dissent Magazine: “Tenant Unions for the Future”
Tenants Together: “Form a Tenants’ Union”
Canceling Rent Debt
Patrick McGreevy in The Los Angeles Times: “Cash to California Renters Goes Unspent With Eviction Protection Expiring Soon”
Giulia Campos in the International Business Times: “11 Million Americans Still Behind On Rent, People Of Color Suffering The Hardest”
Laura Jedeed in Truthout: “Over 10 Million People Could Become Homeless When Eviction Moratorium Ends”
Sasha Plotkinova in the Law and Political Economy Project (LPE): “The Case For Making Rent Disappear”
Inclusionary Zoning
Inclusionary Zoning: A Wikipedia Definition
New York City mayor Bill de Blasio’s signature program: Mandatory Inclusionary Housing – AKA: Gentrification as a Trojan Horse; as explored by J. David Goodman in The New York Times: “De Blasio Expands Affordable Housing, but Results Aren’t Always Visible”
Nadia Balent in RENTCafe: “8 Out of 10 New Apartment Buildings Were High-End in 2017, Trend Continues in 2018”
Lore Croghan in Brooklyn Daily Eagle: “Nearly 90,000 Applications for 200 Affordable Apartments at City Point in Downtown Brooklyn”
Low Income Housing Tax Credits
Urban Institute & Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center: “What Is the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit and How Does It Work?”
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD's) Office of Policy Development and Research (PD&R): Low-income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC)
“FRONTLINE and NPR investigate the billions spent on affordable housing, and why so few get the help they need”: Poverty, Politics and Profit
Housing Vouchers (Section 8)
“While that is certainly better than nothing, the program [Housing Vouchers] only covers about 22 percent of the 11.8 million ELI [Extremely Low Income] households who are eligible.” – Ryan Cooper & Saoirse Gowan for People’s Policy Project: “Social Housing in the United States”
The Urban Institute’s interactive visual guide: “Mapping America’s Rental Housing Crisis”
Liza Getsinger, Lily Posey, Graham MacDonald, Josh Leopold, and Katya Abazajian’s report for The Urban Institute: “The Housing Affordability Gap for Extremely Low-Income Renters in 2014”
Eva Rosen’s Op-Ed in The New York Times: “If ‘Housing Is a Right,’ How Do We Make It Happen?”
The Voucher Promise: ‘Section 8’ and the Fate of an American Neighborhood by Eva Rosen. Published in 2020 by Princeton University Press.
Rent Control
Prasanna Rajasekaran, Mark Treskon, and Solomon Greene’s report for The Urban Institute: “Rent Control: What Does the Research Tell Us about the Effectiveness of Local Action?”
California Proposition 10, Local Rent Control Initiative (2018)
California Proposition 21, Local Rent Control Initiative (2020)
Information About L.A. County's Rent Stabilization Ordinance
British Columbia’s Maximum Allowable Rent Increase
Anna Bauman, Sydney Wertheim and Meghna Chakrabarti on WBUR: “These States Are Turning To Rent Control: How It Affects Affordable Housing”
Amee Chew and Katie Goldstein in Jacobin: “Universal Rent Control Now”
Kriston Capps in Bloomberg: “Would AOC's National Rent Control Solve the Housing Crisis, or Make It Even Worse?”
Bernie Sanders’ 2020 Presidential Campaign website on “Housing for All”: “Protect tenants by implementing a national rent control standard.”
