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#the rent's too damned high

mostlysignssomeportents · 5 months

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Housing is a labor issue

There's a reason Reagan declared war on unions before he declared war on everything else – environmental protection, health care, consumer rights, financial regulation. Unions are how working people fight for a better world for all of us. They're how everyday people come together to resist oligarchy, extraction and exploitation.

Take the 2019 LA teachers' strike. As Jane McAlevey writes in A Collective Bargain, the LA teachers didn't just win higher pay for their members! They also demanded (and got) an end to immigration sweeps of parents waiting for their kids at the school gate; a guarantee of green space near every public school in the city; and on-site immigration counselors in LA schools:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/23/a-collective-bargain/

Unionization is enjoying an historic renaissance. The Hot Labor Summer transitioned to an Eternal Labor September, and it's still going strong, with UAW president Shawn Fain celebrating his members victory over the Big Three automakers by calling for a 2028 general strike:

https://www.teenvogue.com/story/uaw-general-strike-no-class

The rising labor movement has powerful allies in the Biden Administration. NLRB general counsel Jennifer Abruzzo is systematically gutting the "union avoidance" playbook. She's banned the use of temp-work app blacklists that force workers to cross picket lines:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/30/computer-says-scab/#instawork

She's changed the penalty for bosses who violate labor law during union drives. It used to be the boss would pay a fine, which was an easy price to pay in exchange for killing your workers' union. Now, the penalty is automatic recognition of the union:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/06/goons-ginks-and-company-finks/#if-blood-be-the-price-of-your-cursed-wealth

And while the law doesn't allow Abruzzo to impose a contract on companies that refuse to bargain their unions, she's set to force those companies to honor other employers' union contracts until they agree to a contract with their own workers:

https://onlabor.org/gc-abruzzo-just-asked-the-nlrb-to-overturn-ex-cell-o-heres-why-that-matters/

She's also nuking TRAPs, the deals that force workers to repay their employers for their "training expenses" if they have the audacity to quit and get a better job somewhere else:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/14/prop-22-never-again/#norms-code-laws-markets

(As with every aspect of the Biden White House, its labor policy is contradictory and self-defeating, with other Biden appointees working to smash worker power, including when Biden broke the railworkers' strike:)

https://pluralistic.net/2023/09/18/co-determination/#now-make-me-do-it

A surging labor movement opens up all kinds of possibilities for a better world. Writing for the Law and Political Economy Project, UNITE Here attorney Zoe Tucker makes the case for unions as a way out of America's brutal housing crisis:

https://lpeproject.org/blog/why-unions-should-join-the-housing-fight/

She describes how low-waged LA hotel workers have been pushed out of neighborhoods close to their jobs, with UNITE Here members commuting three hours in each direction, starting their work-days at 3AM in order to clock in on time:

https://twitter.com/MorePerfectUS/status/1669088899769987079

UNITE Here members are striking against 50 hotels in LA and Orange County, and their demands include significant cost-of-living raises. But more money won't give them back the time they give up to those bruising daily commutes. For that, unions need to make housing itself a demand.

As Tucker writes, most workers are tenants and vice-versa. What's more, bad landlords are apt to be bad bosses, too. Stepan Kazaryan, the same guy who owns the strip club whose conditions were so bad that it prompted the creation of Equity Strippers NoHo, the first strippers' union in a generation, is also a shitty landlord whose tenants went on a rent-strike:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/20/the-missing-links/#plunderphonics

So it was only natural that Kazaryan's tenants walked the picket line with the Equity Stripper Noho workers:

https://twitter.com/glendaletenants/status/1733290276599570736?s=46

While scumbag bosses/evil landlords like Kazaryan deal out misery retail, one apartment building at a time, the wholesale destruction of workers' lives comes from private equity giants who are the most prolific source of TRAPs, robo-scabbing apps, illegal union busting, and indefinite contract delays – and these are the very same PE firms that are buying up millions of single-family homes and turning them into slums:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/08/wall-street-landlords/#the-new-slumlords

Tucker's point is that when a worker clocks out of their bad job, commutes home for three hours, and gets back to their black-mold-saturated, overpriced apartment to find a notice of a new junk fee (like a surcharge for paying your rent in cash, by check, or by direct payment), they're fighting the very same corporations.

