For it is a mournful truth that devastation is incomparably an easier work than production

 

The abandonment of all principle of right enables the soul to choose and act upon a principle of wrong, and to subordinate to this one principle all the various vices of human nature. For it is a mournful truth, that as devastation is incomparably an easier work than production, so may all its means and instruments be more easily arranged into a scheme and system.

                                                                                    Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In the early 1980s, faced with the ravages of Thatcherism and Reaganism, and the cruelty of the early phases of neoliberalism with its austerity, its newly attired but same old same old war on the poor and working masses and classes, Raymond Williams set out to gather and explain keywords, to layout the intersection of culture, society, vocabulary and power. As Williams explained, “I called these words Keywords in two connected senses: they are significant, binding words in certain activities and their interpretation; they are significant, indicative words in certain forms of thought.” Every period produces its own keywords, though the words themselves are often very familiar, just as every period is produced by its own keywords. You can recognize a period by things people say that they didn’t say before. Listening to, watching, and reading news reports, especially interviews, a keyword of the present moment is devastation.

Well over a hundred years before Williams’ Keywords, from June 1809 to March 1810, Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote a weekly series of essays, called The Friend. In Essay XVI, Coleridge sets out to understand the implications of people in power choosing evil and renaming it good: “The abandonment of all principle of right enables the soul to choose and act upon a principle of wrong, and to subordinate to this one principle all the various vices of human nature. For it is a mournful truth, that as devastation is incomparably an easier work than production, so may all its means and instruments be more easily arranged into a scheme and system.”

Coleridge chose to emphasize “principle of right” and “principle of wrong.” He looked out a world of abandonment and devastation and understood the ease with which all human vices could be brought together into a scheme and system that insisted on its morality, while demonstrating, day in and day out, the mournful truth that devastation is incomparably an easier work than production. Sound familiar? It should.

Mournful truths are not inevitable truths. They are not destiny. They are choices, made collectively and individually. When faced with a scheme and system whose very core is devastation rather than production, we must remember to cherish those who refuse to abandon all principle of right, whose souls continue to choose and act upon a principle of right. In a world where ruling classes and masses insist on the sanctity of their mournful truths, people will do as they are doing, as they have always done. Mourn for the moment, and fight like hell for the living! You gotta be a spirit! Can’t be no ghost!

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Gordon Bennett, “Possession Island” / Tate)

Eviction Watch: Who builds the city up each time? A (construction) worker reads history

 

“And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima’s houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up?”
Bertolt Brecht, A Worker Reads History

In 1936, Bertolt Brecht asked, “Who built the city up each time?” A recent report brings this question roaring back. According to Cities Where Construction Workers Would Have To Work the Longest Hours To Afford a Home, conducted by Construction Coverage, nationally, a construction worker would have to work 54 hours a week to afford the mortgage on a median priced home. Needless to say, that picture changes drastically, depending on where one goes. For example, Virginia construction workers have to work 66 hours a week to afford a median priced home in the area in which they work. According to the study, Washington-Arlington-Alexandria is even worse. Construction workers have to work 80 hours a week to afford a median priced home. Virginia is the 13th most unaffordable state for construction workers. Washington – Arlington – Alexandria is the tenth most unaffordable metro area, but only by a hair. The fifth through the eleventh most unaffordable metro areas are pretty much clustered together, from 84 to 80 hours a week.

As the study notes, “The construction industry is facing a major worker shortage. Associated Builders and Contractors—a national construction industry trade association—estimates that the industry will require an additional 454,000 new workers on top of normal hiring to meet the booming demand in 2025. However, despite the substantial need for more construction professionals, elevated home prices and an inadequate homebuilding pace are making it difficult for construction workers to afford to purchase a home in the cities where they work.”

Where did the masons go?

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Terry Gentile, Design for a Textile, Construction Workers / Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum)

Eviction Watch: In the warehouse of evictions, our “need” for misery and torture

 

 “And she had learned from experience that Need was a warehouse that could accommodate a considerable amount of cruelty.”
Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

2025 began as 2024 ended, skyrocketing eviction filings, soaring evictions, mounting homelessness amid calls from many quarters to “address homelessness” by evicting the unhoused from their encampments, from their homes, however temporary, all in the name of some purported need. Consider two stories, one from the United Kingdom last year, one from Canada this year, days apart.

