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Housing

The Latest Plot To Privatize Public Lands

On a recent visit to see old friends in Livingston, Mont., I found myself downtown, drinking the free art-walk wine, spearing the free cocktail weenies and admiring the fine skin of the expensively dressed couples bobbing in and out of the galleries that have proliferated here like some aggressive breed of plant. The light was retreating up the peaks of the Absaroka Range, and the summer evening’s golden stillness settled over town. Then a rip formed in this tranquility, and through it a ramshackle Subaru station wagon with local plates came trundling up Main Street, piled floor to ceiling with belongings. ​“Fuck!” shrieked the driver, as he pounded the steering wheel. ​“I fucking hate this!”

The New Yorkers Standing Behind Migrants

Flatbush, New York — Shelves of weathered shoes line the purple basement walls of the Bridge, a nonprofit, on Dec. 14, 2024. Used coats hang from rolling racks. Residents of Floyd Bennett Field, a remote former airport-turned-migrant-shelter in Brooklyn, queue up with slips of paper in their hands, listing the ages and genders of their children. Kids weave among parents’ legs before moving to the second floor for childcare. Waiting is part of the ordeal for migrant families in shelters. But now the stakes have increased. The 2,000 Floyd Bennett Field residents will soon be moved to other shelters, and questions loom: Do other shelters have space?

Vote On ‘Social Housing’ Could Break Stranglehold Of Private Landlords

On a once-vacant plot of public land in Seattle, a cluster of mid-rise buildings surrounds a tree-filled courtyard. Children play on swings while adults run laps and chat on shared stoops. Some neighbors live in dorm-style rooms with common kitchens, others in family-sized townhomes — but all benefit from access to parks and transit, affordable rents and a democratic say in how their buildings run. None of this exists yet, to be clear. But it’s the vision, laid out in proof-of-concept sketches and during door-to-door canvassing conversations, that Seattle housing activists are hoping to make tangible to voters.

Abolish Rent, Yes, For Real

The largest tenant union in the country is responding quickly and passionately to the devastation of the Los Angeles fires. The LA Tenants Union is demanding not just enforcement of existing California protections against price gouging of rental homes, but a moratorium on evictions and a rent freeze, all while tenants are coming together with heroic levels of mutual aid. But these steps will only mitigate a perpetual struggle, as union co-founders Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis write in their new book “Abolish Rent: How Tenants Can End the Housing Crisis.” “Why do tenants wake up every month and have to pay rent?” they ask.

Biden’s Legacy: Genocide Abroad, Economic Despair At Home

46th US President Joe Biden officially leaves office Monday, January 20, to be succeeded by former President Donald Trump. Trump’s promises in the name of “saving American workers” have raised alarm for people across sectors of society, including migrant workers who are gearing up for mass deportations, and unionized workers who are preparing for Trump’s attacks on labor rights. Trump’s loyalty to multi-billionaires has also given the working class of the US great cause for concern. Meanwhile, in contrast, the Democrats have attempted to position themselves as the real defenders of working people.

A Public Model For Home Insurance

With every extreme weather event, housing is damaged and belongings are lost. Insurance is supposed to be the safety net that helps people to recover and restart their lives. But as major disasters like hurricanes, wildfires, and hailstorms increase in frequency and severity thanks to climate change, more insurance companies are cutting back on policies, jacking up premium rates, or refusing to cover whole areas of the country. This change is leaving people who live in affected homes—including everything from single-family houses to multifamily rental buildings—facing financial hardship and even homelessness, among other ruinous consequences.

How Federal Disaster Funding Can Slow Rent Increases

Coloradans often welcome rain storms with the refrain, “We need the moisture.” After the deadly floods in September 2013, many Coloradans sang a different tune. Over five days, a slow-moving storm covered some areas of the Front Range with up to 20 inches of rain. Overall, the floods killed 10 people, displaced 18,000, and caused more than $4 billion in damage to more than 17,000 structures, of which 1,882 were completely destroyed, according to the Colorado Division of Homeland Security & Emergency Management’s after-action report.

Kansas City’s Striking Tenants Want Biden To Act Fast On Rent Cap

On Oct. 1, 2024, tenants at two Kansas City, Missouri, apartment complexes started a rent strike. Residents of Independence Towers and Quality Hill Towers, organized under KC Tenants and a newly formed national coalition known as the Tenant Union Federation, had been asking their landlords to fix their dilapidated buildings for two years. They demanded repairs, called for collectively bargained leases, and agitated for the federal government to force the sale of the apartment complexes to more responsible owners.

