the great american housing crunch and what organizing can do about it this week on the laura flanders show we discussed some of the challenges and victories in the campaign for green affordable public housing mantel coming up on the laura flanders show the place where the people who president drums fame and fortune may be or may not be derived from a real estate empire but millions of his fellow americans are not so lucky instead they we all face a real estate nightmare many of us levels of housing insecurity and homelessness are at record highs and the problem is getting worse not better according to a recent issue of jacobin quote there is no us state where a full time minimum wage worker can afford to rent or own a one bedroom dwelling no state climate change alone will displace thirteen million americans according to the guardian newspaper is there a coherent vision to address the problem on a national level what would progressive housing plan actually look like recent victories by community advocates in states like new york providing some anstice here to tell us about those see a weaver director of organizing and campaign manager for the yeah and so in this last legislative session in albany and tenant the tenant movement was successful in really standing up to the real estate industry and the chokehold it held in new york politics for such a long time very successful and strengthening and expanding renters rights in the state and so at this point in new york penetrator stronger they've been in a generation we've opened up new opportunities for organizing renters across upstate new york and we have and the three surrounding county is it's about two million five hundred thousand people call those apartments home so it's a significant portion of the city's housing stock and one of the things that i'm very excited about is that we're actually able to expand some of those protections to the entire state which means millions of more men with that side of the city now have the opportunity to benefit from unstable if only they you a part of this campaign talk about the role that you played how you got involved in what was it like to be up in albany the capital lobbying oh i got involved about a year and a half ago in the fall of two hundred and twenty seven king and only reason why i got involved was because my landlord hit me with something called major capital improvement which is known as i s normally i would not pay attention to it i was just a little rent increase but the fact was the amount that it was and then it seemed a word permanently and which he did was you did the kitchen and bathroom so like for a month when you do kitchen and bathroom tenants are left without those facilities for about a month and no recourse so you don't get compensated but your rent get just for the duration of the improvement but permanently permanently and then even if i move out the next and it is also paying in that because now that portion is attached to the bill and when i move out that m c i still stays there because that's the new rent for that up on it then only before the new tenant moved in the landlord kinko and do some more upgrades and call it individual apartment improvement which is  i and now that tenet also have that was so for whatever reason or for the reasons you just described this one hit you in a whole different way and you got involved right because it for me it was why because see if i'm paying for this permanently if i decide to move i cannot take the toilet with it for i cannot take the kitchen sink or the cabinets with me so why do i have to pay for it primarily because this is the landlord's apartment in his building and any type of upgrade that he does to this building his property value goes up by half so bright for him so when he decides to sell reaping the benefits so what did you do you may you look at this you didn't just put it aside what did you do i set there foreman because i didn't know where to go or who to go to i happen to run into the organization that i'm involved with which is casa which stands for community action for safe apartments and to learn more about it and to see what i can do as the time it now it's it was the cost factor it was the amount today i can afford it but i'm looking to retire at one point and if these m c i ski papen in there now i can afford it you don't even you didn't get in a complaint to an argument with your own individual landlord about your own individual case you got involved in a whole camp yes yes because i felt that i can speak and i'm speaking for the people in my community because when i look at the demographics of my community there's a lot of people who can't speak or whose voice has been cut and so i need to speak for those people who had a pretty unique experience of giving them involved in a in a campaign for the st time and then coming away such a winner yes ye yes you realize how unusual that is yes we you know the nine bills it was created to work with each other to close up loopholes that we saw the current system has have different leaders different type of thinkers and that's how we were able to win a lot of the stuff that we have now and under the new law even though we did not get what we everything  a democratic majority in both chambers of the state government daniel how significant is it what happened here in new york state for people in new york and there's a lot of people who are not rent controlled property  but also nationally how significant is that what happened here well this is a huge win in new york state i think there's more to be done but it's a really big win i think one helpful way to think about it is after the campaign and after the legislative level if the city is investing or if companies are investing to make a neighborhood greener more resilient more of the energy safer that is not going to then trigger displacements for those who are in rent stabilized units and i think this is really important understand right now virtually any improvement you with land prices which politically is why a lot of people can be riled up to oppose things like green improvements or investments in public transport that's right and to be honest when you look at the bloomberg administration and its environmental policy is a lot of people thought well bloomberg screening is fundamentally for rich young professionals to move into these neighborhoods and displaced people of color and his administration did not care about that problem they thought little trickle out some time which is horrible so i think