The reason for housing crisis

An insightful article on homelessness on the Truthout website by Dr. Gus Bagakis, a former philosophy instructor at San Francisco State University.

The article commences with two apt quotes over a century apart.

"As long as the capitalist mode of production continues to exist, it is folly to hope for an isolated solution to the housing question or of any other social question affecting the fate of the workers." -- Friedrich Engels 

"Homelessness exists not because the system is not working but because this is the way it works." -- Peter Marcuse

Many parts of the essay is worth quoting.

"There is no greater condemnation of capitalism than its inability to provide adequate housing for those who produce its wealth -- the working class."

"The fear of homelessness helps capitalism maintain its power. In the days of industrial capitalism, the unemployed were used by the ruling capitalist class to signal to the workers that they were lucky to have their jobs, and if they rebelled, they could be unemployed. Now, after the 2007-8 recession, as we move further into post-industrial capitalism, the homeless are a warning to those potentially rebellious workers unhappy with their loss of wages, lack of stability and benefits, and to students of the zero generation: zero jobs, zero hope, zero possibilities, zero employment, who are in debt for their schooling. The message is: Accept the declining status quo or end up homeless."

"The housing market would collapse if shelter was plentiful and affordable for everyone. In the book, In Defense of Housing: The Politics of Crisis, the authors demonstrate that the interlocking processes of deregulation and financialization turn homes from a living space into real estate -- a commodity, manipulated by investors, banks and even some local governments. This occurs because there is no right to adequate housing in our Constitution or in federal law. If housing was a right and not a commodity, then shelter would be taken out of the private market."

"Capitalism goes where the profits are. In the '60s and '70s, it was Detroit, the automobile capital of the world, and now it has shifted to the Silicon Valley, one of the new centers of power of the economy. When Detroit was in its prime, US politicians proudly brought world visitors there to show off capitalism's success. Now it's a destroyed area, with a thin veneer of the glory days exhibited in the inner city, giving the illusion that Detroit is back in business. Silicon Valley is full of profit potential, a center of creativity, a laid-back life, beautiful buildings and campuses, near a world-class tourist city, and the destination for world visitors, mirroring an earlier blue-collar Detroit. Since capitalism is profit driven, it takes no responsibility for those without homes, the laid-off workers or abandoned plants and toxic dumps. One can only imagine what Silicon Valley will be like when the American empire declines and the center of capitalism moves, probably to China."