By J.R.
Are you living in an “underinvested neighborhood”? Would it be easier to pay the bills and make the rent if only your neighborhood were “revitalized”? Workers know better than to be duped by these catchwords and empty phrases. After all, they can do the math for themselves: since 2000, rents in New Orleans have increased 50 percent while income has increased a mere 2 percent.
It turns out that however much the New Orleans Redevelopment Authority spends ($1.5 million) on the ‘urgent’ task of Façade RENEWals, workers cannot be persuaded that their housing has become any more affordable. But who even pretends that NORA’s sponsorship of a new Whole Foods is a gift to the public—-much less to workers? No doubt the neighborhood has seen a rise in property values but just how many of Whole Foods’ “Team Members” own their own homes?
And among the 30,000 households waiting to redeem their section 8 vouchers, who believes that their interests come before those of the real estate developers and landlords with whom HANO does their business? How many more millions of dollars in tax credits will the public be required to sacrifice in order to convince the developers and their investors to ‘meet demand’?
Once housing comes under the control of the working majority, such absurdities—such ’public agencies’— will seem an ugly joke of the past. Until such control is achieved, workers should remind each other that they are the public that the state pretends to serve. Workers must pursue their interests in conflict with the interests of their exploiters. Safe and adequate housing is chief among workers’ needs. Working people should no longer be content with the ‘affordable housing’ doled out in ever smaller proportion to the riches afforded to real estate capital.
Our simple demand amounts to this: homes in place of real estate or in other words, the welfare of the people in place of bourgeois property.