[discuss-dan] Re: Buying versus Rent Strike in Denver

[allenbutcher@netzero.net]

Stan
I have three responses to your concern, but first, I think I heard 
recently that something like 65% of our population own their own 
homes, so that leaves millions of people paying rent or being 
homeless.

Now I don't really believe that the best thing to do is to carve up 
the Earth into little chunks of real estate and give everyone a piece 
to mortgage their life away to, or stack them up and have them 
mortgage their life away to condominium air space.  I believe that 
the right thing to do is to share the earth and its resources.  The 
question, of course, is how to do that.

The first step toward that, I think, is for those who want to help 
the 35% who can not buy property themselves, to acquire land and 
place it into community land trusts or other forms of intentional 
community (like collective households and cohousing communities), 
which are ways to share land.  My goal is to help people do this, and 
to live in such a community again myself.

The second thing that I want to say is that actually, more low-income 
people could afford to buy some property if they knew about the 
programs that exist to help them do so, and if they oriented their 
lives such that they could follow those programs.  For example, there 
are a lot of low-income people who will buy the most expensive car 
that they can and spend money on any number of other things, rather 
than be disciplined enough to stay focused upon saving money to buy a 
home.  Lots of people who make good money do this, too.  So in many 
cases people don't know what is the right thing to do (how to work 
within the system) with regard to buying a house, or simply don't do 
it even if they do know, for what ever reason.  The point is that 
there are programs to help low-income people, and my goal is to make 
that information more available.  For that I'm working on getting 
information together and ways to get it out, as best I can.  The 
mortgage brokerage I'm working with is partly owned by Hispanics who 
are successfully doing this outreach to low-income people of their 
community.  My focus is to point out that what individuals or 
individual families can not do alone, small groups can do together.  
I stated in another post that immigrant families often manage to do 
this, and so can other low-income people, but of course it takes 
time. 

Third, with regard to those people who do have lots of money and SUVs 
and so on, I think it is important to advocate forms of community 
that are appropriate to them.  Cohousing fits that bill.  My thought 
here is that intentional community is not just a way for poor people 
to work together in mutual aid.  Community is important to everyone, 
and the best way for the dominant culture to be able to accept low-
income communities, like community land trusts and collective 
households, is if people with money are also seen to choose 
community.  When people who have the choice to buy big houses in 
gated communities, instead choose to buy into cohousing developments, 
this is a powerful statement about the importance of community to 
people.  

I think we want to avoid the assumption that community is only for 
poor people.  Instead, we want to see community being recognized as a 
classless issue, as something that transcends class, in order to 
cause the idea of sharing to be accepted even among the rich.  People 
don't generally think of cohousing as revolutionary, but I think it 
has that potential.  Also, some poor or low-income people may need to 
see that people with money choose community, in order for they 
themselves to value the communitarian lifestyle.

And given these three points, I think that it is entirely appropriate 
for the Direct Action Network (not just here but everywhere) to focus 
upon this issue of housing and community, plus other issues of child 
and elder care, food, health, education and so on, because how we 
approach all of these mundane issues is relevant to the struggle 
against corporate power.  In short, capitalism atomizes society, 
breaking our social fabric into little exploitable pieces.  Building 
community makes it easier for people to practice mutual aid and be 
less dependent upon corporations, as well as to have the freedom to 
fight corporate power, while also showing that there is an 
alternative to consumerism and the competitive economy.

I'm repeating myself here, but the point is that none of this is 
possible if people continue to feel that they are helpless.  Also, I 
have to emphasize that the view that buying property is counter-
revolutionary is throwing out the baby with the bath water.  As I 
said before, finance and legal structures of ownership and such are 
tools.  They can be used to build community or to destroy community.  
For those who have money, that is their choice.  For those who don't 
have money there are still ways that they can work together.  If 
those who are relegated to the squats can build community among 
themselves, they will more likely be able to eventually take 
advantage of programs aimed at helping the disadvantaged improve 
their conditions, or to do so on their own.  I think there are 
community land trusts that helped people move out of squats.

My goal is to build community, whether it is among squatters, low-
income people, single-parents, or the middle or upper classes.  I 
have other activist goals as well, but this I think is most important.

And sure, rent strikes and rent control can help, but these are only 
short term fixes.  I'm looking for long term solutions, and community 
is the best I have to offer.
Allen


--- In discuss-dan@y..., Stan Wilson <odinswyrd@y...> wrote:
> Hey Y'all, First off, what the hell do rent strikes
> have to do with buying property?  For MANY people
> buying is not an option, that is why we rent.  Buying
> is the option of the the upper classes & yes private
> property along w/ the nation state are two of the
> biggest calamities to ever befall the planet & all her
> residents.  Squatting is an option but in Denver I've
> found nobody willing to do all the work to support
> squating.  that is because so many "activist" here are
> so full full of their typical middle class Amerikan
> values that they fear all they have to lose not
> realizing that for every risk they take poor people
> take a thousand more just by trying to get by.  The
> reason for a rent strike in denver is not so housing
> is more affotdable for the college degreed spoil off
> spring of Amerika's "baby Boomers" but because rents
> are TOO high and poor people can't afford to live in
> Denver.  Offering up buying to the poor is cruel,
> blind & stupid, of course I realize VERY FEW poor
> people ever see these arguements but the hypocracy,
> and that is what it is, of the discussion is why very
> few poor people ever see this list.  Get it together,
> if you want creative alternatives stop worrying about
> your bullshit bank account, mortage & SUV's and
> actually all that radical shit people talk. Stan
/


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