By Jim Rosenbaum, Jay Leisler and the Labor's Champion Staff

Over three million people are homeless in the U.S. due to unemployment, high rents and growing poverty.

The homeless are a constant presence in the subways, the streets, the bus and train terminals and even airports of New York City. Their presence is so pronounced that the authorities can no longer ignore or dismiss them.

Accordingly, several months ago, the residents of New York were barraged daily by the capitalist media with stories about the homeless. These accounts were sensationalized, depicting the homeless as drunks, dope addicts and persons suffering mental illness who were allegedly the cause of their own plight. This is the typically false presentation of the problem by all the capitalist politicians, especially the Mayor of New York City, Edward Koch. His infamous reputation for slandering and baiting the homeless is only surpassed by former President Ronald Reagan. The Koch and Reagan presentation of the problem turns reality on its head. They pretend to be ignorant of the fact that grinding poverty and unemployment drive some homeless to alcoholism, drug addiction and mental illness. Moreover, studies have shown that 18% of New York City's homeless population have jobs. Similarly, over a third of the homeless in the suburbs, outside the city, have jobs and one out of four homeless people throughout the country are employed.

New York City's homeless population, estimated at 75-100,000 people, includes at least 11,000 children. The amount of facts and figures that could be cited to show the reality of this situation is enormous, but we've heard it all before. The question is: why does homelessness exist and what is to be done about it?

Throughout history, housing has always been poor and in short supply for members of the exploited, laboring classes. This is especially so in the development of U.S. capitalism. Even during periods of economic growth, working people have often had to make do with shacks, hovels, slums or the open skies as home. Firstly, this is because the workers are viciously exploited by the capitalists. When they are set to work, their labor creates a value over and above the value of their labor power. This surplus value is not paid for by the capitalist and is taken by him and accumulated. From this surplus value come the profits, interest and rent of the exploiters. To increase his profits the capitalist is always attempting to cut wages and decrease the value of labor power, with the result that many workers don't make enough to pay for their necessities, including decent housing.

Secondly, the drive for profits leads to displacement of workers by machines and periodic overproduction crises set in. This in turn multiplies many-fold the unemployed. Over 12 million workers are now unemployed in the U.S. and in New York City this has been especially expressed in the loss of jobs in the garment, longshore, and other production industries.

Thirdly, under capitalism all commodities are produced for profit, not for the needs of the people. This includes housing. The amount of housing and its quality is determined by how much profit can be made off of it by the exploiters - the bankers and the landlords. Since, in the main, housing for the workers is less profitable for the exploiters, less of it is put on the market at prices (rents) that the workers can afford. It is sold only to those who can afford to pay. For the real estate industry, housing is a commodity sold to realize maximum profit.

Therefore, the rich employers cannot provide (and never seek to provide) good, inexpensive housing for the bulk of the workers that is "comfortable" and provides a "stable home." The rich insist that the poorest paid workers only need a place to sleep between workdays at best. The needs of working people for an affordable dwelling count for nothing. And for those with too low a wage or without employment for a considerable time, they must go without housing altogether - they enter the ranks of the homeless.

A Housing Shortage

The rich lie when they say that homelessness is caused by an absolute shortage of housing. There is no shortage of housing units for people with yearly incomes over $40,000. What is-in short supply is housing at rents that are affordable to working people and the unemployed. In 1978, the number of low rent apartments (those for $250 or less) was greater than the number of poor households. But by 1985, the number of poor households had increased by 25% and exceeded the number of low rent apartments. Today, in absolute terms, at least 3.7 million poor households can't obtain low rent apartments.

Further, the rents paid by poor people, even for substandard units, is very exorbitant. Most pay a large portion of their income for housing. For example, in New York in 1985, 63% of renters who lived below the official poverty line spent more than half of their income on rent. Some of the poverty-stricken even spent up to 70% of their income for rent. This problem does not only concern those who live below the poverty line. Today, one million people in New York City spend 40% or more of their income on rent. A slight reduction of income or other disruption can easily topple these families into the ranks of the homeless.

For the past two decades the ruling class has carried into effect its policy of changing the land use of New York City in accordance with the demand for maximum profit. More and more of the available space goes toward the construction of huge office buildings, luxury apartments, transport and other enterprises catering to the needs of the rich. This, of necessity, means that working class and low income housing units which stand in the way must by displaced. They are being torn down or priced out of the reach of the workers.