Jack is twelve years old and lives in Liverpool. His family was given a Section 21, or “no-fault”, eviction notice. The family was given two months to move, sixty days to find a place they could afford. There was no such place, and so they were moved into a hotel space, one room, two beds, a kettle. That’s it. As Jack explains, “It was just tiny, horrible, it wasn’t very suitable for children and all you could basically do was just watch TV or go to sleep. It’s just misery. … It was just like a game trying to get past a level, it was just day after day after day, a struggle.”

According to the housing organization Shelter, every day, day in day out, around 500 private rental households receive a Section 21 eviction notice. This year the number of so-called no-fault eviction filings broke all records. As one tenant explained, “I paid my rent every month, but I had no rights.” This is what “no fault” eviction means: no rights and misery, especially for children.

Across the ocean, in Hamilton, Canada, the new year began with this account: “Beverly Hoadley never thought she’d have to move out of her Hamilton apartment of over 50 years. But now facing a possible eviction, the 87-year-old says she’s afraid she’ll soon have no choice but to leave her beloved home. `It’s pretty awful,” Hoadley told CBC Hamilton a week before Christmas. `I’m not sleeping at night. It’s torture.’”

Beverly Hoadley and her now deceased husband moved into her apartment in 1970. At the time, the rent was $137 a month, for a one-bedroom apartment. Half a century later, she’s paying $820 a month. Although she’s on a fixed income, as are many residents in the building, she says it’s manageable. Or it was, until new owners, ironically named Endless Property Holdings, bought the building in September and promptly sent eviction notices to everyone, claiming they had to renovate the building. Tenants and allies are organizing to oppose the eviction. As one resident, also on fixed income, explained, “I feel terrible. I have nowhere to go.” The median rent for a one-bedroom in Hamilton is $1650 a month. While that’s a 3% decrease over the previous year, rents are rapidly rising once again. When people say they have nowhere to go, they have nowhere to go.

The landlord, Endless Property Holdings, say they need to renovate. The building has gone through recent renovations, the residents offered to accommodate any further renovations. The landlord rejected all claims and offers. Why is 12-year-old Jack subjected to misery, why is 87-year-old Beverly Hoadley subjected to torture? Landlord “need”. Year’s end, year’s beginning, children, elders, misery, torture. Need is a warehouse the accommodates a considerable amount of cruelty.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: John Bell, The Reward of Cruelty / Metropolitan Museum of Art)

“Our worsening national affordable housing crisis” caused record levels of homelessness

A sign collected in the Georgetown area of Washington, DC by a Smithsonian employee.

This week, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Policy Development and Research released its 2024 Annual Homelessness Assessment Report. The report takes a one-day image of homelessness on a day in January 2024, a so-called Point-in-Time, or PIT, count. The picture is predictably grim. From 2023’s count to this one, homelessness rose by 18%. The report opens: “The number of people experiencing homelessness on a single night in 2024 was the highest ever recorded. A total of 771,480 people – or about 23 of every 10,000 people in the United States – experienced homelessness in an emergency shelter, safe haven, transitional housing program, or in unsheltered locations across the country. Several factors likely contributed to this historically high number. Our worsening national affordable housing crisis, rising inflation, stagnating wages among middle- and lower-income households, and the persisting effects of systemic racism have stretched homelessness services systems to their limits.” Additional factors include “public health crises, natural disasters that displaced people from their homes, rising numbers of people immigrating to the U.S., and the end to homelessness prevention programs put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the end of the expanded child tax credit.” Top of the list of causes is “our worsening national affordable housing crisis”. Remember that: “our worsening national affordable housing crisis” is the first element contributing to historic levels of homelessness. The lack of affordable housing, not a putative “surge of asylum seekers”.

