Loading summary
Transcript13 lines
- [00:21]
A
Welcome, friends, to another edition of Economic Update, a weekly program devoted to the economic dimensions of of our lives and those of our children. I'm your host, Richard Wolff. For those of you who may have missed the deadline to sign up for the spring online classes from the Left Education Project, those are now in their second week. You can register for the rest of these courses at any of the tracks at a discounted rate. Each class runs from four to six in the afternoon, Eastern Standard Time. And we know that that's inconvenient for some of you. And so we have decided to make live recordings of the entire class available to anyone who signs up at this point, whether or not you've seen the other classes, you will have the whole course at your disposal. Please go for More information to LeftForum. For Left Education Project. Please also remember to, like, subscribe and share this video and support our work by visiting our website at www.democracyatwork.info and or by signing up to our substack community at democracyatwork Substack. All of these mechanisms broaden our reach. It's a way to partner with us and to build the very large community. We now have approaching 600,000 YouTube subscribers, and we invite you to do so. Okay, today's program is going to be particularly focused on housing. We will have an interview in the second half with Rob Robinson, who's been our guest before, talking to us about the housing crisis. Affordability, which everybody is talking about, has an awful lot to do with the housing costs, the rental payments you make, and so on. And we'll also be talking a little bit about two important union events that teach important lessons. So let's get right to it. I want to begin with some history. We don't do enough of that, as some of you have pointed out. And so I wanted to talk about the history of public housing in the United States. Yeah, there is a history. Government in our country has from time to time entered the housing business when it was a clear need of the American people. Why am I telling you this story? Because it's a clear need. Now, that's another way of talking about the affordability crisis. Housing is not affordable to millions of Americans who either go without a home or are crammed into too little space for the physical and mental health of our population. But first, a little bit of instructive history. In 1918, that's over a century ago, as World War I intensified overseas, causing Americans in large numbers to go over there and fight that war, the US Government embarked on what was then a radical experiment. It quietly became the nation's largest housing developer, designing and constructing more than 88, 080 new communities across 26 states in just two years. These weren't hastily erected barracks or rows of identical homes, not at all. They were thoughtfully designed neighborhoods, complete with parks, schools, shops and sewer Systems. In just two years, this federal program provided housing for 100,000Americans. Few people know this history, which is why I'm bringing it to you. If we want housing to be produced, and we want it quickly for people who shouldn't be homeless, who shouldn't be overcrowded, who shouldn't be moving every two weeks, disrupting their children's education and everything else about their lives, well, the government could do it. The government has done it. And that leaves us all with the question, why in the world isn't that being done now? My second update has to do also with a story that has a history. We covered that history in this program. It was the effort of the United Auto Workers to crack a problem they've had, which is organizing auto workers in allied businesses in the American south, that part of the country that has been the most resistant to labor union organizing. And we focused attention on the Volkswagen factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, where the UAW tried twice two elections to win the right to represent the workers. If a majority of the workers who vote vote in favor, the the union is thereby established. Well, after two failed efforts in 2024, the union won and became the official union. And finally, a few weeks ago, they got a contract. They voted on it, and it passed by a 96% vote. That's overwhelming support of the members of that union for the contract they got. And I'm now going to tell you about that contract because it's important for you to know what organized workers can get. And this is an important factory in a new part of the country. It's a boost for unionism. And before I go into it, let me tell you about another boost. The US Labor Department announced that in the year 2025, just behind us, 500,000 more Americans were members of unions at the end of last year than at the beginning. That's the first time in 16 years that union membership has gone up. I think union members are facing the reality of our economic decline. They're seeing social movements arise, such as that in Minneapolis against the ICE program. And they're beginning to recognize, as workers have done in the past, that unions can be a very important defense in hard economic times. Well, back to the factory in Chattanooga. Volkswagen, the United Auto Workers. Every worker who voted for this contract, indeed every worker who works there, because the contract covers everybody, will immediately get a bonus because this contract was signed and ratified. How much will each worker get as a bonus immediately? $6,550. Not a minor matter. They will also receive a 20% wage increase over the four years of this contract. It runs from February 2026 to February 2030. 