Thousands of apartment buildings in New York City lie vacant, the result of a social system which is not concerned about providing housing for the masses, only with maximizing profits for the wealthy.

The workers who are being ejected are being replaced by capitalist residents (small and big). The raising of rents and the conversion of apartments to purchased units (condominiums – co-ops) is the favored method of accomplishing this goal. In the process, the workers are squeezed out of their apartments arid the landlords put them up for sale at huge prices to new buyers. Landlords co-op buildings and raise rents wherever they can. Usually the first rents to rise are those of storefronts, not covered by the present rent control law. Often these increases amount to several hundred percent. This immediately clears out small businesses which are operating on the margin. Next come the rents of the workers, who try to hold on as long as they can by doubling up families, etc., but finally they are forced to move. Since 1977, New York has lost 200,000 units of rental housing, mainly of the low-income type.

Landlords often do everything they can to make life difficult for the tenants who are targeted for this type of displacement by cutting back on heat, hot water and other services to get the tenants to leave "voluntarily." Once the units are vacated, landlords temporarily withhold these apartments from the market (warehousing), anticipating higher rents or co-op speculation. In New York City alone there are over 50,000 such warehoused apartments.

Landlords in New York City' are rapidly converting rental apartments into expensive condominiums or co-ops, throwing out working class families. Here a building of renovated co-op apartments stands next to vacant buildings where the working class tenants have been driven out.

Naturally, the government collaborates closely with the big capitalists and landlords to bring about these results. In 1971, New York City began phasing out rent control in favor of rent stabilization, which allows rents to rise to a "fair market" rent upon vacancy. In addition, huge tax breaks (such as New York City's infamous 3-51 law) are given to developers regardless of the type of housing that is being created. Local government officials conveniently turn a blind eye toward landlord harassment of tenants. Public services, such as firehouses, garbage collection and mass transit, are reduced in working class districts slated for "improvements," while state-inspired crime takes its toll on the neighborhood. Parallel to this, many housing units are simply bulldozed by the city. This has especially affected people who live in Single Room Occupancy hotels (SRO), particularly immigrant and oppressed nationality workers. Since 1977, the number of SRO units in New York City has fallen from 160,000 to 45,000.

At the same time, federal housing subsidies are being drastically reduced to clear targeted neighborhoods of projects. For example, such subsidies were cut from $32 billion in 1981 to $7.5 billion in 1989. In extreme cases, public housing projects are emptied out (with false promises of better' housing) and demolished, as in Newark, New Jersey.

The housing crisis in New York City is only a microcosm of the general problem throughout the U.S. Homelessness is inherent to capitalism and no amount of reforms and moral sermons to the capitalists can change this fact. The only real solution to the housing crisis is through socialist revolution in the U.S. Such a revolution will end homelessness because it will abolish its cause - that is production for profit. To initiate the revolution, the U.S. working class must overthrow the rule of the capitalist class and smash its state machinery (police, army, courts, etc.). The workers must set up their own state, a dictatorship of the proletariat, to suppress the former exploiters. The new workers government would then organize centralized, socialist production, designed to meet the ever-growing material and cultural needs of the working people.

A genuine socialist state would carry out two main policies in the sphere of housing. First, it would expropriate (take over) all capitalist housing complexes. The parasitical leeches who own these buildings and who have for so long grown fat of the misery of the poor, would be sent packing. We are talking about mansions, apartment buildings, developments and hotels - not single-family houses owned by workers and the lower strata of the petty bourgeoisie. The socialist state would immediately be able to house the homeless and all those who live in the most crowded conditions by placing them in the unused mansions, homes, apartments or rooms of the rich. This act will demonstrate the clearest difference between the housing policies of a socialist state and those of the capitalist state, which sends its agents of repression (city marshals and the police) to throw poor people out on the street if they are unable to pay the rent, or even kill them if they resist, as the New York City police did to Eleanor Bumpers in the Bronx in 1984. There are approximately 30,000 evictions a year in New York City alone.

As a long-term policy, a genuine socialist state would continually build vast amounts of new housing for working people. This new construction would take place in all parts of the cities, suburbs and rural areas, breaking down the divisions into rich and poor neighborhoods that exist in all capitalist countries. And rents for all housing would be reduced to a low level, 3-4% of a worker's pay, as is the case today in the People's Socialist Republic of Albania (the only genuine socialist country in the world today). This is the way the housing crisis that has plagued the workers and other exploited classes throughout history will finally be resolved!

