Greedy Real Estate Developers Create Affordable Housing Shortage, Inflate Rents
by Gabriel Mangano
While the super rich rattle on about how wonderful the economy is doing, for the working class there is nothing but increasing poverty, misery, and insecurity. A new study by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) shows that nowhere in the United States can a person working a full-time job minimum wage job afford a two-bedroom apartment.
At $7.25 an hour and with national and state data on rental prices, researchers calculated that the average worker would have to work 122 hours a week (17 + hours a day, seven days a week) at the national fair market rent. Even at the average renter’s hourly wage of $16.88, in only 11% of US counties can a renter afford a two-bedroom apartment.
In New Orleans, things are even worse. A New Orleans/Jefferson Parish worker must make $19.15 an hour to afford a two-bedroom apartment. For minimum wage earners, the outlook is bleak. A minimum wage worker must work 92 hours, that’s 2.3 full time jobs, to afford a two bed-room apartment. In fact, a minimum wage worker has to work almost 80 hours to afford even a one-bedroom. If a minimum wage worker were to rent a two bedroom without paying more than 30% of their income as “recommended” by bourgeois economists, she would have to find an apartment that rented for $377 a month.
While short-term rentals like Airbnb get much of the blame for the housing crisis, even more significant is what kind of housing is being built. Between 2005-15, the number of homes renting for more than $2,000 increased by 97% while homes renting for less than $800 declined by 2%. Of over 6.7 million units added in that time, there were 260,000 less affordable units. Even in New Orleans, there is a 20% vacancy rate while many of the 185,000-renter families scuffle to find an affordable place to live.
The capitalists have created the affordable housing crisis as another way to exploit the workers. The tiny percentage of set asides of so-called affordable units helps only a few and often come with time limits that force long time renters into the streets when their “affordable unit” expires. And while Section 8 affords some “lottery winners” with mostly decent housing it is not available to all. There are thousands of people who qualify for Section 8 but the program is shut off to us. To make it all worse, Ben Carson, Secretary of HUD has proposed raising the rents of those in HUD housing by 20% which will mean evictions and increased hunger and deprivation.
Longstanding homeowners, especially Black and older homeowners, are being forced out of homes by soaring property taxes caused by gentrification which is supported by the city’s mayor and city council.
We need a united Tenants movement for rent control and take overs of abandoned properties for people, not profit. There is abundant housing available and plenty of abandoned units that could be rehabilitated. There are thousands of people who could do that work. While only socialism, which puts the workers in control, will bring a total end to homelessness and even rent all together, we can unite now as tenants to wage a struggle to push back against these insatiable profiteers.