News media headlines, such as The New York Times, “Migrants and End of Covid Restrictions Fuel Jump in U.S. Homelessness” and Bloomberg, “Migrant Crisis Pushed US Homelessness to Record High in 2024”, would have you believe that migrants, asylum seekers, refugees caused homelessness in the United States. Some news outlets actually got the story right. NPR, for example, explained, “To explain this rise, HUD officials and others point, above all, to the skyrocketing rents that we’ve seen in the past few years. They also cite the recent increase in migrants coming to the U.S. without a place to live, especially migrant families, and extreme weather disasters, for example, the fire in Maui last year.” CBS News reported, “Homelessness in the U.S. jumped 18.1% this year, hitting a record level, with the dramatic rise driven mostly by a lack of affordable housing as well as devastating natural disasters and a surge of migrants in some regions of the country.” Again, the reason people are homeless is because they can’t find a place to live. Nowhere to go, and, often, no one to help.

To return to the HUD report, the Point-in-Time count also found that nearly all populations reached record levels. People in families with children had the largest single year increase in homelessness. Nearly 150,000 children experienced homelessness on a single night in 2024, reflecting a 33% increase over 2023. Between 2023 and 2024, as an age group, children experienced the largest increase in homelessness. About 20% of those 55 or older were homeless on the night of the point-in-time count. “Nearly half of adults aged 55 or older (46%) were experiencing unsheltered homelessness in places not meant for human habitation.”The only population to report a continued decline in homelessness are veterans? Want to know why? “These declines are the result of targeted and sustained funding to reduce veteran homelessness.”

It’s not a pretty picture, and no one thought it would be, but it needs to be reported accurately. Yes, late in 2023 and into early 2024, there was a marked increase in the numbers of people entering the United States seeking asylum. In 2023, there was also a record number of people forced to abandon their homes due to tornadoes, hurricanes, floods, fires and other so-called “natural disasters.” Additionally, there was a record number of people 55 years or older being evicted. In various parts of the country, eviction filings reached historic levels. Some might say there was a “surge” in eviction filings. Who or what is behind that surge? Many argue that the unprecedented entry of corporate landlords and hedge funds into the rental market has been a key factor, given that corporate landlords tend to be serial eviction filers, often making up more than half the eviction filings in any given jurisdiction.

The stories we tell, the stories we are told, matter. In a period of rising xenophobic violence, we don’t need stories that misreport the impact of migrants on the social fabric. Migrants did not cause historic levels in homelessness. “Our worsening national affordable housing crisis” did: skyrocketing rents, fewer homes for sale or rent, mounting eviction filing and eviction rates, and a general acceptance of “nowhere to go” as a facet of “return to normal”. It’s time, it’s way past time, to tell a better story, one of targeted and sustained funding to reduce homelessness.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Smithsonian National Museum of American History)

 

Eviction Watch: In a land of melting watches, what is time?

HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME
HURRY UP PLEASE IT’S TIME
T.S. Eliot, “The Waste Land

It’s the end of another year, and, for many reasons, many wonder, “Where has the time gone?” What is time? When it comes to housing, affordable housing, eviction, not to mention any sense of justice or humanity, time is crucial, as two concurrent news reports demonstrate. One, “New law could help tenants facing eviction stay in their homes”, describes the situation in California, while the other, “Tenants On the Wrong Side Of Policy”, describes the situation in Oklahoma. To cut to the chase, while conditions for tenants in California may be improving, and it’s important to note the conditional here, in both California and Oklahoma, the situation is dire, and the world is extraordinarily cruel.

In November, 62% of Californians who voted rejected Proposition 33, which would have expanded local jurisdictions’ ability to impose local rent control measures. While this was a major defeat for housing advocates (and a major victory for landlords, realtors, hedge funds and others who had invested heavily in opposing the measure), there is something like a bright spot on the horizon, a new state law, Assembly Bill 2347, extends the time to respond to an eviction filing from five days to ten days. Think of that, five days. As it now stands, a tenant is served an eviction notice and must respond in writing within five days, or else they lose their case, and home, by default. The can, and generally do, incur financial penalties, and, of course, they have the Scarlet E, for eviction, on their record. It makes absolutely no difference if the tenant has a legal defense. Landlord increased your rent over the legal limit? If you didn’t respond, in writing, within five days, you’re guilty and potentially homeless. If your landlord refused maintenance and then filed for eviction, if you didn’t reply in writing, you’re out, out of luck, out of housing, out of a home. Almost half of California tenants lose their homes this way.

