In the USA ‘Foreclosures
— when a bank or lender takes back a home after
missed mortgage payments —
rose 14 percent from a year earlier.
In
total, 367,460 US properties faced foreclosure filings in 2025,
meaning they were in some stage of being taken over by a lender,
according to ATTOM's
data.
Indeed,
the outlook for the housing market — and the wider economy — is
increasingly bleak. In total, the US
added only around 584,000 jobs in 2025,
making it the weakest year for job growth outside a recession since
2003.
As
foreclosures rise, neighbourhoods are flooded with discounted,
bank-owned homes, dragging down nearby property values. For
homeowners, that often means losing equity simply because of where
they live. A surge in foreclosure filings are a symptom of deeper
financial problems: homeowners squeezed by higher taxes and interest
costs are falling behind, as they fail to pay other debts, such as
credit cards and car loans, as well.’ Mail
Online.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/real-estate/article-15464081/banks-seize-homes-foreclosures.html
The
below is from the Socialist Standard August 2020
‘Decent,
functional and even beautiful living accommodation is unarguably one
of humanity’s prime needs. It is the one prime need in fact that,
more than any other, save food and water, is vitally conducive to
harmonious and pleasant living at all. Conversely, the lack of it is
almost always a cause of misery, meanness and domestic strife. The
question of housing allocation in a socialist society is therefore by
no means a novel one, and has been discussed and debated for a very
long time. That old Fabian fraud George Bernard Shaw, for example,
once said that he was often asked who would live in the big house on
the hill in this socialist society of his, and Bernard Shaw’s
ever-ready response was ‘The same as now, whoever can afford to
live there will’.
We
beg to differ. All of what we say below notwithstanding, if there is
one certain fact concerning life in a future socialist society that
we can predict, it’s that how much money you have will most
definitely not be the deciding criterion that determines where you
live. There won’t be any money for a start – bits of colourful
paper, or, more so these days, numbers on a computer screen, that
denote how deserving you are of living decently as a human being.
Shaw’s
solution to capitalism’s housing problem, like that of the other 56
pseudo-brands of ‘socialism’, was simply an ill-thought out
version of reformed capitalism, inexorably welded to and determined
and dictated by the market for houses. In socialism, there won’t be
any market for houses. Shaw’s ‘solution’ was, bizarrely, simply
predicated on the continuing existence of the very cause of the
housing problem in the first place.
But,
to be fair to him as much as possible, Shaw’s non-solution of
reforming capitalism in such a way as to solve the housing problem,
has been practically everybody else’s non-solution too. Long before
Shaw was preaching his illogical nonsense, one of the pioneers of
socialist ideas, the co-author and life-long friend of Karl Marx,
Frederick Engels, wrote a short series of articles entitled The
Housing Question. Engels was writing in the mid-Victorian period,
a time when the ‘success‘ of British capitalism was at its height
and yet, a time also, when the housing conditions of the working
class were especially miserable, unspeakably wretched and degrading.
Needless to say, then as now, all manner of reformist nostrums were
proposed by a whole range of political activists; from followers of
the French anarchist Proudhon, who advocated that every worker within
existing capitalism should have their own little private property
dwelling, bought on the ‘never, never’, to representatives of the
capitalists themselves, with their ‘factory-provided houses’
abominations. These, needless-to-say, were not only factory-provided,
but factory-owned and job dependent, with all of the horrors of job
loss and consequent eviction that were entailed. Indeed, in
criticising these proposed multi-various reforms, Engels’ work is
almost entirely devoted to dealing with the ways and means of how not
to solve the housing question.
Not
a problem of housing
As
a matter of fact, as Engels explained repeatedly, the real issue is
not at all a ‘housing’ problem – that is, a shortage of labour
power or a dearth of nature-given materials that are necessary to
provide everyone in society with housing accommodation commensurate
with their needs – but a capitalism problem. Deal with the real
issue of capitalism’s general diktat of production for profit, and
the housing question, like every other misnamed ‘problem’ in
capitalism, will solve itself. It is the only concrete solution to
the problem of lack of housing, the inferior quality of housing and
the location of housing. If there is any other solution, apart from
the common ownership of resources proposed by the Socialist Party, it
has never been revealed. All we hear today, from Housing
Associations, charities and political parties are mere echoes of the
ideas and social quackery that Engels exposed and lambasted as absurd
nonsense 150 years ago.