Justice Department Sues Six Of The Nation’s Largest Landlords

The Department of Justice on Tuesday sued six of the nation’s largest landlords, accusing them of using a pricing algorithm to improperly work together to raise rents across the country. The lawsuit expands an antitrust complaint the department filed in August that accused property management software-maker RealPage of engaging in illegal price-fixing to reduce competition among landlords so prices — and profits — would soar. Officials conducted a two-year investigation into the scheme following a 2022 ProPublica story that showed how RealPage was helping landlords set rents across the country in a way that legal experts said could result in cartel-like behavior.

What Started As Emergency Housing Offers Model For Ending Homelessness

It was fortuitous that the Sheraton Wilmington South in New Castle County went up for auction right before the state had to meet the spending deadline for federal CARES Act funds. Amid a raging global public health crisis, Delaware’s most populous county needed safe non-congregate housing for its most vulnerable population, and, following California’s Project Roomkey model, it looked to hotels. On Dec. 1, 2020, New Castle County settled on the property for $19.5 million, and a mere two weeks later, the Hope Center opened, welcoming its first 73 residents on the eve of the state’s first COVID winter surge.

Housing Cooperatives: Preserving Affordable Community Ownership

With affordable housing becoming increasingly scarce in Montana, innovative solutions are more important than ever. This documentary short highlights an inspiring cooperative housing model designed to prevent displacement and create home ownership opportunities for Missoula residents. This initiative, driven by the collaborative efforts of North Missoula Community Development Corporation (NMCDC) and Neighborworks Montana (NWMT), offers a promising blueprint for addressing housing challenges across Montana.

There’s An Abundance Of Housing; Let’s Organize To Take It Over

The Poor People's Army, formerly the Poor People's Economic and Human Rights Campaign, has been leading efforts across the country to place individuals and families who need them into federally-owned housing for a long time. Their position is that housing is a human right and that people in need should not be forced to wait for shelter. They recently published "Takeover: A Human Rights Approach to Housing" on Poor People's Press, a step-by-step guide to occupying empty houses. Clearing the FOG speaks with Cheri Honkala, the lead author, and Galen Tyler, a lead organizer with the Poor People's Army, about the current housing crisis and how people can use the new book to end the crisis of homelessness.

There’s A Severe Housing Crisis In The US: The Work To Make Housing A Right

A new report, Billionaire Blowback on Housing: How concentrated wealth disrupts housing markets and worsens the housing affordability crisis, explains how the United States has entered a state of hyper-gentrification in which the average person has to compete with a large corporation when it comes to buying or renting a home. There are currently 28 vacant homes for every homeless person. Clearing the FOG speaks with Chuck Collins, a co-author of the report, and Mehrdad Azemun of Peoples Action, about the housing crisis, the vision for a homes guarantee and how people are working to make housing a human right.

Working People Place Cost Of Living As Top Concern In US Elections

Just eight days remain until the people of the US head to the polls to decide their next president. The economy and inflation continues to be the top issue for voters by far, with eight in ten registered voters saying the economy will be very important to their vote according to the Pew Research Center. According to Gallup, the economy is the most important out of 22 issues voters were polled on, including “terrorism and national security”, immigration, education, healthcare, and crime. If one were to read exclusively the mainstream media, one would get the impression that all is well with the economy, that inflation is falling, and the job market is doing just fine.

Housing Activists In Spain Occupy Vacant Bank-Owned Buildings

When I first arrived in Spain, a real estate agent told me to avoid Manresa, the working-class city outside of Barcelona where a friend of mine lived. “Don’t go there, it’s not very nice,” he said. “Go to Costa Brava [a vacation site up north] — instead.” Unperturbed, I took a train to Manresa the next day. After seeing hammer and sickle graffiti and anti-capitalist slogans as soon as I exited the station, I began to understand why a real estate agent may not feel comfortable in Manresa. I walked to the center of the city, through some windy, narrow streets and a charming plaza peppered with locals moseying around, to meet my friend at Ateneu La Sèquia, a towering building that was once a nunnery but has been turned into a social center thanks to a group of activists who reclaimed the space by squatting in it.

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