Readings:
- Celisa Calacal – The Radical Vision of a ‘Homes Guarantee’ for All
- Jacobin interview with Lucy Piccochi and Fox Rinne – “‘Can People Pay Rent This Month?’ The Consensus Was No”
Questions:
- Talk about the reasons that the Brooklyn apartments decided to go on strike. What was the thought process? How did they go about organizing?
- Is this similar to how you organize on your campus? How is it different or similar?
- How does a rent strike challenge landlords and capitalists?
- The demands of the rent strikes evolved as the likelihood of legislation changed, why is this important?
- Homes Guarantee proposes “building 12 million new social housing units—a public option for housing, in which rents are set at below-market rates—over the next 10 years and offering at least 600,000 “permanent supportive housing” units, which combine affordable housing with social services to help people who face chronic homelessness. The plan also calls for a $30 billion reinvestment in public housing over the next five years, a stark contrast to the federal government’s massive disinvestment in public housing over the past few decades.” With what you know about how capitalists use housing to reign over the working-class, discuss how this sort of legislation challenges capitalism.
- Compare Homes Guarantee to Medicare for All or a Green New Deal, would you say that it is a homes equivalent? Why or why not?
- The homes guarantee also proposes changing zoning laws previously used for racist housing policy. Why is so important to both change zoning, and other supply side issues, while advocating for public housing? Why couldn’t this work with private investors?