Having
stated the general solution to the housing ‘problem’ we are
invariably questioned as to how the solution of common ownership will
work in practice. Socialist society will undoubtedly require
administration at a local level, a regional level and even a
world-wide level. How this administration is organised and functions
will be a matter for the inhabitants of socialism. What decisions
these socialist bodies take, and how they will be implemented and
even enforced if necessary, will be entirely up to them. That goes
without saying. Although we refrain from crystal ball-gazing, we can,
of course, make some general points as to what might happen in regard
to housing provision in socialism. There are two things, we would
imagine, a socialist society will want to deal with immediately. The
first is the homeless problem.
For
the first time ever, a problem that has been grappled with constantly
in all modern societies, that has been discussed ad nauseam, fought
over, lied about, written about endlessly, and thousands of charities
and other organisations have done to death for as long as capitalism
has existed , will at last be capable of solution. The administrative
bodies in a socialist society will know best at the time how to do
this.
The
second task will be to look at the existing occupied housing stock,
its condition and the needs of its occupiers, with a view to
rehousing those in the worst of circumstances immediately. Again,
decisions will need to be taken by socialism’s representative
bodies over how best to implement this aim.
As
a party, we have never claimed to be in possession of ready-made
solutions for each and every question that the future socialist
society will need to take up. Nor would it be sensible or desirable
for us to do so. In regard to housing alone, the actual
considerations and requirements are seemingly inexhaustible. The
production and transportation of bricks, copper piping, slates, sand,
cement, glass, wooden batons, joists and fencing, to name but a few
of the most obvious that spring to mind, are each a major operation
in themselves. Plumbers, electricians, roofers, bricklayers, joiners,
glaziers and gardeners, will all need to be coordinated. Further,
surveying, land availability, planning, road traffic considerations,
amenities provision, public transport, again to name only those that
readily spring to mind, give an additional idea of the complexities
involved. It is absurd to suggest that we living today should make
concrete plans for all this.
Likewise,
the number of people involved in existing professions that are tied
economically (and are mostly useless, with little or no connection to
the actual construction of buildings) to housing in capitalism, that
will be unleashed by socialism’s construction for use economy, run
into the tens of millions. Our pamphlet From
Capitalism to Socialism,
lists over 70 of these professions themselves. And that’s only in
regard to housing. The number of people engaged in useless jobs in
capitalism generally and not connected with housing but who would be
available to be deployed in that area where required is astronomical.
We
don’t know
How
will socialist society allocate Shaw’s big house on the hill? Our
answer is, and can only be, we have no blueprint. It will be up to
the inhabitants of socialism to decide ‘who gets what’. More
importantly, even if such a question is legitimate, it certainly has
no significant bearing on the case for socialism that we argue in the
present.
However,
such questions can be useful in one sense, for they highlight the
chief difficulty of prediction: why should we assume that the social
norms of today will be exactly those of the future? Certainly, there
is no reason to believe that the attitudes of those living in an
entirely different type of society will be exactly the same as today.
To expect the norms of life in capitalism as it exists now to remain
exactly the same as when there are, for example, a billion
socialists, is naive enough. To expect a socialist society to be, in
the first place, established on the notions and ideas of capitalism,
and even more unlikely, remain completely static, is patently absurd
and flies in the face of all past human experience.
Is
it likely that people in a future socialist society will have the
same desires, concerns, views, needs, aspirations or requirements
that we find so ‘natural’ and indispensable in capitalism today?
No matter how rigid and seemingly set in stone they appear now, it is
absolutely certain that our present concerns for property ownership,
for big houses, for big cars, for the baubles and trinkets so beloved
of capitalism’s apologists, and in a nutshell, a concern for ‘who
gets what’, will be simply looked upon with astonishment and
incredulity and, eventually, intense curiosity.