So now, starting in January, that time will be extended from five days to ten days, and that is the full extent of hope: “Five days has never been enough for a tenant to find legal assistance and try to decipher the complaint filed against them, find out what kind of defenses they have, fill out the paperwork and make it to court”. Ten days doubles the time, but is that enough? Who decides what is “enough time”?

Across the country, from reliably “blue” California to reliably “red” Oklahoma, the picture is similarly grim, except, perhaps, even more so: “with an estimated 3.6 million evictions filed each year, Oklahoma is among a group of states considered landlord-friendly. Landlord-friendly states have no rent control, cheap and simple eviction processes and low property taxes.”

In Oklahoma, the period between receipt of an eviction filing and a court date is three days. That means a renter has to come up with a defense and take time off from work in a matter of 72 hours. So, many tenants miss their court date because they can’t arrange their work schedule. In 2023, for example, 73% of cases ended in eviction because the tenant didn’t show up. In Oklahoma, you can receive your eviction notice on Monday, have your court hearing on Thursday, and find sheriffs knocking at your door on Friday. Who engages in such cruel practices? “The quick time frame of Oklahoma evictions feeds the practice of serial evictions used by some corporate landlords to make more profit. Corporate landlords file most Oklahoma evictions.”

What is time? A while back, a major Tulsa landlord decided to file evictions on the 11th of the month rather than the 6th. Guess what happened? The apartment complex saw a 50% drop in evictions. That’s not just a drop in eviction filings; that’s a drop in evictions. What is time? Some say time is money, but we all know time is life. Moving from five days to ten days can save a family. Children can stay in school. People can remain in community, with all its formal and informal supports. Life can go on. So, when it comes housing, please, please, don’t hurry up. Slow down. Melt the watch. It’s time.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Salvador Dali, “The Persistence of Memory” / MoMA)

Prison population in England and Wales set to exceed 100,000 by 2029. Where are the women? Still in prison

This ceramic piece, ‘Cell’, is a recreation of the adult prison cell Eve McDougall was detained in as a 15-year-old, after breaking a window.

Despite programs that ostensibly were designed to reduce prison populations, The Guardian today reports, “The prison population could top 100,000 within five years in England and Wales …. The justice department acknowledged that a perfect storm of rising prosecutions, politicians bringing in higher maximum sentences, and soaring numbers of people on remand – meaning they are in jail awaiting trial or sentencing – are responsible for the projected rise.” While The Guardian doesn’t specify this, the “soaring numbers of people” on remand are women. Where are the women? Innocent until proven guilty and behind bars.

According to this week’s Ministry of Justice report, “The number of people remanded in custody increased from 16,196 at the end of September 2023 to 17,662 at the end of September 2024. This is above the level projected in all scenarios in the 2023-2028 publication and is around 1,600 higher than projected in the central scenario which projected the remand population to fall over this period. The growth in the remand population over 2024 has been primarily driven by higher-than-expected demand entering the system, and slower than previously projected growth in the number of prisoners flowing out of the remand population following a trial. This population is projected to increase in all scenarios, with demand entering the court exceeding disposals over the projection horizon. At the end of September 2025, the projected remand population is 4,500 higher than the 2023-2028 projected remand population.”

So, who are the people making up this unanticipated growth? According to an earlier report, published in May 2024 (by the outgoing Sunak government), “There has been a 25% increase in the remand women’s population from December 2022 to December 2023. As of December 2023, women on remand accounted for 22% of the women’s prison population.” What do those numbers mean? Last week, James Timpson, the current United Kingdom Minister of State for Prisons, Parole and Probation, appeared before Parliament to answer just that. When asked what percentage of women were remanded into custody in each of the past two years subsequently (1) were not sentenced, (2) received a community sentence, and (3) received a sentence of less than six months, he produced the following chart:

Proportion of outcomes for women remanded in custody at criminal courts, 2022 to 2023, England and Wales

Outcome 2022 2023
Not sentence 14% 16%
Community sentence 13% 13%
Custodial sentence of less than six months 18% 20%

