What comes to mind when thinking of public housing? Is it Cabrini-Green or Bronx style public housing with all its 1970, racist, graffiti-ridden connotations? Or perhaps, for the cosmopolitan set, Scandinavian (read “white”) public housing, complete with kindergartens, manicured lawns, functional public transportation, and strong state support?
What America has is a patchwork system of means-tested, scant, formal public housing owned by the state. It has Section 8, whose vouchers go to subsidize private interests and owners. The only thing blocking the U.S. from getting serious about helping its people is the lock on the state and federal legislatures, whose owners, i.e. campaign donors, scream in pain at the very thought of their gravy train coming to an end.
Make no mistake, providing public housing will end their gravy train. No longer will property owners and investors be able to kick little old ladies, grown men and women, and the disabled out onto the street at their own discretion as if lifted out of a page from a Charles Dickens novel. No longer will American workers be forced to choose between eating or heating their residences. No longer will Americans walk around despondent, aware that their government’s only interest is to keep them from organizing and burning down the offices of their property managers, social service agencies, and centers of government. No longer will Americans look at every other person as a competitor or as someone responsible for their own misfortune.
When the state provides clean, safe, and large-scale public housing at little or no cost for all Americans, men, women, married couples, single individuals, the sick, the healthy, the infirm, alcoholics, felons, and from all walks of life, that is when you can expect all the social indicators of a collapsing society to reverse.
Until then, we can expect the usual suspects to continue their macabre parade down our main streets: decreased life spans, tents on the sidewalk in front of your house, mass shootings, suicides, teen pregnancies, hunger, ill health, bankruptcies, mass incarceration, and failing schools.
We live in a new era now. Gone are the days of lifelong employment; gone are the days of a high school graduate being able to buy a house fairly soon out of high school; gone are the days of trading your car in every two years for a new one; gone are the days of defined benefit pensions; gone are the days of nutritious, inexpensive food; gone are the days of responsive government.
Instead, we now live in an economy characterized by austerity budgets, high deficits, record public borrowing, throw-away jobs, and failing infrastructure. So yes, it’s time to consider actual socialism. We can begin by funding and building large-scale, safe, public housing. After that, let’s work on Medicare for all.
Shanti Harris
San Luis Obispo
This article appears in Apr 20-30, 2023.
Not sure how many conservatives read New Times other than John Donegan, but they all just ran for their AR15s when you used the word *GASP* socialism. Never mind that all the ACA, food assistance programs and Medicare payments are dwarfed by the hundreds of billions in corporate subsidies, their Calvinist cruelty just can’t stomach the thought of help for the little guy, especially if they are ‘not like us.’ In fact, their fear of the Stalinism that they ignorantly equate with democratic socialism has been realized in our late-stage capitalism: ALEC is our politburo and corporate lobbyists are our apparatchiks.
Gosh, what a wonderful world! We could drink or drug ourselves into a stupor, or commit felonies, or just lapse into comfortable indolence, secure in the knowledge that we will be taken care of, with free housing, food, medical care, etc.. Of course, it might be difficult to find anyone willing to serve our morning coffee at Starbucks, or to generate the electricity to power our Teslas, because those are jobs which can be unpleasant, and which few people do just for the fun of it. With all of our workforce enjoying their new leisure, the government will need to conscript people to do these jobs, and we will encounter the pleasant situation of the government choosing careers for us and assigning us to jobs. What fun!
It is easy to paint pretty pictures of our European allies living under socialism but the truth is far from perfect.
First of all, those nations were ravaged by WW II and their governments were forced to provide for civilians alongside soldiers and veterans to rebuild their countries. Counties with cities without shops to provide jobs and food had to use funds granted by other countries to rebuild and provide jobs for those able to work. The U.S. even gave money to Gemany and Japan as well as muc of western Europe. Those with savings helped those in need, individuals and countires combined.
Of course, once in place, how do you back up and redesign a society and it’s government? Just as easily as redesigning the US and it’s Constitutional Republic into a Socialist country. Gradually and, unfortunately, that is happening here and there already because again there is no other choice. Change or Collapse under the weight of your obligations.
Many of those idealized counrties are facing absolute bankruptcy today. They are being forced to reconsider and reconstruct their socialism to survive.
And you want to join them? The U.S. already faces a failure of Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid and our natioanl debt is unsustainaby being passed on to ur grandchildren.
It is not greedy landlords. Or evil Capitalists. It is over-regulated, non-modernized building codes and restrictive zoning by cities and counties alongside state and nattionally mandated rules and regulations.
You see, as time marches on, we learn more about safe buildings and we make more rules on top of old rules often ignoring newer products that might reduce costs overall. We destroy rather than rehabilitate the old in favor of the new and costs rise.
There are solutions that do not require remaking the U,S. into a socialist country.
We simply need to think and innovate to find them.
Be open to ideas thet preserve our freedoms that resonate around the world.
Before it is too late!