When I arrived in Brattleboro in 1984, the parking lot behind the left-leaning bookstore I opened was teeming with scruffy young adults and teens playing hacky sack, often stoned, and generally enjoying life. Not sure if anyone was homeless in town at that time. The country was in the early throes of the cataclysm that the Reagan years would force on all of us. As the media droned on daily about what a nice and fun guy Ronnie was, how very popular he was with all of us (not), Reagan and his propaganda machine were busy dismantling much of the barely adequate social and economic avenues of assistance for the many who were in need. Anyone who is old enough remembers the horrible lies and racist introduction of Reagan’s creation, the welfare queen.
It does not need to be said that she is Black and “She used 80 names, 30 addresses, 15 phone numbers to collect food stamps, social security, veterans’ benefits for four nonexistent, deceased veteran husbands, as well as welfare. Her tax-free cash income alone has been running $150,000 a year.” And that is when $150,000 was real money — not pocket change to the new rich.
Then, as now, as in pretty much every moment of the past 100 years, there were always politicians, “intellectuals,” and right-wing media who declared that socialism was the reason for every dime doled out to a person who was unable to work at a good paying job — whether because of disability, caring for small children by choice or by necessity, lack of skills due to a poor education, or lack of opportunities in their cities or rural areas. Then as now, there were the protestant preachers of the prosperity gospel: if you were rich, you were righteous. Then as now, there were always racists like Donald Trump, and so many others, beating the drum of white supremacy, and the inferiority of the work ethic, the intellect, and the worthiness of those of non-white origin.
This intense campaign to undo every remaining positive aspect of the New Deal, whose programs had enraged conservative politicians the minute any of them were proposed, was accelerated under Saint Ronald. And the origin of the housing disaster faced by millions of Americans, as well as the cities and towns whose sidewalks and wooded areas they are forced to inhabit, can be pinned to the high priced suit jacket of Ronald Reagan and his heartless administration.
From Shelterforce Magazine, 2004:
“The most dramatic cut in domestic spending during the Reagan years was for low-income housing subsidies. Reagan appointed a housing task force dominated by politically connected developers, landlords and bankers. In 1982 the task force released a report that called for “free and deregulated” markets as an alternative to government assistance – advice Reagan followed. In his first year in office Reagan halved the budget for public housing and Section 8 to about $17.5 billion. And for the next few years he sought to eliminate federal housing assistance to the poor altogether.
“In the 1980s the proportion of the eligible poor who received federal housing subsidies declined. In 1970 there were 300,000 more low-cost rental units (6.5 million) than low-income renter households (6.2 million). By 1985 the number of low-cost units had fallen to 5.6 million, and the number of low-income renter households had grown to 8.9 million, a disparity of 3.3 million units.
“Another of Reagan’s enduring legacies is the steep increase in the number of homeless people, which by the late 1980s had swollen to 600,000 on any given night – and 1.2 million over the course of a year. Many were Vietnam veterans, children and laid-off workers.”
And that was written in 2004. Housing has become astronomically more expensive in the past 21 years, and it seems as if almost all new housing is built with high profits in mind, much of it upscale. The shut down of assistance to those needing housing has been coupled with a massive rise in the cost of housing. We see stories all the time such as “The death of the starter home.” For anyone who has attempted to purchase a home in the past two decades, and especially since the insane race of urban dwellers to snatch up any housing that got them out of the cities during the COVID crisis, housing costs seem to have doubled even since 2020. And they haven’t dropped.
In attempting to understand the many different federal agencies who have offered schemes for public-private partnerships, complex ways to take out a housing loan, and tax breaks for building affordable housing, two things are clear.
One — that I would have to be an economist or a finance expert to understand the complexities of all the ways different presidential administrations have tried to appear to be doing something about the housing crisis. I couldn’t understand most of what I read.
Two — that none of it is working. The number of unhoused Americans continues to grow, and the options available to them seem pretty slim. Math is truth: there is not enough housing for the poor and working class.
In my own town, the parking lots have become one of the places where unhoused people spend their time. The illicit drug trade has taken a large toll on so many people in a country where many see no path to a stable future, or who have become addicted and can’t find a way out, and many of these people are among the homeless. But there are plenty of others who work hard at jobs that just don’t pay enough to allow them stable housing in a market where there is no ceiling to rents, where greedy private equity firms are snatching up available housing, where short term rentals make big profits for owners, and where there is not enough financing for housing for poor and working people … who are always blamed and shamed for their situation.
We pay taxes to a federal government that has just passed on a huge gift to the super rich and the most lucrative corporations — more tax breaks, even as they already paid low or no taxes to the very government that could be building our housing stock. Just as many of us speak up for a national health care plan, we need to begin to demand housing from the federal government. We need to be taxing the rich to pay for the needs of society. It is time for those who blame those who are the most insecure — the homeless — to turn their anger on the government. It is immoral in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, as our own Bernie Sanders always states, for the housing crisis to persist and explode.