Again, what do these numbers really tell us? According to the Howard League, “The proportion of women on remand is both higher than in the men’s estate and growing at a faster rate, and vulnerable women are still remanded to custody as a ‘place of safety’, while the government is struggling to keep women in prison safe …. Over half of the receptions into prison are of women on remand and a third are of women serving short sentences.” Finally, according to a recent report from the National Police Chiefs’ Council, “Proportionately, more women than men are remanded in custody, and women remanded in custody at Crown Court are much less likely to go on to receive a custodial sentence than men (52% vs 71%).” For example, according to the Police Chiefs’ Council, in 2022, 85% of sentenced women received a fine and 5% a community sentence. In fact, of women convicted of anything, less than 1% were sentenced to more than 6 months.

None of this is new or surprising: not the rapid rise in prison population, nor the surge in women held awaiting trial, nor the relative diminishment of that gendered significance. Under Conservative, under Labour, it doesn’t matter. The reports come out, the performative surprise, even shock, is declared, the world moves on, except, of course, for the women, stuck in prison for absolutely no reason other than structural misogyny. Where are the women? Exactly where they have been, wasting away in cages of our collective making.

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Eve McDougall / The Guardian

On “real suffering”: The heartless cruelty of eviction in India and beyond

“… the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering…. the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions.”
Karl Marx, A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

According to a recent report, “Over 17 million people across India live under the constant threat of eviction and displacement. These threats stem from various causes, including slum clearance drives, infrastructure projects, environmental conservation efforts, disaster relief measures, court orders and tourism development, among others. This means that nearly one in every 100 people in India faces the fear of being forcibly evicted or displaced by the government … In recent years, government action targeting people’s homes—particularly those from the most marginalised groups—has only deepened the anxiety these communities are already experiencing.”

That anxiety those communities are already experiencing is also called real suffering, and it’s intensifying and spreading. According to the Housing and Land Rights Network’s most recent report, in 2023, at least 515,752 people living in India suffered eviction. That’s the highest number in the last seven recorded years.  At least 107,449 homes were destroyed. To get a sense of the “movement of history”, in 2022, around 46,371 houses were demolished and at least 222,686 people were forcibly removed. That’s around 129 homes destroyed every single day, and 25 people evicted every single hour, 24 hours a day, day in day out. In 2023, at least 107,449 homes were destroyed, and at least 515,752 people were evicted. That’s 294 homes destroyed daily, and 58 people evicted every single hour. Somewhere someone is contemplating these soulless conditions, looks ups and, with a sigh, calls it progress. Development.

If you doubt that somewhere-someone formulation, remember that “in 2022 and 2023, the highest percentage of people (58.7 per cent) – were evicted under the guise of ‘slum’ clearance/‘encroachment’ removal/‘city beautification’ initiatives.” Beautification. From the corporate – state heights, there is beauty and beautification in the landscapes of real suffering.

Who are those living with real suffering? The “most marginalised groups”: “Forced evictions, displacement, and inadequate resettlement disproportionately affect women and children. In the aftermath of an eviction, challenges faced by women are multifold and include loss of livelihoods and access to food, breakdown of social structures and support systems, debilitating health impacts, and increased vulnerability to gender-based violence. Incidents of home demolition and eviction also adversely impact their economic and social vulnerabilities and exacerbate pre-existing and intersectional challenges faced by them in accessing their rights to housing, land, health, work, water, sanitation, privacy, and security. For children, the immediate and long-term impacts of forced evictions are acute and include psychological trauma, mental illness, fear, insecurity, anxiety, loss of education, loss of health, and increased vulnerability to sexual abuse and violence.”

None of that is surprising, nor is it accidental. The production of precariousness and vulnerability is baked into the politics of eviction. In many countries – the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, for example – advocates and governments, local and national, are discussing restricting or outlawing so-called “no fault” evictions. That would be a good idea. But what exactly is fault? What is fault in a world in which, by conservative estimates, one in every 100 people lives with the terror of being evicted soon, in which that terror is considered a corollary of urban development, even beautification that the poors must simply suffer and live with? Though India’s numbers are impressive, they are not outliers. Eviction filing rates and evictions are skyrocketing and reaching historical heights across the so-called developed and democratic world. What then is democracy, what is development, that drowns out the sigh of the oppressed, crushes the heart, extinguishes the soul, and criminalizes any expression of real suffering or protest against real suffering?

