On Saturday January 8th, 2024 at 1:00 PM join us at the Liberation Center (9N 2nd Avenue, Coatesville, PA) to discuss the Coatesville revitalization plan. Come share your opinions about what’s happening in Coatesville. Is revitalization just another word for gentrification? Together we can figure out what’s going on, and together, with our neighbors, we can figure out how to respond.
In the meantime, in the few pages below, we offer some analysis of the housing crisis in Chester County and why socialism offers an actual, realistic solution.
Capitalism and the Housing Crisis
As the capitalist class frantically moves to maintain and increase their profit rates, they squeeze more and more out of workers by raising rents and increasing the price of basic consumer goods from food and sneakers to gasoline and electricity. Responding to this crippling inflation workers’ have launched historic unionization campaigns at Starbucks and Amazon, for example. It is not surprising that the bosses have ramped up their union-busting efforts, but workers’ attitudes toward collective bargaining nevertheless remains high.
Capitalists and the corporate media attempt to convince workers that the cause of their growing suffering is the laziness and bad decisions of other workers. But as the labor movement soars, a growing number of people are pushing back against these outrageous lies knowing that capitalists always pursue greater and greater profits by pushing millions upon millions into deepening poverty [1].
For example, as workers, we know that we are the ones who build society, but the buildings and houses that we build are built to serve the private interests of the capitalist class. Millions of people in the US experience houselessness every year while many, many more millions of housing units sit vacant. Capitalists produce commodities, like housing, not to meet peoples’ needs, but to accumulate profit. As the crisis of capitalism deepens and millions and millions more of us are pushed out of work, we also get pushed out of housing.
Because capitalism is a system based upon endless, compounding growth, it is a system that is “constantly moving and redirecting toward the places and spaces where the opportunity of profit is highest.” As a result, the normal functioning of capitalism “endlessly disrupts the lives and social conditions of the human beings in its path” [2]
Housing Crisis in Chester County
It is therefore not surprising that the housing crisis around the country, and in Chester County, has worsened in recent decades [3]. Did you know that in Chester County, on average, someone is evicted everyday?
Additionally, phone calls to the 211 hotline for shelter/housing services have risen over 600% since 2020. The current average cost of rent and utilities is over $1,300, and more than 44% of households are rent-burdened [4].
For over a year people from around Chester County have been organizing to STOP THE EVICTIONS around two core demands:
- Implement an eviction diversion program: (A coordinated set of various services, including rental assistance, legal representation, and mediation services, all meant to prevent evictions and encourage agreements between renters and landlords. Eviction diversion programs provide more stability for renters and landlords. They also prevent stressful and costly legal processes. Eviction diversion programs proved to be effective during the COVID 19 pandemic when they were implemented across the US slowing down a wave of mass evictions.)
- Implement an eviction moratorium: (A temporary halt on all evictions so renters cannot be kicked out of their homes.)
Socialism is the Solution to the Crisis in Housing
Commenting on the housing crisis former Coatesville City Council member and Chester County Liberation Center Volunteer, Nydea Graves, reported that:
When I was a City Council member I saw first hand how elected officials often avoided taking seriously peoples’ demands, such as implementing an eviction diversion program, by arguing non profits already fill this need. These elected officials have a responsibility to meet the peoples needs rather than looking out for developers and corporations. While programs like ERAP (emergency rental assistance program) offer necessary relief, what we need in the long run is collective power. So what we need is a mass movement including a tenant’s union.
Speaking from “the frontlines of the housing crisis,” Party for Socialism and Liberation member, Elgin Bailey, in a speech at a rally to stop the evictions in Coatesville, argues that while we fight for necessary reforms like eviction diversion programs, ultimately, only socialism offers a real solution to the housing crisis:
I have spent years on the frontlines of the housing crisis growing up in squatters’ houses in North Philadelphia. The years dedicated to tackling Chester County’s housing landscape, including navigating complex squatter situations, evictions, and landlord-tenant issues have equipped me with the expertise and resilience to handle even the most challenging situations. I provide that glimpse into my experience and background to strongly state the following…It is not a crisis. It is an epidemic. This has been a long-term, widespread, complex, and multifactorial issue, with one solution. Socialism. Socialism aims to address the systemic inequalities that contribute to the housing crisis, such as wealth disparity and the commodification of housing. By placing housing in the hands of the public or community ownership, it could ensure that everyone has access to affordable, decent housing.
A socialist system of housing would replace the current situation dominated by corporate lobbying interests with “a model of networked, responsive planning which is both ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’, flexible and dialogic.” In other words, high-level planning could be combined with local control to ensure society’s resources can be mobilized to meet people’s housing needs, which only the people themselves can define. This is the essence of socialism: production is organized not for the private gain of a few, but to meet the needs of the many [5].
In order to build a peoples’ movement that can put sufficient pressure on Chester County’s political establishment to meet the housing demands of the people, Liberation Center volunteers began organizing in Coatesville where the housing crisis is the most severe, due to the racist bigotry of capitalism. In order to apply pressure to the Home Rule municipality of Coatesville, organizers have attended City Council meetings, organized rallies and demonstrations, and held forums and study sessions.
Join us, we can win, but only through organization and unity!
References
[1] Amanda Yee. “Capitalist h0using crisis an accomplice in the murder of Joran Neely.” Liberation News. May 12th, 2023. https://www.liberationnews.org/capitalist-housing-crisis-an-accomplice-in-the-murder-of-jordan-neely/
[2]. The Party for Socialism and Liberation. Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States. (Liberation Media, San Francisco, 2022) 100.
[3]. Michael Rellahan. “People can’t afford to live here, say Chester County housing activists.” Daily Local. August 28th, 2023. https://www.dailylocal.com/2023/08/28/people-cant-afford-to-live-here-say-chester-county-housing-activists/
[4]. Jen Samuel. “Residents struggle with skyrocketing rents in Chester County.” Daily Local. August 28th, 2023. https://www.dailylocal.com/2022/02/05/as-inflation-rages-many-lower-income-residents-struggle-with-skyrocketing-rents-in-chester-county/
[5] The Party for Socialism and Liberation. Socialist Reconstruction: A Better Future for the United States. (Liberation Media, San Francisco, 2022) 101.