Unions who defend their workers' right to shelter do every tenant a service. A coalition of LA unions succeeded in passing Measure ULA, which uses a surcharge on real estate transactions over $5m to fund "the largest municipal housing program in the country":

https://unitedtohousela.com/app/uploads/2022/05/LA_City_Affordable_Housing_Petition_H.pdf

LA unions are fighting for rules to limit Airbnbs and other platforms that transform the city's rental stock into illegal, unlicensed hotels:

https://upgo.lab.mcgill.ca/publication/strs-in-los-angeles-2022/Wachsmuth_LA_2022.pdf

And the hotel workers organized under UNITE Here are fighting their own employers: the hoteliers who are aggressively buying up residences, evicting their long-term tenants, tearing down the building and putting up a luxury hotel. They got LA council to pass a law requiring hotels to build new housing to replace any residences they displace:

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2023-11-28/airbnb-operators-would-need-police-permit-in-l-a-under-proposed-law

UNITE Here is bargaining for a per-room hotel surcharge to fund housing specifically for hotel workers, so the people who change the sheets and clean the toilets don't have to waste six hours a day commuting to do so.

Labor unions and tenant unions have a long history of collaboration in the USA. NYC's first housing coop was midwifed by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in 1927. The Penn South coop was created by the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union. The 1949 Federal Housing Act passed after American unions pushed hard for it:

http://www.peterdreier.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Labors-Love-Lost.pdf

It goes both ways. Strong unions can create sound housing – and precarious housing makes unions weaker. Remember during the Hollywood writers' strike, when an anonymous studio ghoul told the press the plans was to "allow things to drag on until union members start losing their apartments and losing their houses?"

Vienna has the most successful housing in any major city in the world. It's the city where people of every income and background live in comfort without being rent-burdened and without worry about eviction, mold, or leaks. That's the legacy of Red Vienna, the Austrian period of Social Democratic Workers' Party rule and built vast tracts of high-quality public housing. The system was so robust that it rebounded after World War II and continues to this day:

https://www.politico.eu/article/vienna-social-housing-architecture-austria-stigma/

Today, the rest of the world is mired in a terrible housing crisis. It's not merely that the rent's too damned high (though it is) – housing precarity is driving dangerous political instability:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/06/the-rents-too-damned-high/

Turning the human necessity of shelter into a market commodity is a failure. The economic orthodoxy that insists that public housing, rent control, and high-density zoning will lead to less housing has failed. rent control works:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/16/mortgages-are-rent-control/#housing-is-a-human-right-not-an-asset

Leaving housing to the market only produces losers. If you have the bad luck to invest everything you have into a home in a city that contracts, you're wiped out. If you have the bad luck into invest everything into a home in a "superstar city" where prices go up, you also lose, because your city becomes uninhabitable and your children can't afford to live there:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/27/lethal-dysfunction/#yimby

A strong labor movement is the best chance we have for breaking the housing deadlock. And housing is just for starters. Labor is the key to opening every frozen-in-place dysfunction. Take care work: the aging, increasingly chronically ill American population is being tortured and murdered by private equity hospices, long-term care facilities and health services that have been rolled up by the same private equity firms that destroyed work and housing:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

In her interview with Capital & Main's Jessica Goodheart, National Domestic Workers Alliance president Ai-jen Poo describes how making things better for care workers will make things better for everyone:

https://prospect.org/labor/2023-12-13-labor-leader-ai-jen-poo-interview/

Care work is a "triple dignity investment": first, it makes life better for the worker (most often a woman of color), then, it allows family members of people who need care to move into higher paid work; and of course, it makes life better for people who need care: "It delivers human potential and agency. It delivers a future workforce. It delivers quality of life."