20% over four years. On top of the bonus of 6,500. Some workers, skilled workers, machinists, electricians, will get more than that. But that's just to give you an idea. Health care premiums paid by the workers will go down by 20%, not. Not the coverage, the cost to the worker, even more for some of their plans. And they will not go up again for the life of the contract. So down 20% and at that level for the next four years. Nor can they lay off workers. I could go on, but this is a remarkable contract. A bad inflation will hurt it. But other than that, it gives you an idea of what the struggle for unions can achieve here in the United States. Today. A very different story has to do with the Pittsburgh newspaper, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Many years, a major newspaper, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette. All right. They've been on strike for three years. The workers there in a dispute on November 24th of last year. They won a hard won victory after three years. The victory came against a company that had kept publishing the paper during the strike by using scabs and by using workers that were not in bargaining units on strike. The strike was caused when universally all kinds of benefits that had been provided to the workers were taken away. That's really what provoked the strike. The union then proceeded to file charges with the National Labor Relations Board, as a union is entitled to do. These charges were supported by the board. That is, the board investigated the charges and found in favor of the union. But the company ignored the National Labor Relations Board. That happens often. The union went to court to enforce the situation and they won in the court. The 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, November 10, 2025, confirmed the NLRB's earlier decision and ordered the company to restore all the requested items of the collective bargaining agreement. The union went through all the steps to compel the management to honor the agreement. That was deemed fair and reasonable by the National Labor Relations Board. However, a few weeks after this, on January 7, 2026, all the workers at the Post Gazette were notified that the owners Block Communications would end publishing of the Post Gazette On May 3rd of this year, leaving the city of Pittsburgh with no print newspaper at all. All right. This is extraordinary and deserves a comment. A newspaper is a vital source of what makes any city or indeed any community a really viable community. It's how millions and millions of Americans participate in local affairs, in local governments. It's part of any functioning democracy. It is outrageous that we allow it to be privately owned so that a person who's rich enough to buy a newspaper can then decide what it covers, how it covers it. But here we see the power that we give to individual owners to be taken even further, that a private capitalist owner of a newspaper, unhappy, that won't make as much profit as it might have before because it has to deal fairly with its workers, can simply shut the enterprise down, walk away, take away this important part of the community because it's privately profitable for them to do so. Never has the clash between the profit motive and the profit of private individuals been more obvious with democracy and the needs of a community. That's an important lesson taught by, by the crisis of Pittsburgh that we've just covered. We've come to the end of the first half of today's show. Stay with me. We'll be right back with Rob Robinson and the crisis of housing in the United States today. Before we jump into the second half of today's show, I wanted to thank you for your very generous response to our fundraising efforts this year and in particular in the last couple of months. And in part responding to that, we are extending the availability of our limited edition, linen covered hardcover version of Understanding Capitalism, the book I wrote and that we have been making available now for quite a while. If you are interested, I will be signing copies of that hardcover and they will be available to you as they have been over the last few weeks. Just simply send an email to us@infoomocracyatwork.info and put in the subject line limited edition. We will send you all the information you need to order and receive your copy signed copy of Understanding Capitalism in its hardback. And thank you again for your kind attention to the fundraising dimension of what we do. Welcome back, friends, to the second half of today's economic update. I am very pleased, proud to bring back to our microphones and to our cameras, Rob Robinson. He's been a guest on our program before. Many of you have written to us about his appearances. He is a specialist on issues of land, housing, homelessness, questions that are fundamental to the way we live and fundamental to the problems of this economic system we're living through. So I want an update, basically, Rob, from you Let me begin by thanking you for your time and sharing your wisdom with us. Rob, for those of you who may not remember, is a formerly homeless community organizer and an activist based in New York City. His work focuses on changing people's fundamental relationship to land and housing. He is a senior advisor with a New York City based human rights organization and an adjunct professor of urbanism at the New School University in New York City. And he is also a teacher in the classes that we have organized under the Left Forum as the Left Education Project. Sorry, my brain is running ahead of my mouth. Okay, so, Rob, let's begin with the big one. Is there a housing crisis in the United States as we speak?
- [18:24]
B
There certainly is, and it has been for some time. Professor Wolf the price of housing has gotten completely out of hand and not only contributing to increases in homelessness, but people in general are struggling to remain housed. Even those we don't suspect to be at risk of homelessness are at risk. Their rent burden, cost burden. With respect to housing, there's probably 23 million renters in this country who are struggling to keep up with the rent, and there's probably 20 million single family homeowners that are at risk of losing their homes or their cost burden. And I think sometimes we separate the two, and I think that's a mistake on our part. Everybody needs a safe, dignified, affordable place to live, whether you're renting or whether you're owning. But I do think this American dream sort of gets in the way of these narratives. So I'll stop there and see if you want to probe a little bit more.
