[Private profiteers have concentrated the grip over real estate to
such an extent that virtually every American lives in a company town
now. Unions from all sectors need to wage campaigns for housing
policies that break the grip of real-estate elites.]
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WE ALL LIVE IN A COMPANY TOWN NOW. THE LABOR MOVEMENT CAN LEAD THE
WAY OUT.  
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Ann Finkel, Lewis Barnes
October 1, 2023
Jacobin
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_ Private profiteers have concentrated the grip over real estate to
such an extent that virtually every American lives in a company town
now. Unions from all sectors need to wage campaigns for housing
policies that break the grip of real-estate elites. _

A new luxury condo building goes up in New York, the most
rent-burdened city in the United States., Angus Mordant / Bloomberg
via Getty Images

 

We all know how bad the housing crisis is. Rising rents
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rampant speculation, and skyrocketing eviction
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rates paint a grim picture. Beneath the surface is a more malignant
driver of this crisis: the speculative private market, which has
concentrated its grip over real estate to such an extent that
virtually every American lives in a company town now.

As educators, we have witnessed this housing crisis not only be a
source of stress and instability for ourselves and our coworkers, but
also uproot our students from schools — away from their friends,
teachers, counselors, and neighborhood communities. The root of this
injustice is the private market’s monopoly on housing construction
and ownership. Unions from all sectors — education, service,
manufacturing, and especially the building trades — need to unite
and campaign for housing policies that break the monopoly of the
private market.

Modern Company Towns

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, company towns were areas
where workers from one or a handful of companies lived in housing
owned and operated by those companies
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The result was that companies wielded exorbitant power over their
workers, as they controlled not only their wages but their homes.

Today, the power of the real-estate industry has grown so vast that
most Americans have extremely little control over their housing. As
Fran Quigley points out
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“Institutional owners — corporations or limited liability
companies — now own the majority of all US rental units
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and over 80 percent of the properties with twenty-five or more
units.” Since 2009, Wall Street firms have converted hundreds of
thousands
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of homes into rentals, increasing rental and home-buying prices. This
extreme concentration of property in the hands of a few real-estate
tycoons compounds with the national housing shortage
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The effect is striking: the majority of Americans, even those lucky
enough to own homes, face a housing market rife with speculation and
concentration that produces a feedback loop of ever-increasing costs
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Meanwhile the National Multifamily Housing Council
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— supported by the likes of billionaire real-estate investor Harlan
Crow, whose father was America’s biggest landlord
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and who carries on the tradition — ruthlessly interferes with even
modest efforts to curb the market’s power, such as rent control and
stronger eviction protections. By using housing as a speculative
investment, the private market has created an entrenched system that
enriches the few while creating precarity for the many.

Many of those who experience precarity are union members, including
hotel staff, construction workers, paraprofessionals, and teachers. To
ensure their members have roofs over their heads, and to build
long-term political power, unions must join the fight to solve the
housing crisis.

There Is Power in a Union

Unions can stand together against the crisis created by the private
market — and in the past, they have. In the early twentieth
century, the labor movement and the New Deal coalition set a precedent
for unions leading fights for housing justice. In New York City,
members of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 3 and
the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America raised money from union
members, community allies, and even union-owned banks to finance and
maintain limited-profit housing cooperatives
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From 1926 to 1974, roughly 40,000 affordable units of housing were
produced thanks to this effort.

During the New Deal, leaders like Catherine Baeur brought together the
American Federation of Hosier Workers, Amalgamated Clothing Workers of
America, and other unions to form the Labor Housing Conference
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This alliance advocated for New Deal funding to create mixed-income,
perpetually affordable public housing modeled after Vienna’s social
housing. Ultimately, these efforts were never embraced by a majority
of the labor movement, and their effects were limited. Still, this
past provides a template that can inspire the present.

Today, some unions are rising up to tackle the housing crisis through
bargaining contracts, supporting legislation and ballot initiatives,
and going on strike. The Seattle Teachers Union recently backed a
ballot initiative [[link removed]] to
create a city-owned social housing developer that will construct
permanently affordable, environmentally sustainable, union-built, and
tenant-governed mixed-income social housing. A broad coalition
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the initiative, and it passed overwhelmingly.

Oakland teachers went on strike in April, and ultimately won an
agreement
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for the school district to use vacant land to construct affordable
housing for students, families, and staff. Striking UNITE HERE Local
11 hotel workers in Los Angeles are demanding
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hotels publicly support a ballot measure on affordable housing — and
implement a surcharge on hotel meals to create revenue to fund
affordable housing construction for union members. Meanwhile, the
Boston Teachers Union and Chicago Teachers Union have established
housing justice committees that partner with community organizations
and fight for rent control and social housing.

Unions of all kinds — from education to service work to building
trades — should bargain, strike over, and importantly create
cross-union efforts for housing justice. They can begin by uniting
over ballot questions and legislative campaigns for housing
cooperatives and social housing
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Other policies, like affordable housing and rent control, are also
worth fighting for. But social housing
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open to much larger parts of the population than traditional
affordable housing, and rent control is illegal in many states. There
are generally no laws prohibiting states and cities from building
social housing. Social housing creates an entrenched constituency by
serving both the lower and middle classes. And, in removing swathes of
land from the private market, social housing challenges the monopoly
of the market.

By bargaining, organizing, and even striking for tenant-governed,
mixed-income, perpetually affordable social housing, unions can be
leaders in breaking the company town model and ensuring that ordinary
people govern both their workplaces and their homes.

===

Contributors

Ann Finkel is a teacher in Chicago Public Schools, former chair of the
Boston Teachers Union’s Housing Justice Committee, and member of the
Chicago Teachers Union’s Housing Justice Committee.

Lewis Barnes is a paraprofessional in Boston Public Schools and a
member of the Boston Teachers Union’s Housing Justice Committee.

* Housing Crisis; Real Estate Industry; Social Housing; Unions and
Housing;
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