if we think to ourselves there are so many things we need to do to improve the quality of life in so many different neighborhoods but those improvements have to be for the people who live there and environmental justice community is the people who fight to clean up neighborhoods should benefit and so you need rent control and we probably actually need universal rent control nationally flexible has to depend need universal rent control new social housing so when you improve places improve neighborhoods the people who live there benefit from those improvements where new people move in everybody benefits remember how those rent stabilized rates of rent established seventy four dollars in municipalities that are participating in the program which is new york city and then a handful of cities outside in the surrounding three counties and rent increases are set by a local board  when they sit down every year and when they gather their data because they spend the year gathering data and their data is to determine two things the increase that will not hurt to ten minutes and increase that will allow landlords to be able to maintain their buildings under me mints taxes water bills etc so that's how the rent landlords has been making profit increases for the last thirteen years so why do you need programs as far as the mc eyes and a eyes because see this year between  who can't afford it and for people that have followed the career of our president they will remember that it was exactly the mechanism of capital improvement so called that enabled his family real estate company right in jacket when you talk about a green new deal for housing that doesn't just emerged from landlords and tenants working things out together there's a heavy investment and it's not as if we're not investing as a country in the housing subsidies they've just mostly gone to private owners that's right i mean this issue of subsidies is really fascinating because i think most americans as with many parts of the government they think that the government is providing all these things based on taxpayer dollars to people who don't work very hard or something like that but it's the opposite you know as we've been known for a long time in the last keep saying there is essentially socialism for the rich and rugged individuals and for the poor if you look at subsidies for housing the mortgage interest tax deduction which allows people to buy homes and not pay taxes on the mortgage interest cost the government about seventy five billion dollars a year low income housing tax credits which is the main way affordable housing is funded across the government but it one billion a year so th as much so what a green new deal for housing is about saying actually housing is a human right we have to stop a climate emergency keep people safe take the carbon pollution out of the air and to do that we need to do a number of things rehabilitate public housing bring it back up to the highest standards we need to have things like universal rent control but we also need a really big ask something like medicare for all something like for you you know public college and for university and the way to do that i argue is to demand ten million no carbon public homes mixed income homes all across the country  highest quality design and we have many examples from all over the world vienna is probably the best example of a really successful public homebuilding this would help decarbonise the economy create millions of jobs train workers and take in carbon out of buildings and give every ultimately give every person  f this country access to the highest quality housing and you say oh but what's that going to cost that would cost about the amount of the tax cut they went overwhelmingly to the richest americans so real estate is responsible for about sixty percent of the wealth in this world they pretend that there is a scarcity there's not a scarcity there's a scarcity for pollution in the atmosphere which rich people are dumping into it but there is no scarcity of resources to give every person in this country access to really high quality safe no carbon comfortable housing not easy though in the last few months i've been in both barcelona and buffalo new york and in both of those cities one in the catalan region of spain one and upstate new york you have one local government trying to make some change up against entrenched interests grassroots groups able to do a certain amount but there are some real sticking points where do you think those sticking points are it's just true for two too long in our state real estate has had an open door to our governor and we see that in what's going on in buffalo and rochester syracuse and in new york city as well so cuomo has only been so new york is one of the richest states in our country  tons of billionaires not tons but many billionaires live in our state if we were it we have the capacity in new york state to fund public housing to fund social housing to fully fund housing for people who need it to rehab eighty nine thousand homeless people who live in our state but our governor is not interested in doing that our governor is much more interested in things like the buffalo one billion and these economic element projects that really he uses as a way not to provide housing for folks but to funnel money to his developer donors and i think outside of the real victories that we won for renters in this last legislative session one of the things that we also successfully did as we broke the real estate industry's grip and that's that's one of the major victories to me as well they woke up on june th and june th completely shocked they were not expecting to lose as much as they lost there have been ripple effects throughout the head of red meat john banks stepped down yesterday or the day before so real estate is really in because they were not expecting the state legislature to so thoroughly kick them out but it's really needed i mean in under under our governor and our governor cuomo homelessness in our state has gone up by forty one percent eighty nine thousand people and that's living in shelters it's really for probably well over one hundred thousand folks while it's going down in the rest of the country so that sort of that sort of way that real estate has been able to profit off of an eviction crisis and profit off of false economic development is something that we're really looking to change what is the argument that you make to the landlords or do you i mean new york city is a limited area of the prices