Every time I walk past an encampment of unhoused people, I see something that tells me the person living in a particular tent or broken down vehicle is trying to make that space on a sidewalk or in a city park into a home.<\/p>\n
It might be a little fence around the tent entrance. Or a couple of plants in pots. One year I saw a Christmas tree, decorated. It broke my heart.<\/p>\n
This week I\u2019m reading the news about the Los Angeles fires, in which many people have lost their homes. Last fall it was the people in western North Carolina, who shouldn\u2019t have been at risk from a hurricane, and yet lost so much.<\/p>\n
Loss from disaster also breaks my heart.<\/p>\n
Then there are all the people living in refugee camps, people who had to flee their homes or whose homes have been destroyed by war.<\/p>\n
All of these losses provide a reminder that everyone \u2013 everyone \u2013 needs a home. Yet we live in a world that has turned that basic need into an investment.<\/p>\n
If you own your home \u2013 or rather, at least in today\u2019s United States, you and a bank own your home \u2013 it\u2019s an investment, the largest one you\u2019ve got in most cases.<\/p>\n
If you get in a jam and can\u2019t pay your mortgage, you\u2019re at the mercy of your lender.<\/p>\n
If you rent, it\u2019s the landlord who gets the return on investment. If you can\u2019t pay your rent, you\u2019re out on the street.<\/p>\n
Your situation is always a bit precarious.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a saying that goes back to the activism of the 1960s and 70s:<\/p>\n
Housing for People, Not for Profit.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
That\u2019s not what we have, but that is what we should have. And could have.<\/p>\n
In the spirit of coming up with audacious visions, here\u2019s mine on housing: <\/p>\n
Every person on this planet should and could have a home. Yes, we have enough planetary resources \u2013 even in light of climate change and overpopulation \u2013 to do this. I\u2019ll write more about why I think this we have the resources to do this another time, but for this post I want to focus on this as a vision related to housing.<\/p>\n
To make sure everyone has a home, houses and apartments have to stop being investments. They need to simply be places to live. Maintained, certainly. Made sturdy against possible disasters, from earthquakes to hurricanes to fires. Properly managed.<\/p>\n
But not your retirement savings or your path to riches.<\/p>\n
The number of homeless people in my area has grown markedly over the ten years I\u2019ve lived here. Yet when there are programs to provide so-called affordable housing, they\u2019re always set up so that somebody will make a big return.<\/p>\n
There have been many new apartment buildings built in Oakland since I moved here and most of them have vacancies. None of the people living on the street can afford the rent in those buildings. Neither can many of the people working ordinary jobs around here.<\/p>\n
This vision of a home for everyone is doable, though difficult because we are all so embedded in the current capitalist system, whether we\u2019re landlords, homeowners, renters, or even living on the street.<\/p>\n
As Frederic Jameson says, \u201cIt\u2019s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism.\u201d<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t like imagining the end of the world.<\/p>\n
So instead, my vision is of an economic system that starts with the assumption that everyone is entitled to a home, which is a step toward imagining the end of capitalism.<\/p>\n
A home doesn\u2019t mean just four walls and a roof. It\u2019s something with infrastructure. It should have energy to power cooking, heating, cooling, and ventilation. It must have clean drinking and bathing water, a toilet, and connection to the sewer system.<\/p>\n
Now in the United States, having access to that kind of infrastructure is not particularly difficult, even though in many places the infrastructure hasn\u2019t been kept up.<\/p>\n
In some other countries, there are large areas where there is no energy or water system. But there could be.<\/p>\n
Water is probably more of a problem than energy, because, especially with climate change, there are lots of places where there\u2019s too much of it or too little of it. But modern water and sewer providers \u2013 and I\u2019ll point out that the best ones in the United States tend to be operated by local governments (East Bay Municipal Utility District is an excellent example) \u2013 are doing a great job even if they have to devote a lot of time to repairing old pipes.<\/p>\n
With the growth of renewables, it is more and more possible to provide electricity to people without building a large grid. Many parts of the world have substantial sunshine and no grid; setting up PV systems on a local level can meet this need.<\/p>\n
That is to say, there are lots of ways to provide the infrastructure that makes a building a comfortable home.<\/p>\n
Now, not everyone wants or needs the same kind of home. My partner and I would like an apartment in a multifamily building where we know all our neighbors and have a community. It also needs to be a walkable neighborhood with lots of public transit, because we\u2019re not getting any younger and don\u2019t want to be tied to our car. (We\u2019re working on that.)<\/p>\n
People with large families \u2013 especially extended families \u2013 need something bigger. People who garden need a yard, and greenspace is important to us all. There\u2019s no one right space for everyone.<\/p>\n
But everyone needs a safe and comfortable space they call their own.<\/p>\n
One key element in building such spaces, especially in places where people have very little, is to make sure to build what people really want and need. Throwing up tuff sheds and manufactured housing that isn\u2019t well-made or comfortable isn\u2019t an appreciably better solution than telling people living on the streets to go to a shelter and leave their pets and belongings behind.<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t build for people; you build with people.<\/p>\n
That goes for many other things besides housing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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