The failure to fund care work is a massive driver of inequality. America's sole federal public provision for care is Medicaid, which only kicks in after a family it totally impoverished. Funding care with tax increases polls high with both Democrats and Republicans, making it good politics:

https://www.dataforprogress.org/blog/2021/4/7/voters-support-investing-in-the-care-economy

Congress stripped many of the care provisions from Build Back Better, missing a chance for an "unprecedented, transformational investment in care." But the administrative agencies picked up where Congress failed, following a detailed executive order that identifies existing, previously unused powers to improve care in America. The EO "expands access to care, supports family caregivers and improves wages and conditions for the workforce":

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-actions/2023/04/18/executive-order-on-increasing-access-to-high-quality-care-and-supporting-caregivers/

States are also filling the void. Washington just created a long-term care benefit:

https://apnews.com/article/washington-long-term-care-tax-disability-cb54b04b025223dbdba7199db1d254e4

New Mexicans passed a ballot initiative that establishes permanent funding for child care:

https://www.cwla.org/new-mexico-votes-for-child-care/

New York care workers won a $3/hour across the board raise:

https://inequality.org/great-divide/new-york-budget-fair-pay-home-care/

The fight is being led by women of color, and they're kicking ass – and they're doing it through their unions. Worker power is the foundation that we build a better world upon, and it's surging.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/12/13/i-want-a-roof-over-my-head/#and-bread-on-the-table

#pluralistic #labor #hot labor summer #eternal labor september #jane mcalevey #los angeles #weaponized shelter #housing #airbnb #equity strip noho #tenants unions #red vienna #jennifer abruzzo #nlrb #the rent's too damned high

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odinsblog · 8 months

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The rent is too damn high!

#politics #housing #affordable housing #living wages #rent #the rent is too damn high #wages vs rents #economics

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continent-of-wild-endeavor · 5 months

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Scrolling fb marketplace & came across - is that...? Yeah, that is a shed that somebody "finished" & now they're renting it out like it's a real house. Smh.

#converting a shed for yourself to live in is one thing #a fun moneysaving diy thing!#renting it to others for TWELVE HUNDRED AMERICAN DOLLARS?!??#that is another eviller thing #real estate #the rent is too damn high

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bensigas · 1 year

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Did this Landlords Are Leeches design, for fun. You can get it here if you’re interested: https://society6.com/art/landlords-are-leeches8284119 https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/44995877-landlords-are-leeches?store_id=2389831

#leeches #landlords are leeches #landlords #rent #rent is too damn high #socialism #socialist #fuck capitalism #but I still need to pay my bills

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aformerghost · 9 days

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Looking up the numbers on how much it takes to live alone in my area is very disheartening. I mean $53 an hour or over $60,000 annually to afford a 1 bedroom apartment? So everyone has to settle for toxic or awkward living situations just to exist down here wow okay makes a lot more sense now.

#shitpost #cost of living #housing cost #california #california housing #renting #rent is too damn high #meme #lol #funny #lmao #mental health #relatable memes #life stuff #roommates #renting a room #thoughts

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bitchesgetriches · 1 year

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The Rent Is Too Damn High: The Affordable Housing Crisis, Explained

Keep reading.

If you liked this article, join our Patreon!

#rent #the rent is too damn high #affordable housing #affordable housing crisis #eviction

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mostlysignssomeportents · 10 months

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Why are so many Californians homeless?

12% of Americans live in California — but 30% of homeless Americans, and 50% of unsheltered Americans, call California “home.” This is the source of endless schadenfreude from “red state” partisans, and is often waved as proof of the failure of liberal policies. But the real story is both more complicated — and simpler.

UCSF’s Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative’s “California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness” is the largest, best study of homelessness in California in some 30 years:

https://homelessness.ucsf.edu/our-impact/our-studies/california-statewide-study-people-experiencing-homelessness

Between Oct 2021 and Nov 2022, researchers surveyed a representative sample of 3,198 people, and conducted in-depth interviews with 365 more. They concluded that, contrary to popular folk-stories about “homeless migration” by out-of-staters seeking an easy life on California’s streets, “people experiencing homelessness in California are Californian.” Nine tenths of respondents were already living in California when they lost their housing.

It’s also not true that homeless people move to LA or San Francisco from out of town: three quarters of participants live in the same county they were living in when they lost their homes.

So California’s unsheltered and homeless people are Californians. They’re our neighbors. They are disproportionately racialized — 26% are Black, 12% are First Nations, and 35% are Latino. They are older: their median age is 47. They’ve been homeless for a long, long time: the median duration of homelessness is 22 months, and 36% of respondents were “chronically homeless.”

