this is Richard Wolff from democracy at work responding to another ask Prof wolf question from
our patreon community this question comes from Elia and Ilya asks about housing and landlords
and to put it bluntly he asks couldn't we do better without landlords without someone in
between the family that needs a home and the home that we need can't we put the needs for
housing together with the people who have these needs without the in-between making
money off of the connection another way to put this is why isn't housing recognized as a human
right there are actually organizations all over the world fighting for exactly that the right
to water the right to land the right to food clothing and the right to shelter and housing
and you know if a society works well it solves the problems of food clothing and shelter it either in
a society like ours it either gives people a high enough wage and salary income to afford
proper housing or it lowers the price of proper housing so that people's wages will enable them
to afford it we all know that it's kind of Common Sense so what is it that explains situations where
millions of people don't have enough to afford the housing they don't earn enough and or the housing
is too pricey well housing is a private business in this country private companies build most of
the houses we live in and private companies are the landlords of most of the houses we
live in if their apartment or multi-unit housing which is for the majority the way we live okay
than an adequate system gives us the income and or the prices so we get a fit for people have housing
well we don't do that in this country or to be honest we fail as a capitalist economic system
we don't get the job done how do we know because we have hundreds of thousands of homeless people
October this month is actually the national uh block evictions month in this country because
people are being thrown out of their homes at record rates right now because it was
delayed during the pandemic it's exploding now because they don't have enough money to
pay the cost of the rental unit or whatever it is that they have could it be otherwise
the answer is of course it could let me give you examples one of the most famous is Vienna
Austria in Vienna Austria the capital of that country half of the housing in that huge City
is what's called social housing it's owned by the city of Vienna everybody in it is a renter people
are allowed to run their own apartment houses I've been there they're beautifully maintained they're
beautifully preserved the rents are kept below 25 of anybody's income they adjust as your income
does they've been doing that for decades even when Austria was under the most conservative government
imaginable nobody touched the social housing program of Vienna because the mass of people would
have voted them out of office in 10 minutes can it be done of course it can be done one of the ways
is to eliminate the middle man the landlord have the people's government build and run the housing
have the people in a Cooperative way run the housing paying for it a modest rent and why would
it be modest because it wouldn't have to include anybody's profit because you would have taken
the profit the capital ISM out of it is that an option yes all over the world that is being used
the examples we have that we could use to Fashion a good one in this country are everywhere not just
in Vienna Austria so yeah we ought to be able to arrange housing that was run by the people in it
who would make sure that it is handled properly especially if the communities were diverse had
different skills different attitudes could divide up the work a system could be developed to do that
look we have a public education system that educates our people we don't allow capitalists
to come in there and destroy it and make it a profit-making business and when they do it's
another world it's private schools and they have their sets of problems but we want for the mass
of people a public education that creates an educated public we could do the same for
housing and it would be a big step forward if we did if interventions like this open up the space
for discussion and for changes that this country badly needs then we ask you to partner with us
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