Hanna Kettunen & Hannu Ruonavaara in Housing Studies: “Rent Regulation in 21st Century Europe. Comparative Perspectives”
Konstantin Kholodilin in Housing Policy Debate: “Long-Term, Multicountry Perspective on Rental Market Regulations”
Social / Public / Municipal Housing
Rowan Moore in The Guardian: “Housing in Crisis: Council Homes Were the Answer in 1950. They Still Are”
Javier Moreno Zacarés in Novara Media: “Britain’s Indignant Moment? Grenfell, Neoliberalism and the New Common Sense”
James Butler hosts a discussion with Guardian columnist Dawn Foster and Inside Housing’s Luke Barratt for Novara Media: “Grenfell: One Year On”
Owen James in The Guardian: “The Cladding Scandal Reveals How Britain Treats Its Poorest People”
Natasha Drake in LeftVoice: “Forgetting Grenfell: the Neoliberal Narrative”
John Boughton in Verso Books: “Grenfell Exposed Neoliberalism's Reality: Ruthless Economising that Saves Pennies Not Lives”
Ryan Cooper & Saoirse Gowan for People’s Policy Project: “Social Housing in the United States”
Daniel Aldana Cohen in Jacobin: “A Green New Deal for Housing”
Bernie Sanders’ 2020 Presidential Campaign website on “Housing for All”: “End the housing crisis by investing $2.5 trillion to build nearly 10 million permanently affordable housing units.”
Ilhan Omar’s Homes for All Act (2019); as examined by Kriston Capps for Bloomberg: “What a Trillion-Dollar Housing Pledge Looks Like”
Galen Herz in Jacobin: “Social Housing Is Becoming a Mainstream Policy Goal in the US”
Peter Harrison & Henry Kraemer for Data For Progress: “Homes For All: The Progressive 2020 Agenda for Housing”
Peter Dreier in Prospect Magazine: “Why America Needs More Social Housing”
The Gravel Institute with Zohran Mamdani: “How Socialists Solved The Housing Crisis”
Veronika Duma and Hanna Lichtenberger in Jacobin: “Remembering Red Vienna”
Eva Blau for the Austrian Embassy in Washington DC: “Re-Visiting Red Vienna As an Urban Project”
Dennis Broe in The People’s World: “Red Vienna: The Enduring Legacy of an Architecture of Hope”
Failure by Design: The Decimation of Public Housing Projects in the U.S.; as hinted at in HUD's PD&R Edge Magazine: “Why Did Pruitt-Igoe Fail?” that touches on a counter-factual documentary of the tragedy that market fundamentalists don’t want you to know about: Chad Freidrichs’ The Pruitt-Igoe Myth. Released in 2011 by Unicorn Stencil.
Meagan Day in Jacobin: “We Can Have Beautiful Public Housing”
Community Land Trusts (CLTs)
“Community Land Trusts (CLTs”): “Today, there are around 277 community land trusts across the United States.” Community-Wealth.org hosts a vast and accessible archive on the movement to build a solidarity economy based on cooperatives and community ownership:
RioOnWatch: “Community Land Trust Models and Housing Coops from Around the World”
Oksana Mironova in Jacobin: “How Community Land Trusts Can Help Address the Affordable Housing Crisis”
Olivia R. Williams in Jacobin: “The Problem With Community Land Trusts”
A fantastic 10-minute documentary on World Habitat’s YouTube channel celebrating the Champlain Housing Trust after winning the 2008 World Habitat Award; full of great small interviews and poignant moments of a community transformed: “Champlain Housing Trust: A Community Land Trust”
Jake Blumgart in Slate Magazine: “How Bernie Sanders Made Burlington Affordable”
Erica Foldy and Jonathan Walters for NYU-Wagner’s Research Center for Leadership in Action: “The Power of Balance: Lessons from Burlington Community Land Trust”
The Burlington Community Land Trust merged with Lake Champlain Housing Development Corporation in 2006 to become the Champlain Housing Trust, the largest CLT in the United States.
Cooperation Jackson: “Building a solidarity economy in Jackson, Mississippi, anchored by a network of cooperatives and worker-owned, democratically self-managed enterprises.”
Adam Lynch in Yes! Magazine: “After Centuries of Housing Racism, a Southern City Gets Innovative: In Jackson, Mississippi, Community Land Trusts Are Key to Fair and Affordable Development.”
Dana Hawkins-Simons & Miriam Axel-Lute in Strong Towns: “Organizing and the Community Land Trust Model”
Matthew, your manic pixie dream co-host of The Future Is a Mixtape, is a Co-Founder of the Inland Equity Community Land Trust, which hopes to create permanently affordable housing that is ecologically sustainable and decimates the racial, gendered and economic stratifications that exist in the Inland Empire (Riverside & San Bernardino Counties in Southern California).
