Vice President Kamala Harris promises to build three million affordable houses if elected president. Meanwhile, her fellow Democrat―California Gov. Gavin Newsom―has ordered local governments to evict homeless people from their encampments or lose state money.
This is a direct threat to the city of Los Angeles, where at least 29,000 homeless people are living outside. The total number of homeless people in Los Angeles County is over 75,000, of whom 52,000 have no shelter.
Newsom’s order is as cruel as Texas Gov. Abbott putting barbed wire in the Rio Grande (Rio Bravo del Norte) to maim migrants.
Where are homeless people supposed to go? California has an estimated 180,000 homeless people but only 71,000 beds in shelters.
“It’s absolute mayhem and craziness,” Jeni Shurley told NBC News. Shurley, who lives in Los Angeles, has been homeless for 10 years while working temporary jobs across the United States.
“I have done everything I can, every program that’s been offered,” she said.
I’ve taken up on it, and I haven’t gotten any assistance that I need whatsoever.
While California has at least 180,000 people without a home, it also has 197 billionaires. Just the richest top 10 of these moneybags have a total stash of $755 billion.
It’s these parasites that Gov. Gavin Newsom works for and collects campaign contributions from. Gavin’s daddy―William Newsom III―handled the finances of oil billionaire Gordon Getty.
Newsom’s cruelty was given permission by the June 28 decision of the United States Supreme Court in its Grants Pass v. Johnson decision. It upheld a Grants Pass, Oregon, law that made it a crime for people to sleep in public even if they had nowhere to seek shelter.
The greatest crime under capitalism is to be poor.
No homeless children in Venezuela or Cuba
In a country of 340 million people, the promise of Kamala Harris to have 3 million more houses built over four years falls far short of what’s needed.
This isn’t a program to directly build 750,000 homes per year. The Vice President is proposing subsidies for “first-time” homebuyers instead.
The Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela―whose population is less than one-tenth of the U.S.―has built 5 million homes over the past 13 years. That’s a good reason why Venezuela’s President, Nicolás Maduro Moros, was recently re-elected.
Venezuela accomplished this feat despite 930 economic sanctions being placed against it by the United States and its allies.
There are more than 100,000 homeless schoolchildren in New York City, the capital of capitalism. But there are no homeless children in Cuba or Venezuela.
The number of homeless people is much larger than those in shelters or on the streets. Over 3.7 million people live in doubled-up households.
Many families facing eviction or foreclosure seek shelter with other family members. Overcrowded housing helped kill thousands during the COVID-19 epidemic.
There’s a housing crisis in the United States but no housing shortage. Greedy landlords keep apartments off the market to jack up rents.
Just in New York City, 26,310 “rent-stabilized” apartments have been kept empty. Rent control laws do not cover thousands more unoccupied apartments.
That’s as criminal as hoarding food during a famine.
Rents across the United States have increased by more than 30% since early 2020. That’s higher than the average inflation rate, which certainly outpaces wage growth.
While many homeless people are unemployed, thousands of people with low-paying jobs live in cars because the rents are so high.
Housing is a human right!
People need more than inadequate subsidies for home buying. We need rent rollbacks and a ban on housing foreclosures.
The Biden-Harris administration has poured over $55 billion in arms into the proxy war against the Russian Federation in Ukraine. At least another $12.5 billion has been poured into the genocidal war against Gaza.
This $67.5 billion being used to kill children could have built 225,000 new apartments at $300,000 per unit. It’s nearly as much as the $78 billion the New York City Housing Authority claims it needs to fix its apartments.
Before Wisconsin Sen. Joe McCarthy became known as an anti-communist witch-hunter, he attacked public housing programs. He did so on behalf of the real estate lobby.
These same developers and real estate outfits defended housing segregation for decades. Metropolitan Life Insurance kept Black people out of its Stuyvesant Town, Peter Cooper Village, and Parkchester apartment complexes in New York City.
Donald Trump’s daddy, Fred Trump, refused to rent to Black people. Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner is a big slumlord in Baltimore and elsewhere.
Instead of Biden ladling out another $8.5 billion being given to the anti-union Intel corporation, we need a massive program to build public housing.
One of the first acts of the Cuban Revolution in 1959 was to ban evictions and roll back rents and utility bills. We need to organize the power of the people to make housing a human right.