In Defense of Housing

Summary, part 2

Oppression and Liberation in Housing

In this chapter, the authors examine both the ways that the nature of the housing market facilitates exploitation, as well as how housing possesses the potential for liberation and empowerment. 

The commodified nature of housing enables it to serve as a tool for both labor-based and social oppression. For example, companies throughout history have established various forms of “worker towns” to surveil their employees, and armies have used domicide, the intentional destruction of homes, as a tool of war. Additionally, whether as a prerequisite for voting in the US’s early national period or as a symbol of consumerism during the Cold War, homeownership has always been used as a marker of political power and privilege. Presenting homeownership as the only way to access decent housing systemically oppresses the working class and ultimately stabilizes the social order by perpetuating inequality.

Further, residential oppression does not affect everyone equally. Throughout the text, the authors incorporate feminist analyses which argue that for women, the home has long been a site of struggle because of the economic devaluation of domestic labor. Throughout history, the systemic racism of the housing system allows it to serve as a tool to deny opportunity. De jure and de facto segregation–from Jim Crow laws to redlining–have served to exclude Black Americans and other people of color from the housing system. Acts of state violence have routinely violated the safety and security of Black homes in America. The book offers the example of the police killing of seven-year-old Aiyana Stanely-Jones in her home in 2010. (This trend of violence can also be identified in more recent cases such as the murder of Breonna Taylor in 2020, which occurred after the book was written.)

When it comes to how housing can be used as a tool for liberation, Engels was the only prominent radical to warn against reducing housing to an issue of consumption. To support the idea that the residential ought to be considered in movements for liberation just as much as the industrial, the authors examine different historical movements that recognized how the home is not merely a place of private struggles, but of political ones. The protest tactic of rent strikes has been used to resist various forms of residential oppression, from the 1915 Red Clydeside movement in Glasglow, to socialist/communist/anarchist movements in the Americas, to anti-colonial movements in Ireland, Zanzibar, and South Africa. Most importantly, the movements that employed these tactics viewed residential oppression as linked to deeper systemic issues such as class struggles and racial/ethnic exclusion. 

The home also represents a critical site for activism and self-determination. bell hooks described the home as “the one site where [African-Americans] could freely confront the issue of humanization” (p. 111). Early feminists proposed policies like socialized childcare and wages for housework to fight to make the home a more equitable space. During the labor movement, New York City saw the creation of cooperative housing that housed largely working-class, immigrant neighborhoods. These communities used these social spaces—which rarely exist in the same form today—as a place to collaborate and cultivate activism. 

All in all, the authors argue that we must understand the forces behind residential oppression to uncover the liberatory potential of housing. They argue that only the repoliticization—the recognition that housing is and operates within an inherently political system—of the housing debate will accomplish this.

The Myths of Housing Policy

In this chapter, the authors break down the common misconceptions surrounding housing policy to argue that state housing policy has and continues to maintain the socio-political status quo by favoring privatization.

The authors begin by dissecting the history of early housing regulation that was in reality intended to mitigate the ruling class’s fear of disease and working-class unrest.  The frequent riots that characterized the period, such as the Draft Riots of 1863 and the Tompkins Square Riot of 1874, were fueled by issues of racism, nativism, and classism, but it is rarely acknowledged how those events were exacerbated by living conditions (albeit not a central or explicitly identified issue). Although progressive reformers of the era like Lawrence Veiller and Jacob Riis helped to improve housing conditions, their work ultimately served elite and assimilationist interests.

Similarly, public housing initiatives at the time were not primarily aimed at helping the urban poor, but instead were intended to further common public and governmental economic, political, or military goals. Programs like government-supported unit construction and subsidized loans to veterans are examples of wartime housing initiatives that ultimately bolstered the private market. The creation of the United States Housing Authority enabled the large-scale construction of public housing, but these projects were largely motivated by the underlying goal of quashing unrest and supporting private housing. 

Urban renewal, also known as “slum clearance,” is a prime example of how public policy serves to further private profit. In the US, about 1 million households were displaced from the 50s to the 80s, with many cases of slum clearance funded by housing acts. Urban renewal enabled suburbanization, disappeared jobs, reduced public services, and worsened segregation. Most importantly, it illustrated that the state was an ally to private developers, as government initiatives following urban renewal enabled private control of low-income housing and offered tax credits to private developers. Another state policy that appeared to improve housing conditions is inclusionary zoning, which was central to NY mayors Bloomberg and de Blasio’s housing policies. Although this policy requires public developers to build a number of “affordable” units in addition to market-rate housing, these units are often overseen by private developers with little regulation.

Lastly, the authors examine myths about the state itself and its relationship to housing. The myth of the meddling state is an argument that conservatives often use to counter the liberal conception of the benevolent state by arguing that a free market ruled by supply and demand is the best approach for the housing market. Not only does this myth ignore the trend of severe underspending on public housing (over 75% of the government’s total housing subsidies consist of tax expenditures) but it also ignores the fact that the market has always required and involved state action. Ultimately, breaking down these myths illustrate that “state action can be used to democratize and redistribute housing, or it can function to preserve inequality and support private profitmaking” (p. 144).