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Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the Dec. 25, 1997
issue of Workers World newspaper
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Gov’t to the poor: Sleep in the streets!

Public housing to bar the unemployed & their children

By John Catalinotto

The other shoe is about to drop.

First, in the summer of 1996, President Bill Clinton and the Congress repealed the 60-year-old federal welfare law providing subsistence benefits for the poorest members of the working class. Now the Congress is preparing to repeal the 60-year-old federal law providing public housing, pushing these same people—mostly unemployed women and their children—onto the streets.

They’ll pass it, that is, unless a mass struggle is waged to defend public housing. That would stop them.

The repeal of both the welfare and housing laws is an assault on the entire working class. But they are crafted to divide the class by creating a sub-class of the poorest and most oppressed people.

The New York City Housing Authority has jumped out ahead of the new law. Officials have announced that starting Jan. 1, welfare recipients who apply for public housing will be assigned the lowest priority. People with low-income jobs will receive preference.

Mary Brosnahan of the Coalition for the Homeless slammed the new policy, warning it would create "a tidal wave of homelessness."

The Housing Authority will shut out those who need subsidized housing the most. It pits the working poor against people without jobs, rather than solving the enormous housing problems that both face.

130,000 families for 8,000 apartments

New York has 180,000 units of public housing. About 8,000 become available each year. There are 130,000 applicants on the waiting list for those few spots.

What is really needed is a tremendous increase in public housing and in funds to assure that the housing is adequately maintained.

The new housing bill contains no such increase. Called the "Housing Opportunity and Responsibility Act," the bill passed the House May 14 by a vote of 293-132.

Both Republicans and Democrats supported it. It is on the Senate agenda for the new year.

The bill repeals the 1937 Public Housing Act. Like the federal welfare laws, unemployment insurance and Social Security, this law was passed during the Great Depression.

These laws were a response to mass struggles by workers and the unemployed, demanding some relief from the worst suffering.

Gutting these laws attempts to throw the poorest workers on the scrap heap and pull down all other layers of the working class. It’s the Contract with America without all the fanfare.

The new law would also require "all able-bodied public-housing residents to contribute eight hours per month of community service." In other words, like workfare, it imposes a new type of slavery on a section of the working class.

Double-barreled shot at the poor

This new attack is compounded by the big cuts already made to welfare. With less money coming in and no public housing available, more people on welfare will wind up with no housing at all.

More people asked for emergency food and shelter in U.S. cities in 1997. The U.S. Conference of Mayors said Dec. 15 it expects to see even greater need in 1998, based on a survey of hunger and homelessness in 29 cities.

Some 86 percent of the cities reported an increase in food requests; 59 percent had more requests for emergency shelter.

According to the survey, "city officials report that the strong economy has had little or no effect on either hunger or homelessness and that few people affected by those problems have benefited from the economy."

On Dec. 16, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released the results of its study, finding that the income gap has surged in the last decade. The prosperous economy, according to the CBPP report, has benefited only the rich.

In New York, the gap between the poorest 20 percent and the richest 20 percent is the widest of all. The average income for the bottom fifth of households with children in New York is $6,787. For the top fifth it’s $132,390.

Yet this is the city where the poorest are to be denied subsidized housing. Legal Aid Society of New York Litigation Director Scott Rosenberg said the Housing Authority is "doing this in response to budget cuts.

"The real issue is that the Housing Authority is seeking more income by the somewhat perverse means of excluding those in greatest need," he said.

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