The difficulties of counting the homeless are well documented, but it is more than that which keeps us from gaining a clear picture of the problem. The official figures revolve around 600,000 Americans who are unhoused or seeking housing assistance on any given night, but that number lowballs a massive problem that faces most Americans. As we all know, many Americans live crowded together in housing only a group can afford. Many Americans live out of their cars; for all kinds of personal and financial reasons, homelessness is largely a hidden condition. It can stay that way, in part, because no one in power wants the American working class to see the problem as it is or see our relationship to the problem.
When homelessness first arose as a matter of national concern five decades ago, people used to talk about how many Americans lived “two paychecks from the street.” The California Hope Center recently found that one in seven community college students experienced homelessness while 55 percent were housing insecure. The U.S. Census reveals 3.7 million Americans are housing insecure. In 2021, a Charles Schwab study counted 59 percent of Americans as being only one paycheck from the street. That is 195 million Americans at risk of joining the ranks of 1.6 billion homeless worldwide.
The ruling class does not want us to see ourselves in those numbers. The rise in America’s homelessness parallels the increase in automation which, under capitalism, has steadily stripped our labor of value. Now, 3D printers alone could virtually solve our housing problem, but the ruling class media repeats the lie that we have been recovering since record housing foreclosures in 2007.
Meanwhile, homelessness kills more and more people each year. Every time we hear the yearly snapshots of a single night’s homeless, we should add 13,000 people who died in the streets that year. The average life expectancy for those unhoused is 50 years, almost 30 years lower than the national average.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development reports that the numbers of homeless grew in the last four years, in many areas by double-digit percentages. Once one of the most affordable places in America, the homeless population in Fresno, California has increased by as much as 43 percent since the onset of the pandemic. Overcrowded shelters, with high rates of abuse and disease transmission, have become even more deadly. The homeless in cities across America – from New York to Kansas City to Los Angeles – have had to fight for safer housing while cities continuously lift pandemic protocols. On the streets, homeless tent cities are regularly destroyed during sweeps. The homeless are on the front lines in the fight against American fascism.
The new class in America, our class, is the vast majority of people who are one crisis from the street if we are not already there. If we recognized our basis for unity, we would begin to understand our power. A shared understanding of reality, of the revolutionary processes at work, and of a vision of the communist society that is possible, could set us free. The fight for homes is a frontline struggle of this new class, the only class in human history capable of securing a sustainable future and a home where everyone can belong. RC
March/April 2022 Vol2. Ed2
This article originated in Rally, Comrades
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