Is
such a belief in the possibility of such a profound change taking
place idealistic or utopian? The history of a mere couple of decades
or so tells us no. Not even the imaginative genius of Oscar Wilde
could have ever dreamed of such an utterly unimaginable event as two
men getting married – to each other! Think about that and consider
the extraordinary change in attitude that has taken place in such a
short historical time span, so that, apart from a small minority of
religious bigots, no one bats an eyelid at what once was, barely
yesterday in historical terms, such an inconceivable proposition as
to be simply dismissed out of hand by practically every human being
on the planet. Yet now it is widespread and the ‘norm’.
But
to speculate, perhaps, in the immediate aftermath of the transition
from capitalism to socialism, as a start, the inhabitants of
socialism will decide, after making adequate provision for the
existing occupants, to agree a list of the 500 (1000? 2000? 5000?)
biggest and most beautiful private dwelling buildings in a metropolis
such as London. Perhaps they will then decide to convert 100 into
havens for the mentally ill, 100 into centres for the care and
healing of victims of sexual abuse, 100 into centres for the study
and treatment of those suffering from seemingly uncontrollable and
socially harmful sexual urges, and 100 into recuperation centres for
those suffering the effects of being incarcerated under capitalism
for crimes against property.
Perhaps
also, in an advanced socialist society of 20 years standing, when
most or all of these problems have been eradicated, the majority of
the very same buildings will, one by one, be simply left to run
themselves as examples of by-gone notions of desirable (or even
undesirable) architecture, with accommodation upstairs for those who
want to preserve and protect them. The point is, we simply cannot
predict what will happen.
How
will socialist society come into ‘possession’ of these buildings?
Again, we don’t know. Is it possible that they will be simply
requisitioned for the use of everyone? Absolutely. After all, to
describe the matter bluntly, the capitalist revolutions of the past
were to privatise the earth and everything in it and on it, to
proclaim the rights of private property and to convert it into the
ownership of a few.
A
socialist revolution will be aimed at taking the property back we
have created, taking it out of the hands of a parasitic few and to
place it at the disposal of society. That is what a socialist
revolution is.
How
the inhabitants of a future socialist society will act, what their
priorities will be, and what is important and desirable for them, can
be safely left to them to decide.
What
happens to an insignificant number of ‘more desirable than others’
buildings is only one aspect of the matter, and by far the least
important. The question of housing provision in general, both now –
as in the lack of it – and the potential that socialism will
undoubtedly open up, is far more important.
To
make glib, possibly well-intentioned – though usually ultimately
utterly futile – proposals to deal with housing problems in
capitalism’s restrictive profit-driven market for houses is one
thing; to deal with the necessity to provide healthy, decent, and
even – a purely subjective opinion, of course, beautiful – living
accommodation in socialism’s production for use on the basis of a
free access economic system, is quite another.
We
would make it abundantly clear again, in any discussion of how a
socialist society will deal with the general allocation of housing,
that we cannot speak for a future society in regard to what decisions
will be necessary in the construction or location or provision or
allocation of housing – any more so than we can on the future
prospects for harmonicas or hairnets.
Our
only concern at present is to drive home the necessity for the one
over-riding solution to the problems of capitalism and that is
socialism. This will create the only possible basis for solving the
so-called housing problem. And this, as we say repeatedly, for the
simple reason that it isn’t a problem at all, but merely a
consequence of the artificial scarcity in housing created by
capitalism’s disgraceful and disgusting inherent drive for profit.
Socialism will unleash the tremendous construction capability
necessary so that we can begin practical steps towards not only
solving issues like homelessness and slum-dwelling, but constructing
beautiful housing accommodation – we are, after all, admirers of
the ideas of the early Marxist William Morris – so as to meet the
self-defined needs of every human being.'
Nigel
McCullough
https://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2022/08/what-happens-when-there-is-no-housing.html
