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Capitalism causes homelessness.
A thread. 1/14
A thread. 1/14
I tend to get a lot of pushback when I say this, but it’s basic economics. In our system, we purchase housing on a market. That market sets prices according to supply and demand.
2/14
2/14
Sometimes the supply is too low, or the demand is too high, and the price rises above what people can afford. When that happens, they become homeless.
3/14
3/14
Don’t believe me? Ask *the Trump White House,* which put together this handy graph:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/The-State-of-Homelessness-in-America.pdf
4/14
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/The-State-of-Homelessness-in-America.pdf
4/14
This is basic economics, folks. Capitalism commodifies *everything,* including the basic necessities of life. If you can’t afford them, then you’re shit out of luck, through absolutely no fault of your own.
5/14
5/14
Homelessness is a product of capitalism working exactly the way it’s supposed to. Recently, a senate staffer told a woman her inability to afford cancer treatments is like his inability to afford a dress shirt—both just priced out of the market, oh well. Same principle.
6/14 https://twitter.com/kristenclarkejd/status/1303661449051598848
6/14 https://twitter.com/kristenclarkejd/status/1303661449051598848
Just as there are some people with jobs who can’t afford yachts, some with jobs who can’t afford homes. This isn’t rocket science. This is basic capitalist economics, working the way it’s supposed to. Doesn’t matter if you die without housing.
7/14 https://parade.com/643064/beckyhughes/working-homeless-population-grows-in-cities-across-the-u-s/
7/14 https://parade.com/643064/beckyhughes/working-homeless-population-grows-in-cities-across-the-u-s/
This is, of course, sociopathic. It runs against our human nature to be this callous. So how do you convince people to accept a system like this?
8/14
8/14
You convince them that homelessness is not simply the natural consequence of leaving housing to the vagaries of the market, and instead blame personal failings: drug abuse, mental illness, laziness, etc.
9/14
9/14
We have a vast ideological apparatus at work to constantly (re)convince people that homelessness is the fault of the homeless and not of our economic system. This reached its pinnacle with Trump, who publicly called the homeless “filth.”
10/14
10/14
Trump has openly blamed homelessness on mental illness and personal choice. Most propaganda is more subtle than this, but serves the same function: convincing people the problem is at once too vast and too granular to fix.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Trump-Carlson-interview-filth-San-Francisco-14067485.php
11/14
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Trump-Carlson-interview-filth-San-Francisco-14067485.php
11/14
This is an *ideological* project, what Gramsci called cultural hegemony: our elites using every avenue available to them to convince us to adopt their vision of homelessness.
12/14
12/14
But we could easily fix it. We have more than enough houses for everyone. We could easily end homelessness by allocating those houses through non-market mechanisms.
https://sf.curbed.com/2019/12/3/20993251/san-francisco-bay-area-vacant-homes-per-homeless-count
13/14
https://sf.curbed.com/2019/12/3/20993251/san-francisco-bay-area-vacant-homes-per-homeless-count
13/14
The easiest way to end homelessness is to give the homeless homes. It sounds counterintuitive if and only if you’ve internalized elite messaging that homelessness is caused by the failings and shortcomings of the homeless themselves.
14/14 https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housing-help-solutions
14/14 https://www.vox.com/2014/5/30/5764096/homeless-shelter-housing-help-solutions
PS As an addendum, the mayor of LA just comes right out and admits it: when the economy is doing “well,” there are more dollars chasing housing. Demand goes up and homelessness goes with it. https://twitter.com/AngryYuca/status/1307550996256571392
Garcetti frames this as a natural and inevitable result, as if we’re not human beings with a choice about how we allocate housing. It’s a policy choice to allocate housing solely through markets. *Homelessness is a policy choice.*
Once you understand this, it becomes clear that Obama’s decision not to bail out homeowners in 2008 wasn’t a mistake, a missed opportunity, or an oversight. *It’s an ideological system working the way it was designed to work.* https://twitter.com/danielmarans/status/1296674849411211266
Because the moment you reveal that you can help people in an emergency, you reveal that you can help people *whenever you want.* And once people internalize that homelessness is a policy choice, not natural and inevitable, the whole thing starts to crumble. https://twitter.com/o_lloyd/status/1305961151898030089
