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\u201cIn America, it was the slaveholders who got restitution, not the people whose lives and wages were stolen from them for twelve generations.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of Our Disconents<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n Recently, the Connecticut legislature debated, yet again, a bill to establish no fault eviction protections<\/a>, this time for residents of mobile manufactured home parks<\/a>. In an exchange between a tenants\u2019 rights advocate and a Senator, who is also a landlord, the Senator suggested that preventing no fault evictions is akin to slavery, because it is \u201ctaking the labor of others against their will<\/a>.\u201d The Senator went on to say \u201cthis [no fault eviction protection] is the same thing\u201d as slavery, which apparently is no more than exploitation of labor power. Nothing about people owning people, nothing about people turning other human beings into beings less than human, nothing about extraordinary cruelty and violence. Just a violation of property rights. This is the same thing.<\/p>\n This Senator, in Connecticut, echoed the sentiments of an attorney,\u00a0 in California, who specializes in residential and commercial eviction of tenants. In a discussion of eviction controls, in Los Angeles, the attorney noted<\/a>, \u201cIn the City of Los Angeles, regardless of the status of the property, there is a prohibition against no fault eviction \u2026 which is a little bit of state imposed slavery.\u201d The attorney then goes on to explain that the owner who wants to go out of business, simply wants to close down, can\u2019t, because of the prohibition, and that\u2019s slavery, \u201cforced labor\u201d. Again, from sea to shining sea, the reduction of slavery to theft of labor is a trope for those who argue against any abridgement of their \u201cproperty rights\u201d, which have magically been transformed into labor rights. A specter haunts the United States, and that spectre is \u2026 the landlord.<\/p>\n The comment in California was made in 2022. The comment in Connecticut was made in 2024. What is to be made of the use, and abuse, of slavery in these, and I\u2019m sure other, instances? On one hand, it speaks to the unspeakable that is regularly spoken among Whites Only gatherings, even if not everyone in the room is White. That is, it\u2019s ok to say that any abridgement of one\u2019s power is a form of slavery because, really, slavery wasn\u2019t all that bad. It wasn\u2019t torture, murder, sexual violence and more. It was only taking a bit more than one should have, and really, that\u2019s the worker\u2019s fault, isn\u2019t it? If they were more cunning, better equipped for the \u201creal world\u201d, more \u2026 well \u2026 more like \u201cus\u201d, they wouldn\u2019t have been made to suffer.<\/p>\n But it speaks as well to the difficulties of developing equitable and just housing policies in a country where slavery founded all notions of \u201cright to property\u201d and hence of both right and property: \u201cSlavery cannot be dismissed as an unfortunate flaw in an otherwise perfect cloth. It would be closer to the truth to say that slavery provided the fabric out of which the cloth was made<\/a>.\u201d Yes, there is a housing shortage, yes, mortgage rates are higher and there are other elements contributing to the precariousness of renters\u2019 lives. But at heart, a fundamental issue is the power landlords arrogate unto themselves in the name of history, in the name even of ethics and all that is good and right in the world, that is, in the name of property. \u00a0So, the next time someone in power explains what slavery really was, pay close attention.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n (By Dan Moshenberg)<\/p>\n