Housing

The Communities Trying To Take Over Their Local Electric Utility

February 22, 2024 Akielly Hu, Next City. Create! Community Control, Energy, Housing, Public Utilities, Utilities

Around a dozen communities across the country have launched campaigns to get rid of their investor-owned electric utilities — the for-profit companies that distribute electricity to three-quarters of U.S. households — and replace them with publicly owned ones. Calling their goal “public power,” advocates argue that existing utilities have saddled customers with high rates and frequent outages, while lobbying to delay rooftop solar and other climate policies. Advocates say local ownership of the power grid would lead to lower electric bills, a quicker transition to renewables, and greater accountability to customers.

Public Ownership Of Housing Could Be Closer Than You Think

February 18, 2024 Mindy Isser, In These Times. Create! Affordable Housing, Cities, Housing, New York (NY)

The housing crisis in New York is the worst it’s been in over five decades, and low-income residents are being hit the hardest. As a result, homelessness is on the uptick and working-class families are being forced out of the city at an alarming rate. In the midst of this emergency, an array of progressive politicians and organizers are joining in an effort to move away from private sector development as the sole tool to address the severe housing shortage. In early February, New York State Assemblymember Emily Gallagher and State Sen. Cordell Cleare introduced a bill to create the Social Housing Development Authority.

UFCW Local Leads Fight To Win Strongest Tenant Protections

February 13, 2024 Ty Moore, Labor Notes. Strategize! Housing, Tenant Rights, UFCW, Victory, Worker Rights and Jobs

Grocery and retail workers helped win the strongest tenant protections in Washington state last November for the 100,000 renters in the city of Tacoma. First we had to beat the mayor’s and city council’s attempt to bring a competing watered-down ballot measure. And then we had to overcome a vicious and deceptive landlord opposition that smashed all previous political spending records in Tacoma. “We’ve created incredible goodwill in the community just as we gear up for a tough contract fight,” said Michael Whalen, who helped initiate the campaign as a dairy clerk and shop steward at Fred Meyer.

An Upcoming Supreme Court Case Threatens To Criminalize Homelessness

February 1, 2024 Adam Mahoney, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Class Struggle, Criminalization, Homelessness, Housing, Supreme Court

As America’s affordable housing crisis grows, especially for those of retirement age, Black folks continue to be pushed into homelessness at a disproportionate rate. Advocates argue that an upcoming U.S. Supreme Court ruling may make it even more dire. Earlier this month, the court announced that it would hear a case that will essentially decide if people experiencing homelessness can be issued jail time, tickets, and fines for sleeping on the streets — even if there are no shelter alternatives available for them. The case will be heard either this spring or in the fall.

New York’s Tenant Unions Are Playing The Long Game

February 1, 2024 Teddy Ostrow, The Real News Network. Strategize! Housing, New York City (NYC), Rent control, Tenant Unions

In the summer of 2022, a few months before her rental lease was set to expire, Lucy Rinzler-Day saw a provocative poster hanging in her apartment building’s elevator. The poster—which, she would later learn, was made by her neighbor—warned tenants of the 32-unit building in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, to be on the lookout for illegal rent increases on their lease renewals. Their apartment building is rent stabilized, a form of housing regulation that protects tenants from exorbitant rent hikes and gives them the right to renew their leases. Any rent hike over 3.2% that year, as established by the city’s Rent Guidelines Board, would be illegal.

Our Housing Crisis Is Literally Killing People

January 31, 2024 Fran Quigley, Scheer Post. Resist! health, Homelessness, Housing, Housing Crisis, Indiana

Last week, my students and I worked with several unhoused persons who had been recently living in dangerous, unhealthy apartments or homes in our community of Indianapolis. One, a young mother of a toddler with another baby soon on the way, had just left a home where eight people across three generations were living. The house had no central heat, so space heaters were the only source of warmth during a month when the temperature dipped below zero for several days. Those heaters and everything else electrical in the house were linked to a complex web of extension cords connected to a solitary working outlet.

Georgia Pays For Foster Care Rather Than Providing Housing Assistance

January 19, 2024 Stephannie Stokes, ProPublica. Resist! Child Welfare, Foster Care, Georgia, Housing

Between fiscal years 2018 and 2022, DFCS reported “inadequate housing” as the sole reason for removing a child in more than 700 cases, according to an analysis by WABE and ProPublica. The analysis, using data from the federal Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System, which tracks child removal cases in each state, also shows that in thousands of additional cases — about 20% of Georgia’s nearly 31,000 child removals during the five-year period — DFCS reported housing as one of multiple reasons. Housing was the third most reported reason after substance use and neglect.

In The World’s Wealthiest Country, Housing Should Be A Human Right

January 2, 2024 Kazmyn Ramos, Scheer Post. Organize! Housing, Human Rights, Mutual Aid, Wealth

Too many of us have to depend on sheer good luck to make it — especially when it comes to putting a roof over our heads. We grow up hearing that hard work alone will lift us above the hardships we’re born into. But many of us also watched as our parents worked two and three jobs, relied on extended family to watch us, and still struggled to afford stable housing. Far too many of us are living that same struggle ourselves. It’s not that we aren’t resourceful. My grandmother, who barely scraped by with factory work and countless odd jobs, pulled together with neighbors who supported each other through a mutual aid network.