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: George Grosz, Eviction (Per Gerichtsbeschluss entlassen) / MoMA)

 

Diary Entry: For Those Who Claim to be Pro-life — for Emmanuel Littlejohn and Many Others

Diary Entry: For Those Who Claim to be Pro-life — for Emmanuel Littlejohn and Many Others

 

For those who claim to be pro-life

For a justice system with as bad aim as two would be assassins.

More evidence against Donald Trump than against Emanuel Littlejohn

(But, the Lord is with us.)

Now He’s dead — killed by the same state mechanisms Christian Nationalist seek to enhance

And use to save the unborn babies

Just not grown men on death row.

Nope.

No contradictions there.

And, Trump is still endlessly [un]appealing

It’s got me holding my head in my hands 

walking around just saying:

Damn to myself

A vehement percussive exhalation accompanied by a mantra of disgust

This diary entry of a mad Black man.

Who does this justice system serve?

Somewhere Malcolm, Abraham, Martin, and John watch, shake their heads 

And refuse  to weep.

Has anybody here seen my old friends?

Can you tell me where they’ve gone?

 

(By Heidi Lindemann and Michael Perry)

(image Credit 1: James Victore / MoMA)

(Image Credit 2: Bob and Roberta Smith: Art Amnesty / MoMA)

Oregon: If working people can’t afford to stay in the housing, it’s not affordable housing

Martha Rosler, Housing Is a Human Right, short animation produced by The Public Art Fund, “Messages to the Public,” 1989

What exactly is affordable housing? There’s much discussion these days, and finally, concerning an affordable housing crisis, the lack of affordable housing, the vast and growing numbers of households, families, individuals and communities living and struggling with housing insecurity, paying more than 30% of monthly income on household expenses and/or expecting to be evicted or foreclosed on within the next two months. So, what does affordability actually mean? This question came roaring to the surface in a new study, Eviction in Oregon’s Subsidized Affordable Housing, which looked at eviction filings and evictions from January 2019 to December 2023. On one hand, eviction filings against residents of subsidized affordable housing made up a relatively small fraction of all eviction filings in Oregon. However, once the eviction case was filed, subsidized tenants were more likely to get an eviction judgment. The vast majority of these filings were for non-payment. The vast majority of non- or late payment was because, simply, the tenants, the residents of supposedly affordable housing, could no longer afford the affordable housing. As a concept, policy, and lived reality, what then is affordable housing?

As in most areas, the majority of evictions are filed by a small number of entities. In this instance, as in so many other places, third-party corporate management companies were responsible for a disproportionate number of evictions. As noted in the report, “The difference in eviction filing patterns between third-party managers and internal managers … can be attributed to variations in their lease enforcement strategies …. While third-party managers commonly operate under compliance-oriented lease enforcement policies similar to the private sector, internal managers from the housing authority tend to adopt strategies designed to promote housing stability among low-income households.” In other words, internal managers, managers committed to affordable housing rather than profit, create leases, policies and practices that recognize various difficulties residents might encounter and find or create financial and social services to support those residents.

For many, once the filing occurs, the damage is done. Many algorithms used by landlords, and especially corporate landlords, don’t differentiate between eviction filing and eviction, and so, irrespective of the court’s decision, having an eviction filed can have long-lasting catastrophic impact. Securing “affordable housing” shouldn’t condemn a person and family to a lifetime of trauma.

