On February 1, 1968, two African-American sanitation workers in Memphis, Echol Cole and Robert Walker, were crushed to death under their truck’s malfunctioning garbage compactor. Eleven days later, on February 12, their fellow African-American sanitation workers went on strike, calling attention to their low wages and poor working conditions, and catching the attention of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who traveled to Memphis to support the workers and eventually paid for that decision with his life. Dr. King’s support of the sanitation workers of Memphis teaches us that civil rights and economic justice are intrinsically linked. Regardless of the rights we have in law, if we are economically disadvantaged, we are second-class citizens.
Progressives have eagerly coalesced around a $15 minimum wage and universal access to healthcare. However, they have been slow to understand that the biggest challenges facing people of color and working people today in America’s largest cities are gentrification and displacement. Working and middle class residents, by the hundreds of thousands, are being priced out neighborhoods they have called home for generations. From New York to Los Angeles, and cities in between, millions of people are paying the majority of their income in rent or mortgage payments.
In the same way that we understand that we cannot depend on the marketplace to provide universal, quality, affordable healthcare, it has become obvious that the real estate marketplace is not able or willing to provide shelter for everyone who needs it. The situation has gotten so bad in some cities that middle class employees, such as teachers and nurses, cannot afford to live in the very communities where they work. The implications of the housing crisis are obvious. Homelessness is rampant; young working people cannot afford to leave their parents homes; people are doubling and tripling up; and evictions are all too common.
The state of California is a textbook example of the devastating impact of gentrification. For example, in this day and age of cities claiming spaces for tech hubs, California is no stranger to the impact of this concentration of wealth and high-tech talent on native residents who live and work outside the borders of the tech industry. In 2013, protestors in Oakland and San Francisco attacked tech-company shuttle buses to shed light on growing inequality and the exorbitant rise in rent, highlighting broader economic divides. Despite California's riches, its surplus of highly skilled people, and flourishing industries—including the tech sector—it is the poorest state in the Union because of the cost of living—and the highest cost is the price of housing. For many, the California dream is turning into an income inequality nightmare.
Everyone complains about homelessness and gentrification but precious little is being done about it. Instead, we are being force fed warmed over supply side, Reaganite solutions. Only this time, it is so-called progressives who tell us that building a huge amount of luxury housing will generate large revenues that will magically trickle down to the poor and working class. That is not how gentrification works. When you build a luxury tower in a neighborhood, everything around it rises, including rent and services. In other words, no matter how many Ferraris you build, people who can only afford a Kia will never become Ferrari owners.
The financial crisis taught us that banks can't regulate themselves; the Affordable Care Act, which did nothing to control what drug companies and insurers could charge, did not provide universal affordable healthcare; and without rent regulation and laws that favor the building of low income housing the current crisis will continue to get worse.
Most tenants have no protection against exorbitant rent increases and little protection against evictions. The so-called affordable housing industrial complex exists for the benefit of developers and produces a tiny percentage of the housing that is needed. To make matters worse, liberal politicians are enacting policies that give incentives to luxury developers at the expense of communities, while smaller cities, rust belt towns, and the poorest red-lined communities in the inner cities have no investment at all.
Real estate and developer interests dominate the Democratic Party at the local and state level. It is next to impossible to get anything passed if the party is in opposition. The recent failure of a bill in the overwhelmingly Democratic California legislature that would simply have given the control of rent regulation back to the cities where it resided until 1995, demonstrates the inordinate influence of the real estate industry.
We need a revolution akin to the one launched by Dr. King in 1968. We cannot allow America’s big cities to become luxury ghettoes. There needs to be a linking of arms across all communities to demand a universal right to shelter. The undue influence of real estate must be balanced with a unified movement that effectively organizes to contain unmitigated greed and educate people on the most effective ways to fight back.
Fronting for big real estate should be as radioactive as sticking up for tobacco companies. There are connections that must be exposed. The identities of those who prioritize profit over people must be shared with the families and individuals crushed under the weight of unaffordable housing. Our nation needs a vision of diverse, equitable, sustainable, cities that meet the needs of everyone. Now is the moment before everyone is priced out or the next financial crisis hits.