can it seems just endlessly skyrocket for property we're seeing entire neighborhoods kind of emptying out occupied only by investors money it works for them why should they not keep doing it i mean i think one thing we have to remember is that yes bloomberg restricted to construction of apartments in the outer parts of new york city about half the zoning that bloomberg did were to restrict development in parts neighborhoods like south brooklyn east queens half of those down zoning s within like a ten or fifteen minute walk at a subway so actually there are a huge number of sort of semi suburban neighborhoods in new york city where bloomberg politics were not hey let's build up let's make room for all the immigrants who are moving into the city but instead it was no let's play to the racial prejudice s of a lot of these homeowners let's play to the fear of change and make the entire burden for development be borne by essentially communities of color working across communities in other neighborhoods of new york city so i think when we ask ourselves is there room to make space for more people to live near the subway in your parks and you're called a couple services there or is there absolutely is the question is what's the coalition and if the coalition is read me and yuppies then you know you're not going to have a great housing policy if you're a coalition is working class people middle class people mostly americans who rent to are facing a gigantic cost burden you know half americans pay a rd of their income in rent a quarter of americans pay half their income in rent if you build that into your coalition a fighting coalition like c n n need to have been building then i think you've got to really have a new housing politics a politicians you will line in their pocket all we had to organizations was us and now we'll voices and it does matter and we did make a difference we need to keep fighting and keep making sure that we do have affordable places to rent because when we keep hearing words like gentrification or rezoning or whatever it is is that you creating the space for other groups of people now would you do with the people who's already lived there no one has never answered that question where do those people go so which you're doing is increasing the homeless population and this is why the upstate downstate coalition was created it was for people who are living in regulated apartments unregulated apartments and the homeless and that was why we became came together because all i see is when you're trying to move me out using programs like m c i is i a eyes preferential rance they can see you know the control and using all the stuff to  new york having more people involved in the process more people involved in the wealth that is made in their area and more people do involved in decision making about hard choices some of them especially as we deal with the crisis of climate change what's your vision from here going forward in terms of how housing policy can usefully be made and said well one of the reasons why we brought homeless folks and tenants together in the state down to housing alliance is precisely what you mentioned but then you mentioned our housing policy in this country has been structured around a property rights framework and has been structured around homeownership  but half our state rents the share of the nationally the share of households in our country that rent is growing for people who are my age who maybe have more good student that or health care and that taking on a mortgage is not something that we want to do so my vision and why we're organizing renters and homeless folks together is that we fundamentally shift economic development policy and housing policy in this country to emphasize that sort of stop treating homeownership as our only wealth building tool and as our only housing tool to start treating housing like a human right to start treating renters with their respect and as a full community members that they are and so for me i cannot make democracy and our neighborhoods as about renters can this side whether or not they want to stay early if it's about stability it's about the fact that nobody should be evicted some people are going to get evicted and some landlords are going to say i have a right to evict people i'm the one owning this property i'm the one maintaining it i require a certain partnership on the renter side where is the place for the landlords and the owners in this in this discussion daniel i think the place for these people is the place of somebody who owns for instance stocks or an equity that returns six or seven percent and they can be happy with that i mean see and i talked about this before one of the things that happens when you have rent control is that you are essentially not wiping out the ability of a landlord to exist but you are look you are taking away the super profits were landlords who essentially have the very good luck for the most part of either being incredibly rich i mean able to buy whatever they want or h happen to own something in a really desirable place where most landlords the not create the new york city economy they didn't make manhattan into a global capital of finance fashion education you name it and yet they're sitting on this property so suddenly all this money comes to them i think that private investment  as we all know fundamentally has one goal which is profit returns to the owner and public investment can have a number of different goals including effectiveness number one not having corruption and or two but also when you have public investment in something like retrofitting  it the biggest green city in the world four hundred thousand people could live clean comfortable apartments with the best appliances with new skins on the building's ceiling area between apartments so you know that when you do that kind of thing through public investment it allows you to do a lot you can incentivize worker cooperative actually get the rehabilitation work you can have public banks that are responsive to community concerns were giving out very low interest loans or even simply giving it cash grants so once you have public investment that allows you to democratize the economy at multiple different levels you can have buildings become limited equity corroborative community land trust you name it there are so many different ways that we can govern our common spaces once we take away private property of the overriding priority public investment i want to suggest that we can also redefine what that is