Revolutionaries, Let's Pit Landlords Against Employers
As recently as 2005 there were many
American activists calling for class war. That obviously didn't go
anywhere. Many people, like the homeless and the child laborers of
the world, are too busy fighting for their daily sustenance to
involve themselves in a class war where they'd fight for full
systemic change. Therefore, homelessness and extreme poverty persist.
Add to that the fact that the
non-profit/industrial complex has evolved to a point where many of
the non-profits that ostensibly are pushing for solutions to
homelessness and/or extreme poverty are now receiving government
funding from a capitalist system. With capitalism being a system that
permeates the world, none of the people who benefit from this
exploitative system are incentivized to accommodate the less
fortunate – unless and until the poor arise. These beneficiaries
include obvious entities such as government and the business
community as well as the not-so-obvious entities like non-profits
that serve the poor.
Fact of the matter is that such
non-profits help to keep the lid on the pressure cooker. They help to
ensure that the poor will receive daily sustenance – food, shelter,
clean clothes etc. They manage housing programs for the mentally and
physically disabled. Some of these non-profits get paid to end
homelessness, fail and continue to get paid. Then there is the fact
that, when government officials who work on “ending” homelessness
are formulating their annual plans, they call meetings with these
non-profits. With the majority of attendees making money while
managing a problem that they claim to want to solve, a vote is taken
on what the attendees think is the most pressing issue within the
homeless continuum. Not surprisingly, the vote always indicates that
a room full of people who make most of their money managing the
disabled who have been housed in programs like Permanent Supportive
Housing think that the needs of the “most vulnerable homeless”
are the most pressing.
I would never argue that we should
decrease services for the most vulnerable among us – unless that
group were to irreversibly decrease in size. However, there is no
point in repeatedly voting on a matter wherein the outcome of the
vote is likely to remain the same. Furthermore, DC Government
initially said that they would start with the most vulnerable
homeless and eventually assist the least vulnerable too. That was in
mid-2008. The latter part of the plan hasn't materialized yet.
The “least vulnerable homeless”
who are able to work if they were to receive assistance in finding
and/or being trained for living-wage jobs are relegated to spending
yet another year in shelter. The only silver lining in this dark
cloud is the fact that, when they grow old and turn silver, they'll
likely – but not certainly – be housed. That said, we need to
blow the lid off of the pressure cooker.
We need to pressure government into
connecting “homeless A-bods” to living-wage employment. But we
must first realize where politicians are coming from if we re going
to drag them to the place where they should be in their thinking. As
elements of a worldwide capitalist system, homeless service providers
– especially government – are not incentivized to do anything
that would cut into the profits of businesses. They don't want to
force employers to pay a true living wage or force landlords to keep
rents down to a level that is affordable for the lowest-paid workers
in their respective locales. If government were to make a robust
effort to connect able-bodied homeless people to living-wage jobs and
affordable housing, it stands to reason that other constituents who
are teetering on the edge and about to fall into homelessness would
clamor for these targeted programs to be expanded into citywide
programs or for the underlying admissions (the need for living wages
and affordable housing) to be codified into law. This would cause
employers and landlords to cry foul and to come out against city
governments. Municipal governments fear this phenomenon – and with
good reason.
In Washington, DC rents average $1,500
per month. A full-time worker must make about $30 per hour to pay
that much in rent. The minimum wage in DC will rise from $10.50 to
$11.50 on July 1st, 2016. In just over six months a
full-time worker in DC will make $1,840 per month – a whopping $340
more than the average rent. (you can't rent a hole in the wall for
$600 – the amount such a worker could afford to pay.) This brings
me to the reason for my proposal that we pit landlords against
employers.
Until now, landlords have lobbied for
the right to raise the rent any time that the DC Council considers
any type of rent control. In similar fashion, employers like Wal-mart
have lobbied for the right to pay low wages any time that the DC
Council has considered creating any living-wage legislation. Both
groups approach government with their respective concerns – though
not simultaneously. As it turns out, someone who makes $1,840 per
month before taxes can't afford to pay $1,500 or even $900 per month
in rent. We should therefore create an initiative that brings these
two groups together. We could tell the landlords that the employers
don't pay their employees enough for these employees to pay local
rents. We could tell the employers that the landlords are raising the
rents which are already far beyond what their employees can afford to
even higher levels. We could then tell these two groups to decide
whether the pay goes up or the rent comes down.
This idea, of course, is lost on the
argument that low-wage workers can live outside of DC and pay more
for transit to come into the city. After all, they can take two or
three buses over the course of two hours in order to get to work each
day. It would only cost $1.75 each way, as opposed to a per-station
charge on the subway. Who cares if they spend four hours in transit
each day??? That's the price of poverty.
Being as a movement should be based
on a widely-understood principle that the masses are willing to get
behind and fight for, I've often argued that a person should be able
to afford housing in the city where they work. Let's face it:
your work (or willingness to work) is your primary bargaining chip –
even in a society where labor is becoming obsolete and people are
being replaced with more productive machines that don't demand
benefits. (It's worth noting that, in many cases, laid-off people
were also customers of the companies that let them go.)
All things
considered, it behooves those of us who fight for the needs of the
working class to demand that municipal governments create legislation
that requires that anyone who works 40 hours per week in a certain
city be able to afford housing there (without paying more than
one-third of their income after taxes and without government
assistance). We could call it “The Right to Live in the City Where
you Work” Law.
Such a law could place demands on
landlords to ensure that the percentage of their units that rent for
one-third of a minimum-wage workers monthly pay is directly
proportionate to the percentage of employees in that city who make a
minimum wage. It could require that employers double as landlords by
renting large numbers of units which they then sublet to their
employees for no more than a third of an employee's wages. The
possibilities are endless.
A former director of DC Government's
Dept. of Human Services, David Berns, had a mantra – the one good
thing he left us with. It was: “Get a job. Get a better job. Get
a career.”. Current director of DC Government's Dept. of
Employment Services (DOES) has made that her mantra as well. Great.
Now to actualize it.
Oddly enough, it is a group of 50 local
religious entities who do grassroots advocacy and which call
themselves the “Washington Inter-faith Network” or “WIN”
which has taken the lead on this matter. They've begun talks with the
local water and sewage administration (WASA) around employing
homeless parents for green jobs in the soon-to-be-developed sewage
overflow gardens that will catch the raw sewage that is currently
overflowing into the Anacostia and Potomac Rivers every time there is
a substantial rain. (This problem must be fixed per orders of the
EPA.) Of course, no one aspires to become a “sh*t shovel-er”.
Nonetheless, it's a dirty job that someone has to do. It affords
homeless parents with opportunities to build their resumes. A good
reference from WASA could lead to “a better job” which could lead
to a career. The trick after getting homeless parents employed at
WASA is to then ensure that they are kept on the roles at DOES and
trained up to 20 hours per week for better employment. The
responsibility of DOES shouldn't end until the homeless parent is
connected to a job that pays at least three times the amount of the
parents' rent. All of this same thinking should also be applied to
homeless singles.
As stated earlier, the possibilities
are endless. However, the conversation has to start somewhere. As
Frederick Duglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a
demand. It never has. And it never will”. In lieu of these wise
words, we should start the conversation by pitting rent-raising
landlords against low-paying employers – by adjoining the concerns
that hereto now have caused these groups to lobby separately and
thereby forcing them into direct confrontation with each and AND with
the third part of a “power triangle”: local government.
Let's get the pillars of capitalism fighting each other at the local
level. This should be fun.
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