Though homelessness has been increasing for over four decades, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought homeless and tenant’s rights organizers to the forefront of American politics, forcing politicians to address the issue in new ways. Minnesota Representative Ilhan Omar has worked with tenants rights organizations throughout the country to draft a plan to end evictions and provide mortgage relief to landlords. First introduced in April 2020 (to a hostile Congress), the bill was reintroduced in March of this year. In support of Omar’s Rent and Mortgage Cancellation Act, Washington Representative Pramila Jayapal told The Hill, “It is not enough to sit back and just hope that a patchwork of eviction moratoriums keeps families in their homes, we must cancel rent and mortgage payments during this crisis because housing is a human right, during a pandemic and always.”
Such efforts have pushed the President of the United States to address homelessness. Of Biden’s plan, Donald Whitehead, leader of the National Coalition for the Homeless, told The Seattle Times, “We haven’t seen an approach this comprehensive since the outset of modern homelessness.” With 640 billion dollars to halt evictions and assist with rent and affordable housing, Biden hopes to make homelessness an entitlement issue to be offered to “anyone who qualifies,” like food assistance.
Though such efforts to address homelessness are welcome, it’s important to remember that past efforts—such as shelter systems—have led to new problems such as crowded, risky, and unhealthy living conditions and systemic abuse, not unlike that in the prison system. The comparison to our government’s efforts to address hunger should also set off alarms. The International Monetary Fund’s ranking of food insecurity in the top 20 advanced economies ranks the United States last, rural communities suffering twice the food insecurity of urban populations, and minority groups suffering the worst hunger urban or rural.
Similarly, racial minorities are disproportionately represented among the homeless, with individuals, single-parent families, and veterans among the highest demographics. According to the nonprofit National Alliance to End Homelessness, modest gains in the fight against homelessness have not stopped the rise, which has increased significantly over the past decade. The group conservatively projects that COVID-19 will increase the overall demand by at least 400,000 new housing units. Eighty four percent of those currently living unsheltered also have health issues that make them more susceptible to the disease, and at least a third of the homeless population is over 50, with homelessness causing effects equivalent to accelerated age-related risk factors related to the pandemic.
The rise in homelessness directly parallels the rise in laborless production, and the homeless literally have no home in this system. Brutally thrown into conflict with private property, the homeless fight on the front lines of the new class. With constant downward pressure on our class as a whole, the homeless have long been the victims of the system’s most aggressive fascist measures, including not only the abuse associated with the shelter system but government “clean-up” sweeps destroying makeshift homes and personal property and robbing the homeless of even the most meager means of survival.
Homelessness is the direct result of an economy that can no longer meet the needs of the people, and we must recognize the struggle against homelessness as a desperate frontline battle between human needs and private property. The conflict will only escalate until our class unites to ensure the distribution of safe, secure homes to all who need them, and this will only come with a new system that places human rights first.
Published: March 31, 2021
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