What if paying landlords to house people doesn’t work? The political aspects of housing for all

Keywords: housing, tenant organizing
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

About one-third of the nearly $50 billion in federal Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) the US Congress appropriated to pay rental and utility debt and keep tenants housed remains untapped, amid rapidly increasing evictions. Meanwhile national landlord industry groups used their considerable resources to mount a relentless legal campaign to repeal the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) tenant protections, in which they ultimately prevailed with the US Supreme Court’s decision to nullify the order. This paper applies Michal Kalecki’s observation about the political resistance capitalists mount to full employment policy to understand the evident collective priorities of property owners, decidedly oriented toward maintaining their control over their assets above immediate cash payments. Here eviction is analogous to Kalecki’s analysis of the role of the “sack”: just as the threat of firing is the basis for owners’ control over labor and their ability to impose working conditions, the threat of eviction has a similar function of disciplining tenants to accept the landlords’ terms for access to shelter. The paper further connects this idea—that capitalist class power is the means to achieve profit-maximization—with scholarship in the Black radical tradition that emphasizes the centrality of maintaining domination, and in particular racial hierarchy, to capitalist accumulation. This analysis suggests that neoliberal policy as a way to achieve public goals, based on ensuring capitalist profit, is a dead letter (and always has been). Instead, building economies that serve human need, like housing for all, will require mounting political power that can overwhelm owners’ opposition.