- [19:30]
A
Yeah, I do, because I recently spoke to a schoolteacher, and the schoolteacher blew me away by telling me over her years of experience what was one of her biggest problems. Oh, she said, that's easy. It's the fact that. And then she gave me a number that I didn't know what to do with. In her estimate, 20%. She's here in New York City. 20% of her school children in her classes are homeless for part of any given year. And while they're homeless, and usually in the weeks and months leading up to their homelessness, they are moving around from one place to another. In other words, they leave their home. They then they have a week with cousin Harry and maybe a few days with a good neighbor, and she says they can't do their homework. They don't even have a desk. They don't have a computer. Everything is in boxes waiting to be moved to wherever the heck they're going to be. In other words, she says, and these are the students that then fall behind. They can't catch up. Many of them have this experience with more than once. In other words, they're in families which don't have the money. So I realized that housing is not only a terrible problem in itself, but plays a contributory role to a whole host of other associated social problems.
- [21:04]
B
You're absolutely correct. I think what people don't understand is the family situation is ripped to shreds when you're at risk of homelessness. The fundamental issue here is the cost of housing versus wages being stagnant. Right. Wages don't rise as fast as the cost of housing. People in New York City, people will gloss over the fact that we have some 600 shelters. But a shelter is not a home. When a family is moved from place to place is a lack of stability. Today we do a lot of work online. As you know, we just recently had a big snowstorm in New York City, and it was a debate whether or not we would do school online or we would do it. You know, we'd cancel school for the day. So there is a thing now, if you have access to the Internet, yeah, you can do schooling online. But does that shelter have access to the Internet? Do the families living in these shelters have access to the Internet? So that child may be lacking studies on a given day and falling behind. So these are problems that we don't look at. We sometimes look at the picture, look at it from 10,000ft above. But there are these problems on the ground that are really affecting and it affects the future of America. Right. If these kids aren't getting a basic under education, then we have a problem as they grow older.
- [22:25]
A
Okay, I want to pick up on your thought about home ownership. You know, it's a big deal here in the United States that somehow you're successful in life or something if you own your own home. Even if the truth of it is that the bank that you're up to your eyeballs in mortgage, and it's more the bank's house than it is yours. But I want you to talk because I know you're very eloquent about it, about this American dream, about the home ownership and how it contributes to the problem.
- [22:58]
B
It was so homeownership, single family homeownership was once the foundation, supposedly, of a stable life in the US conditions were a lot different 50, 60, 70 years ago or coming out of World War II. But conditions change now. Housing has become a manipulative instrument for financial institutions to barely Profit from, they don't care about whether or not you're living in a stable environment. They care about the profit that they can possibly make. So while, you know, you look at a city like New York, we don't, the majority of people, 75% of our residents, live in rental housing. But that rental housing is at risk because of overseas investments seeing it as investment properties. But around the rest of the country, with respect to single family homeowners, you get large corporations like a Blackstone buying up these properties where people are struggling to keep up with the mortgage, falls into foreclosure, they face eviction. Then Blackstone claims these houses and wants to rent it back. It's about a profitability margin with these folks. And profit is something that people are never satisfied with. They continue and continue. There's no such thing as overdosing on profit, so to speak. You might overdose on a drug, I could always compare profit to a drug, but it's a drug that you, you don't overdose on. You just want more, more, more. The body never satisfies its urge for more profit.
- [24:30]
A
And obviously if the house is owned by an investor mentality, then anything that can make the price of it go up is a plus for the investor, but it makes it unaffordable for more and more people. I mean, this is a clash between the investor who owns and, and the home liver who needs a place to live. And it's therefore a system that is not working to do what all economic systems in the history of the human race have been judged sooner or later by how well they can feed human beings, clothe human beings and house human beings. And we are a society who's rushing after the prophet, is running against satisfying the housing and it's getting worse and worse. And I keep meeting investment people because I'm an economist who tell me these stories about these funds that are buying up small houses, single family houses, to convert them into profitable rental. This is not a solution. And anyway, your comments, it's certainly not sustainable.