They are survivors of violence: 72% of them have experienced violent assaults in their lives; 24% have experienced sexual violence (that number goes up to 43% for cis women, and 74% for trans and nonbinary people).

They’re sick. 60% have a chronic illness. More than a third have some health condition that limits their daily living. 22% have a mobility limitation.

They’re also pregnant. A quarter of the participants who were assigned female at birth had been pregnant during their current episode of homelessness.

66% are experiencing mental illness. 48% have serious depression, 51% have anxiety, 37% have trouble concentrating, and 12% experience hallucinations.

Only 9% have received any mental health counseling.

They take drugs — but at fairly low levels. 31% take meth regularly. 11% take opioids. 16% binge drink.

They are in trouble with the law and also at risk of being victims of criminal violence. A third have been to jail at least once during their current homeless episode. 38% have been assaulted while homeless (10% of homeless people surveyed experienced sexual violence).

So how did they end up homeless? It’s depressingly easy.

It starts with getting evicted. For leaseholders in the survey, the median amount of notice they had that they would lose their homes is ten days. For non-leaseholders, the median amount of notice was less than one day.

Homeless people are poor before they become homeless. Many people’s last home was a “non-leaseholder” arrangement — they were people who lost their rented homes and moved in with family or friends. For these people, the median wage in the six months before they lost their homes was $950/month. While 43% of non-leaseholders weren’t paying any rent, the remainder were paying a median rent of $450/month. Non-leaseholders have no legal rights, and often lived in “substandard and overcrowded conditions.”

For leaseholders, the median monthly income before losing their homes was $1400/month — but their median rent was $700/month.

When a leaseholder loses their home, the cause is usually economic — they can’t afford the rent. When a non-leaseholder loses their home, the cause is usually social — a conflict within the home or “not wanting to impose.”

People about to lose their homes turn to family and friends for help, but not for-profit or government agencies devoted to helping people in their situation. 70% of survey respondents believed they could have avoided homeless with a one-time cash payment of $5,000-$10,000. 90% say a Housing Choice Voucher would have kept them from becoming homeless.

20% of people who become homeless say it was because they lost some or all of their income — often because their car broke down or got towed and they could no longer get to work. Once homeless, most survey respondents seek work — but are unable to find it, due to age, lack of transportation, disability and lack of housing.

What can we do about this? 90% of respondents say the biggest barrier to finding a home is housing costs. Half say their bad credit makes it even harder to find a rental, while a third say their criminal records also get in the way. Half also say that all the affordable housing is unsafe, or too far from their communities or care providers.

The authors have a suite of policy recommendations. For starters, we can increase homelessness prevention by giving financial support and legal aid to people facing eviction. These can be offered at “service settings” like domestic violence services, and at “institutional exits” from jail and prison. We can also make it harder to evict people.

We can expand “low barrier” access to mental heath and addiction care. We can offer training and transportation support to people in precarious economic situations, as well as help in navigating the process to get benefits.

We can offer more services to people in unsheltered settings, and embrace a racial equity approach that recognizes the racialized nature of homelessness.

And finally: we can increase the availability of housing vouchers, and the stock of affordable housing.

This last one is long overdue. America treats housing as an asset rather than a human right, creating a world of haves and have-nots. The haves are dedicated to increasing the value of their assets by restricting the supply, and by reducing the protections offered to tenants (the more a landlord can extract from tenants, the more all houses are worth, because every time one goes up for sale the bidding includes landlords who are factoring in their ability to milk flush tenants and evict broke ones):

https://gen.medium.com/the-rents-too-damned-high-520f958d5ec5

In California, the meager supply of low-income housing has been gobbled up by Airbnb, and also by unscrupulous landlords who illegally convert their low-income housing into boutique hotels, with no fear of punishment from toothless, gutless enforcers:

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-la-failed-stop-landlords-turning-low-cost-housing-hotels

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/12/because-its-too-expensive/#rents-too-damned-high

[Image ID: A homeless person's tent under a freeway underpass. From it emerges the bear from the California state flag.]