The crisis confronting the homeless has reached incredible proportions. Many homeless face the immediate prospect of death from disease, starvation and exposure as the winter months are approaching. Urgent measures are necessary to meet the elementary needs of these people. Such relief must be paid for at the expense of the millionaire capitalists. In order to protect the well-being of the homeless (and all of the working class) and to promote the class consciousness, organization and fighting capacity of the workers to emancipate themselves, the Revolutionary Political Organization (Marxist-Leninist) raises the following immediate demands. All progressive people concerned with improving the housing of the working class should fight along side us.

1) Cut military spending and use these funds to provide millions of public service jobs at union wages. Such a federal measure must be completely administered by the unemployed themselves.

2) Permanent housing (not shelters!) should be created on government-owned property. There are millions of units of abandoned apartments in city-owned building around the country. The state and federal governments also own thousands of buildings that are not used. These could easily be repaired and used to house homeless families and individuals who are now living in the streets. The facilities must not be converted into barracks. The administration of these establishments must be placed in the hands of the homeless residents.

3) Expand subsidized public housing. Since the economic downturn of the capitalist system in the early '70s, the amount of public housing that has been built has been negligible. And local governments have even taken to destroying housing projects that had been constructed earlier. A vast amount of new public housing is needed now to make up for the lack of such construction over the last 15 to 20 years.

4) Freeze all rents immediately. There must be no evictions or cutoff of utilities for inability to pay rent or mortgages or utility bills. Sky-rocketing rents have been one of the main causes of the growing population of homeless people, as workers find their income is insufficient to pay rent Also, there must be no eviction of squatters who have taken over empty buildings for housing

5) Raise the minimum wage to $8.00 an hour. With a minimum wage of $8.00 an hour, the lower-paid workers 'will have the means to pay for housing which is now denied to them.

6) A moratorium on housing demolition and co-op conversion in working class neighborhoods. Scores of thousands of people have been forced from their homes as low-income housing has been torn down and luxury housing built in its place.

Let no one think that demands such as these can be fulfilled easily. These are demands for reforms that are in the interest of all poor and working people. But they go against the interests of the rich, particularly in the real estate industry, the banks and the capitalist state. They can only be won, even partially, by determined, on-going struggle- by the masses of homeless and other working people. The ruling class can be forced to make concessions, but only when it is confronted by a growing and increasingly conscious movement.

The liberals and other reformists preach the opposite - that housing reforms can be won by delivering moral sermons to the real estate monopolists and their government. At a mass housing march in New York City in December 1988, Bishop Paul Moore of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine told the crowd that they should rely on Donald Trump and other billionaires, who created the housing crisis in the first place, to solve it. And Reverend Jesse Jackson simply put forth liberal platitudes like "You are homeless, but you are not voteless." Needless to say, despite the best intentions of the majority of the marchers, not one unit of housing for the homeless or other workers was built as a result. That is because class struggle by the workers against the capitalists is the only means to bring pressure to bear on them.

The above-mentioned demands can be won now, that is while the capitalist ruling class is in power. But the housing crisis can not be solved under capitalism. We have seen that the real estate interests, construction monopolies, the banks that provide financing, are only interested in making maximum profits, not in building housing to meet the needs of poor and working people. They will always find ways to take back or avoid concessions that have been made around housing, as around any other issue.

New York's rent control laws are an example. These were passed years ago as a concession to a militant workers' movement. But they have not stopped the tremendous increases in rents and co-op conversions that have taken place in recent years with the connivance of the real estate industry and state and local officials. Therefore all our energy must be directed at linking tile fight for improvements with the eventual fight for socialism in the U.S.

A successful struggle of the workers for their immediate' needs and for socialism requires that they be led by a genuine Marxist-Leninist party composed of the most devoted and conscious fighters from among their ranks. These Marxist-Leninists must win the backing of the masses of workers in the trade unions. They must ensure that the labor movement fights for the interests of all workers, including the homeless. The fight for the homeless must be centered in the trade unions. No other force is in a position to properly defend these interests in such a way as to promote the unity of the working class as a whole. Therefore, revolutionary workers must oppose the spread of liberal and reformist trends and organizations that sever the struggle of the homeless from the labor movement and hook it to the cart of the counter-revolutionary, anti-people, Democratic Party. Independent mass action of a united working class, and against all capitalist political parties, is the only path to victory.

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