Our cyberpunk hellscape: “Vancouver Real Estate: Yaletown Parking Spot Sells Below $45,900 Assessed Value for $38,250”
Universal Basic Income + Jobs Guarantee
Advance Child Tax Credit Payments in 2021 – part of the “American Rescue Plan”
Peter G. Peterson Foundation: “What to Know About All Three Rounds of Coronavirus Stimulus Checks”
Kalena Thomhave in The American Prospect: “Undoing Welfare Reform: If Congress makes the expanded Child Tax Credit permanent, simple, and universal, it could have reverberations across the entire welfare state.”
Bernie Sanders’ 2020 Presidential Campaign website on “An Emergency Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic”: “Provide direct, emergency $2,000 cash payments to every person in America every month for the duration of the crisis.”
Jacob Pramuk in CNBC: “Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders and Ed Markey Want to Give Americans $2,000 a Month During Coronavirus Crisis”
Sigal Samuel for Vox: “Everywhere Basic Income Has Been Tried, in One Map”
A Fantastic UBI Experiment in Stockton, California; as explored by Rachel Treisman for NPR: “California Program Giving $500 No-Strings-Attached Stipends Pays Off, Study Finds”
Nicholas Reimann in Forbes: “California Legislature Approves First-Ever State Guaranteed Income Program, Report Says”
Janelle Salanga in CapRadio: “California Invests In Guaranteed Income: $35 Million Will Support Monthly Payments For Pregnant Women, Foster Youth”
Bernie Sanders’ 2020 Presidential Campaign website on “Jobs and an Economy for All”: “Enact a federal jobs guarantee, to ensure that everyone is guaranteed a stable job that pays a living wage.”
Ellen Sciales for The Sunrise Movement: “The Civilian Climate Corps (CCC), Explained”
A. Philip Randolph Institute: A "freedom budget" for all Americans; budgeting our resources, 1966-1975, to achieve "freedom from want."
Rutger Bregman in The Correspondent: “The Bizarre Tale of President Nixon and His Basic Income Bill”
Cancel Rent & Mortgages
Joshua Clark in Zillow: “U.S. Renters Paid $4.5 Trillion in Rent in the 2010s”
Estimated U.S. military spending is $934 billion; as detailed by Kimberly Amadeo in The Balance: “US Military Budget, Its Components, Challenges, and Growth: Why Military Spending Is More Than You Think It Is”
The Tax Foundation: “Types of Taxes: The Three Basic Tax Types”
Liz Knueven in Business Insider: “The Average Amount People Pay in Property Taxes in Every US State”
Decommodify The Land
Democratic Confederalism: A Wikipedia Exploration
Murray Bookchin: “What is Communalism?: The Democratic Dimension of Anarchism”
Murray Bookchin: “Libertarian Municipalism: An Overview”
Reverse Mortgages could be used to decommodify land for the purpose of developing city/countywide CLTs, but for now we just have this heinous shit described by Nick Penzenstadler and Jeff Kelly Lowenstein for USA Today: “Seniors Were Sold a Risk-Free Retirement with Reverse Mortgages. Now They Face Foreclosure.”
Joyful Militancy authors carla bergman and Nick Montgomery discuss “Solidarity Housing” during the AK Press event: “Decomposing Empire, Composing the Future: A Conversation with the authors of Joyful Militancy”
The Abolition of Private Property
Usufruct: A Wikipedia Definition
Cory Doctorow in Boingboing: “Library Socialism: a Utopian Vision of a Sustainable, Luxuriant Future of Circulating Abundance”
Free Zero-Carbon, Safe, Comfortable Homes for All - Guaranteed from Cradle to Grave
Poppy Noor in The Guardian: “Utopian Thinking: Free Housing Should Be a Universal Right”
Science Fiction author, and common sense utopianist, Kim Stanley Robinson in Commune: “The end of the world is over. Now the real work begins.”