Image: Wonderlane (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/71401718@N00/34328251571

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

#pluralistic #san francisco #calpoli #california #scholarship #the rent's too damned high #homelessness #la #weaponized shelter #cash transfers #race

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ehgood-enough · 6 months

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My landlord just upped my rent by the most he ever has because of “inflation” wtf inflation doesn’t change the cost of your mortgage.

Water rate hasn’t gone up.

Since I’ve been renting here he’s gone from working a very busy full time job and driving an old little Mazda and living in house down the street to early retirement, moved to one of the richer parts of town in a huge house and driving an Audi. Fucking “inflation” my ass

Mind you I don’t have a functioning sink in my bathroom and haven’t in over a decade. My fridge that he was totally going to replace after I moved in is still sitting in my kitchen with busted shelves and either being too cold or too warm no middle ground. Windows that don’t close all the way that he was totally going to replace ? Yep still not done just like the fridge over a decade later

I could go on and on. He’s literally fixed one thing the entire time I lived here. Replaced a toilet that had been leaking for I think 3-4 years possibly longer. I kept mentioning it but he kept saying oh ok he’ll get to it but didn’t bother until it became a serious issue

But yeah I can’t really afford to move so…..

But what an asshole move to raise the rent at the start of heating season because I can really afford more rent and the outrageous costs for heating that have gone up like mad

And of course I was just finally feeling like life had become somewhat stable for me heading towards better. Every fucking time I feel ok there’s something that ruins it

#fuck landlords #landlords #rent is theft #the rent is too damn high #eat the rich #guess I’m freezing to death this winter #seriously I could barely afford to keep it 60F inside last winter I don’t know what I’m going to do #so depressing #it’s 54F inside right now because I can’t afford the heat this early #whining #i’m so miserable

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nutzo0001 · 1 month

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Friend need help:

In just 60 days we will be forced to leave our home. Rent prices in California has made it very very hard to find a new place despite our efforts. Owning this house is out of reach which is very depressing since my parents have worked countless years to keep this roof over our heads just for it to be taken away.

$1,495 USD raised of $5,600 goal

Finding a home that truly fits our needs has been a struggle, and planning for the future has caused us stress. But we're staying positive. We're working hard to save money and protect my nephews from this situation. Recently, our landlord offered to sell us the house we're currently in. It's tough right now, as we're barely making ends meet, but we're exploring options like seller financing or rent-to-own deals. House hunting has become monotonous, with unresponsive listings and deceptive schemes. It's not easy, especially with little kids, to find an apartment where noise isn't an issue. However, we believe things will work out. The support from our community has been incredible, and we're grateful for every dollar we receive. Though we know there's still a long road ahead, we will remain hopeful.

#california #rent #home #community #help #family in need #fundraser #lake forest #It's depressing #California housing #Housing crisis #Rent is too damn high

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buttclench-ryugazaki · 4 months

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"idolish7 depicts realistic problems within the entertainment industry and the harsh toll it takes on the people desperately trying to make a living in the business" yeah okay i see that

"in idolish7 three young adults move in together as roommates because they cannot afford to rent individually" HOLY SHIT THEY JUST LIKE ME FR????

#i feel like i never see rent as a legitimate problem in anime unless the show is specifically about people living in poverty #and this! is really fucking refreshing to see! the cost of living IS too damn high!#idolish7 #i7 trigger

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scretladyspider · 1 year

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🚨Please stop scrolling — Mutual Aid Request 🚨

I started a new job this week! Yay!!!!!

However I need some help. You see between now & when I get paid, I don’t have any source of income for things like bills and food that can’t be put off.

I need $300 this month for help with expenses that I can’t postpone until after I get paid.

(Originally it was higher, but Twitter helped me get a little over halfway there. I forgot to post here too for a bit. I’m putting off everything that I can afford to until my first paycheck, which should be at the end of the month.)

CashApp - secretladyspider

venmo - secretladyspider

PayPal

Please reblog!

If more people see it, there’s a better chance someone who can help even a smidge will see it too. That’s why shares matter. So if nothing else, please reblog! It makes a difference, I promise.

Thank you for your help as I get back on my feet. 💛

#mutual funds #mutual aid #mutual aid request #capitalism #rent is too damn high #cost of living #food #text #fundrasier #gofundme #please help #please boost #crowd funding

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