“Things as They Ought to Be”

This piece originally appeared on Fran Quigley’s blog, Housing Is A Human Right

The Way Forward for Housing

A few recent scenes from eviction court:

· Felicia’s work hours are limited because her youngest child has serious physical limitations that make it hard for her to leave him with others. She is way behind on her $1100/month market-rate rent. Felicia (I am not using real names here) is eligible for federally-subsidized housing, but she is years away from getting her name called off the waiting list.

· Thomas works the 8PM-4AM shift at Taco Bell. He makes $13.50 an hour. He tells the judge and us that he is hoping to catch up on back rent for the apartment he and his eight-months-pregnant partner live in. Everyone wishes Thomas the best. But with his paycheck, it is going to be tough.

· Stacia and her kids have lived in the same rental home for nearly 10 years. A large corporation that recently bought the house ignored her calls to address the leaks, mold, and rodents. But, as soon as Stacia was late on her rent, the landlord sprung into action—to file for eviction.

Felicia, Thomas, and Stacia are just three of many client stories from the past few months. Those clients are a small portion of the 500 households facing eviction each week in our town of Indianapolis. And our city’s renters are a tiny share of the estimated 3.6 million households that faced eviction this year, and the seven million households that, per the Census Bureau, are behind on their rent. Like Felicia and virtually all of our clients, millions of those households are eligible for rent subsidies but do not receive them due to underfunding.

Meanwhile, we elected as President a third-generation landlord who is openly hostile to public housing.

How should we respond? Believe it or not, an 86 year-old statement from Franklin D. Roosevelt points the way: “Too many people who prate about saving democracy are really only interested in saving things as they were,” he said in 1938. “Democracy should concern itself also with things as they ought to be.”

“I am not talking mere idealism; I am expressing realistic necessity . . . (our) system must provide efficiently for distributing national resources and serving the welfare and happiness of all who live under it.”

Six years later, Roosevelt proposed a Second Bill of Rights, which featured the right to a decent home. The U.S. has not yet adopted that second bill of rights. But almost every other nation in the world has signed on to the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which ratified Roosevelt’s vision, including an enforceable human right to housing.

Saving Democracy Wasn’t Enough

There has been a lot of post-election discussion about the lessons to take from the Trump victory, including our own analysis here, “’The Rent is Too Damn High’ and the 2024 Election.” Writing in n+1, tenant organizer Charlie Dulik made a valuable contribution to that discussion. Noting the unprecedented 23% rent spikes under the Biden-Harris administration and reports that nearly a quarter of renters skip meals to make rent, Dulik points out that 75% of swing-state voters say housing costs are their top concern.

But Kamala Harris backed away from early promises to cap rents, despite strong voter support for rent control measures. Instead, her campaign focused more on abstract messaging about the Trump threat to democracy. Dulik is among the many who were unimpressed. “Why vote for a candidate promising to save democracy if you don’t believe they can save the roof over your head?” he asks.

The threat to democracy may not have resonated with voters, but pocketbook issues certainly did. Writing in Jacobin, Paul Prescod points out that many were surprised that working class voters voted for Trump. Less surprising is that those same voters supported tangible economic reforms. Alaska voters passed a minimum wage increase. So did Missouri. Arizona voters rejected a proposal to lower the tipped workers minimum wage. Alaska, Missouri, and Nebraska voters all passed requirements for employers to provide paid sick leave.

Trump won all of those states.

More housing-specific proposals are popular, too. In addition to 70% of voters supporting rent control, polling shows that protections for tenants and the expansion of public housing have wide support. Measures to increase funding for affordable housing win on ballots across the country.

We know that Trump getting working-class votes won’t translate to him or the Republican Congress pushing for positive reforms for housing. But others will be.

As we have written here, the Green New Deal for Public Housing Act, sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, would devote up to $234 billion to renovate U.S. public housing and build new units The National Tenants Bill of Rights, drafted by the Tenant Union Federation, the National Housing Law Project and the National Low Income Housing Coalition, would require evictions to be for just cause only, prohibit discriminatory and expensive rental applications, and protect tenants’ right to organize.

Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Homes for All Act proposes to devote a full $1 trillion to build over 10 million public and permanently affordable housing units. Rent control proposals are active across the nation. So are efforts to guarantee counsel for all who face eviction.

Social movements go through dark periods before one day breaking through for real reform—sometimes with surprising, dramatic speed. Felicia, Thomas, Stacia, and the millions of others engaged in the struggle to keep a safe roof over their heads can’t afford for us to stop pushing for a better world. A world where things are as they ought to be.