- [25:49]
B
And I think there's a complication here, Professor. I think somewhat society is somewhat complicit in this problem. So you have part of people in America that think that they can make a lot of money by investing in one of these homes and possibly selling it. Then when they sell it, they realize they go back on the market to get another one and it's unaffordable. So they went from home ownership or supposed home ownership to now renting and now they're caught up in that rental cycle. So it's a problematic thing. I think what we have to do is dismiss this narrative. And that is hard for people. It is really hard. When this has been drilled into you year after year, family after family is drilling the schools, they drill this into you. Single family, home ownership, it's the way to wealth. I might make the argument that it was never a way to wealth. It might have been some stability once upon a time, but that is all dissipated now. It is something that you're going to struggle, right? And a financial institution doesn't care about whether you're struggling or not. They're going to put you sit down with a banker and he's going to make that mortgage for the house that you enjoy fit you. Whether or not you understand that he's setting you up to fail. And in many instances, a big majority of people purchasing a mortgage from a bank or getting involved in that situation are being set up to fail. And they don't realize it. They realize it 10 years down the road or they realize it 20 years down the road when they think they're close to finalizing that mortgage. And then the roof goes on the house and then all of a sudden they have to re roof the house, which is an $80,000 investment. They don't have the money. They take out a second mortgage. It leads to what I like to refer to as perpetual debt. It does not lead to perpetual wealth. It leads to perpetual debt. And I think that is really hard for the general John Q. Public to understand.
- [27:52]
A
And then they send out every member of their family to make the money that they have to then shovel to the bank to. To hold on to the house that they can barely enjoy because they're busy running out there making the money. The ironies of it. Listen, we have a new mayor in New York City, Zoran Mamdani, a socialist who won overwhelmingly and had as one of his basic campaign promises to do something about housing and particularly the rents that the majority of New Yorkers. You're a person who's devoted much of your life to this subject. What recommendations would you give to Mr. Mamdani as he struggles to deal with this problem, assuming that he's going to go through on the promises that he made.
- [28:41]
B
So I think there's a couple of things. One, he's already attempted, to his credit, he has replaced members of the Rent Guidelines Board, which can stabilize housing rent for rent, stabilized buildings. But that's a small percentage of the population New York. What are you going to do for others? Right. Those others are not being talked About. So he's going to have to figure out how you throw a bone to the other, the bigger portion of society. Right. If you're going to get to one side, you have to give to the other. But I think there are three key issues that he can work on to make things better, and this is going to include housing and homelessness. There's a policy called housing first, where you take a person who is street homeless, you put them in housing right away, and you surround them with the necessary social services. If they have some type of mental disability or other needs, maybe they. Maybe they have an addiction, a substance addiction. You know, you can give them housing and then bring them supportive services. So if you're a provider that is getting funds from the city, then he should make an executive order to say, you know what? If we're going to fund you, then you have to use this housing first policy. I think the second thing that he can do is bring people with lived experience of homelessness to the table and engage them in real conversations for real solutions. Right. Not the normal theatrical way that has been done by prior administrations. Song and the dance. Look who we brought to the table. The idea was, but have them sit down, they have the solution to the problem. And I think the third, and this is probably the strongest with respect to New York, we have a law called the right to shelter law. Well, that has created a shelter industrial complex to the tune of almost 600 shelters in New York, of which 90,000 people reside at night. We need to move from a right to shelter to a right to housing. And we need to limit the length of stay in a shelter. Somehow we need to figure that out. The average length of stay is close to two years. So shelter has basically become a home in New York City. And that's another way to end homelessness.
- [30:52]
A
Bravo, Rob. Thank you. I hope that Mr. Mamdani or people that work close to him are listening and take those kinds of suggestions forward. We're very hopeful here in New York City that we've turned a corner by the election we just had. And one of the tests will be housing rent and everything you've talked about. Thank you very much for your time, as always. It went very, very quickly, but I hope that you will join me in saying that we hope that we will meet our audience again, if not next week, then in the weeks and months to come.
- [31:30]
B
Thank you, Professor Wolf.
- [31:33]
A
Thank you. And to all of you, let me reiterate. I look forward, I really do, to doing this program and to speaking with you again next week.