Our city council, and many city councils, work with big landlord corporations to maintain a certain amount of empty houses. A big component of this is YIMBYs in our city who would push their own children in front of a moving bus if it meant a big developer doesn’t pay taxes to build “luxury” apartments in gentrified neighborhoods. Said apartments are required to offer a certain number of “affordable” units son the poors can have a taste of the good life, only $2500 per month for a family of 3 making up to 26k per year, on a single bare unit in a mid sized Midwest city, but don’t try to use the front door or the gym.
You get what I’m saying? The affordable housing rules are what keeps these units empty, floating the value of the other units. When distributed city wide, it’s a scheme to keep rents high, while the companies building the new buildings don’t pay taxes for 25 years.
All the while, touting affordable options to families in need. A couple years ago our city received $14M from the state to provide affordable housing, and gave $11M of it back a year later. And all the while, the only housing people can afford, gets worse and worse.
I’m not arguing that the problem is local government and not capitalism. I am saying they work together in very specific ways.
Capitalism is not a ghost or the devil. It is a particular set of social relations. Defining it abstractly like the big bad in season 1 of some superhero movie is not practical. In order to learn to defeat capitalism we have to fight the forms it takes in order to expose how it has corrupted government, democracy, human rights; but also to show that capitalism will never stop taking different forms and the bourgeois will never stop trying to swindling their way into more and more power, until the profit motive has been totally negated on every level.
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GDP is such bs.
Our city council, and many city councils, work with big landlord corporations to maintain a certain amount of empty houses. A big component of this is YIMBYs in our city who would push their own children in front of a moving bus if it meant a big developer doesn’t pay taxes to build “luxury” apartments in gentrified neighborhoods. Said apartments are required to offer a certain number of “affordable” units son the poors can have a taste of the good life, only $2500 per month for a family of 3 making up to 26k per year, on a single bare unit in a mid sized Midwest city, but don’t try to use the front door or the gym.
You get what I’m saying? The affordable housing rules are what keeps these units empty, floating the value of the other units. When distributed city wide, it’s a scheme to keep rents high, while the companies building the new buildings don’t pay taxes for 25 years.
All the while, touting affordable options to families in need. A couple years ago our city received $14M from the state to provide affordable housing, and gave $11M of it back a year later. And all the while, the only housing people can afford, gets worse and worse.
deleted by creator
I’m not arguing that the problem is local government and not capitalism. I am saying they work together in very specific ways.
Capitalism is not a ghost or the devil. It is a particular set of social relations. Defining it abstractly like the big bad in season 1 of some superhero movie is not practical. In order to learn to defeat capitalism we have to fight the forms it takes in order to expose how it has corrupted government, democracy, human rights; but also to show that capitalism will never stop taking different forms and the bourgeois will never stop trying to swindling their way into more and more power, until the profit motive has been totally negated on every level.