The word “afford” originally meant to promote the well-being of a person or thing. Affordable meant that which enhanced and promote a person’s well-being. At some point, affordable shifted to mean that which one could reasonably purchase. What if affordable housing meant the enhancement and promotion of people’s and individual’s well-being? At the very least, publicly supported and subsidized affordable housing should be based on the value of dignity and well-being. If working people can’t afford to stay in the housing, it’s not affordable housing.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Martha Rosler / Housing Is a Human Right, March 1989)

In Vancouver, why is the rent too damn high? (Hint: it’s not inflation or market changes)

 

Like most cities, Vancouver is an expensive place to live in. Located in British Columbia, Vancouver is the third largest metro area in Canada. According to a recent report, Vancouver is also the third least affordable housing market in the world, after Hong Kong and Sydney, Australia. For each of the last 16 years, Vancouver has been the first, second or third least affordable major market. That’s some distinction. According to the report, Vancouver’s housing market is “impossibly unaffordable”. Impossibly … and in fact.

What happens in Vancouver does not stay in Vancouver: “Troublingly, impossibly unaffordable housing in the Vancouver market has also has spread to smaller BC markets in British Columbia …. From 2015 to 2023, housing affordability worsened by the equivalent of 2.5 years of median household income in smaller markets outside Vancouver, an even greater loss than the 1.2 years in the Vancouver market itself.” Troubling, indeed.

An equally recent report from British Columbia’s Office of the Human Rights Commissioner, noted the depth, breadth and centrality of the impossibly unaffordable housing crisis: “The collision of market forces with inadequate social supports has pushed thousands of B.C. residents into homelessness and left many more on the brink.” Unsurprisingly, homelessness and severe housing insecurity target women and children, Indigenous people, people of color, people living with disabilities, low-income people. According to the Commissioner, “In our research unaffordable, inaccessible and inappropriate housing quickly and unsurprisingly rose to the top of the human rights issues facing British Columbians.” Unsurprisingly.

Another unsurprising report, from BC Housing, the provincial housing agency,  considers the workings of two public agencies, Shelter Aid for Elderly Renters Program, SAFER, and the Rental Assistance Program. SAFER launched in 1977, the Rental Assistance Program started in 2006. The report found that both programs have done a fairly decent job until recently, but rapidly rising rents have threatened that success: “While SAFER and RAP help to make housing more affordable, a significant affordability gap for many SAFER and RAP recipients exists. …. Recipients of both programs are in danger of entering into homelessness or seeking affordable options that may result in living in unsuitable or unsafe housing should rents continue to increase …. The impact of these programs has declined over time as housing costs have increased dramatically across the province.”

Vancouver is impossibly unaffordable; unaffordable, inaccessible and inappropriate housing is the key human rights issue; and previously fairly successful assistance programs are now endangered, all thanks to rapidly rising rents. What is to be done? While all the authors of all the reports are committed to housing justice, to equal access to safe and dignified housing as a human right, they also all fall prey to the Great Market Forces Fallacy. Consider this statement, from the last report’s conclusion: “There is no doubt that both SAFER and RAP are helping to achieve greater affordability for many recipients …. However, the rent ceilings and the lack of indexing to inflation or market changes was readily identified by all as a barrier to affordability. For some, the lack of change in benefits has resulted in them being priced out of the rental market in their desired community. It has also limited their ability to move out of less desirable housing. The stress of possible evictions is high due to the inability of the benefit to adequately contribute to new rents should the household be required to move.” Clearly and unsurprisingly, recipients need subsidies to match rising rents. But then what? Rents are not rising because of inflation. Rents are rising because landlords, increasingly corporate landlords, are able and more than willing to raise rents precipitously. As long as homes are part of a “real estate market”, as long as public and social housing in considered an afterthought, as long as landlords are lords of the land, rents will continue to rise … rapidly.

In the late 1880s, looking around at the ways in which the new urban real estate market was carving up Manchester, Friedrich Engels noted, “The English bourgeoisie is charitable out of self-interest; it gives nothing outright, but regards its gifts as a business matter, makes a bargain with the poor, saying: `If I spend this much upon benevolent institutions, I thereby purchase the right not to be troubled any further, and you are bound thereby to stay in your dusky holes and not to irritate my tender nerves by exposing your misery. You shall despair as before, but you shall despair unseen, this I require, this I purchase with my subscription of twenty pounds for the infirmary!’” The barrier to affordability is not inflation nor market changes. It’s the unchanging cruelty of the market itself, unsurprisingly, impossibly, troublingly, and everyday.

 

(By Dan Moshenberg)

(Image Credit: Visual Capitalist)