Mutual Aid Groups, Asylum-Seekers Support Families Facing Eviction

December 30, 2023 Claudia Villalona, The Indypendent. Organize! Asylum, Eviction, Housing, Migrants, Mutual Aid, New York City (NYC), Shelters

On Saturday, Dec. 16, hundreds of migrants and asylum seekers gathered at the Fourth Universalist Society on the Upper West Side for the “Posada de Comadres.” Coordinated by a coalition of mutual-aid and immigrant-rights groups, the event featured a housing workshop, a resource fair, the distribution of winter clothing and a mobile health clinic that offered basic health services. Valentina (a pseudonym) and her family, asylum-seekers who fled Colombia, were one of the families present at the event. They are also among the 3,500 families that received an eviction notice from the city earlier in the month. Valentina is over eight months pregnant; her baby is due in the first week of January.

Black Investors Take Back Legal Tool To Restore Chicago’s Affordable Housing

December 29, 2023 Kelli Duncan, Next City. Create! Affordable Housing, Chicago, Housing, Predatory Lending, Racism

It was early 2020 when Jay Davis realized his family was going to lose his childhood home, a red brick house in Rosemoor on the South Side of Chicago that had been in his family for generations. Davis’ great-uncle had been living there, and as his dementia worsened the one-story house began to deteriorate. When he died, he left it to his son who had serious health issues and could not maintain the home, Davis said. Davis, 41, wanted to keep the house from becoming another vacant lot on the South Side. He understood the significance of homeownership as a tool for building generational wealth that has been denied to many Black Chicagoans due to racist practices like redlining and predatory lending.

Americans Abandoning Neighborhoods Due To Rising Flood Risk

December 20, 2023 Cristen Hemingway Jaynes, EcoWatch. Educate! climate crisis, Climate Justice, Flooding, Housing

As flooding becomes more common due to the shifting and strengthening weather patterns and sea-level rise associated with climate change, so does climate migration. New research by the First Street Foundation (FSF) has combined historic population change trends with flood risk data to reveal climate migration patterns happening in areas with high flood risk across the United States. “Much of the world’s population is exposed to some kind of extreme weather event exacerbated by climate change. These events have been directly connected to impacts on human systems including economic, social, and political crises,” the authors of the study wrote.

Why Labor Unions Should Join The Housing Fight

December 15, 2023 Zoe Tucker, Law and Political Economy Project. Strategize! Housing, Los Angeles, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

Brenda Mendoza, a worker at the Ritz-Carlton Los Angeles, begins her daily commute at 3 a.m. To save gas, she carpools with family members, and they arrive back home around 9 p.m., at which point she’s lucky to catch three hours of sleep. Some days, she can sneak a nap during her 30-minute lunch break. This extended journey was not always Brenda’s fate, as she once commuted only ten minutes to and from her union job as a uniform attendant. However, increasing rental costs have pushed her and her family so far from downtown LA that she now drives four hours roundtrip every day she works at the hotel, where the cheapest room would cost you more than $800 tonight.

What We Can Learn From One Florida Community About Climate Resilience

December 14, 2023 Danielle Arigoni, Next City. Create! Climate Change, climate crisis, Extreme weather, Florida, Housing, Resilience

The health and safety we enjoy as individuals and the opportunities for employment, education, and recreation available to us are shaped to a large degree by the built environment in which we live. For the past 70 years, the vast majority of new housing development has followed the example of Levittown, New York. The city now serves as the poster child for a seemingly endless wave of car-dependent greenfield suburban sprawl developments that not only helped to generate the carbon emissions that contribute to the climate crisis we now face but also modeled a form of growth that provided opportunity for wealth creation for some households and not others.

For Human Rights Day: Poor People’s Struggle To Survive In The USA

December 11, 2023 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast - Clearing The FOG Democrats, Elections, Housing, Human Rights, Poverty, Republicans, United Nations

Sunday, December 10, was the International Human Rights Day to mark the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the United Nations in 1948. Clearing the FOG spoke with human rights defender Cheri Honkala. A founder of the Poor Peoples Economic and Human Rights Campaign and the Poor People's Army, Honkala talks about the worsening situation for poor people in the United States. She also describes the protests that will be taking place at the Republican and Democratic Party's national conventions this summer, an update on her arrest and conviction at the Office of Housing and Urban Development in Washington, DC and her new book, a guide on how to take over vacant houses.

California Is Showing The Potential Of Strip Mall-To-Housing Conversions

December 11, 2023 Ahmad Abu-Khalaf, Next City. Create! Affordable Housing, California, Development, Housing

State and local jurisdictions are desperately looking for new ways to speed up affordable housing development as the supply of homes falls short of demand nearly everywhere in the U.S. This fall, the Biden-Harris administration announced new resources to support commercial conversions to create affordable housing. While much of the focus is on office conversions, an idea that swept the nation as millions of Americans transitioned to remote work, relatively few office buildings are physically suitable for conversion. The costs can be incredibly high and the surrounding neighborhoods, often in business districts, are not necessarily conducive to new housing and the needs of residents.

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