Housing/Rent/Mortgage/Land Ownership Discussion Thread - P…

On April 07 2020 11:34 GreenHorizons wrote:


Exactly. Instead of hoping you get to the breadline in time so you can pay your landlord you can make sure your family can eat and access the internet/communicate with family.

It's not a matter of choosing not to pay their bills, they can't, it's which bills they pay. A rent strike is a collective bargaining tool so they can ensure that they aren't without housing when the landlord can legally evict them for rent many couldn't have paid whether they wanted to or not.

My role is more organizing and providing informational resources for how to do it effectively than to personally advocate people choose not to pay rent though just to be clear. I do support people who can afford their rent striking in solidarity (and ideally using those resources to support those less fortunate) though they should be aware of the potential consequences.

On April 09 2020 01:20 GreenHorizons wrote:


liberation is always a risk.

On April 09 2020 01:52 GreenHorizons wrote:


You asked why gamble, and with liberation it isn't a choice. Liberation and the status quo means many people are gambling with their lives to make it to the next day.

The system is already protecting their landlords whether they pay them or not (the existing legislation gives them up to a year of interest/penalty- free deferral), and I expect even more to go their way.

Without demand/struggle, power concedes nothing and renters are not seeing that same relief. Many landlords, knowing they don't have to pay their mortgages are demanding payment and threatening eviction in conflict with state legislation. Without organized direct mass action renters are just going to get screwed over anyway so there isn't a choice without risk.



also this of course.

On April 09 2020 02:13 KwarK wrote:

All of these arguments are just as valid against unionization of employees.
If you encourage workers to not go to work then they're risking getting fired and the organizer won't pay all their paychecks until they find new work. You're not making a new argument, you're just describing how collective bargaining works and the inherent risks of it that everyone already understands.

Your entire post can be dismissed with "Yes, that's how it works, everyone understands that's how it works. The goal is through collective bargaining to avoid punitive responses by the exploitative party on the other side of the collective bargaining by demonstrating that their need for us is greater than our need for them because their profits are ultimately rooted in our labour. However the risk of failure exists and is exacerbated by the use of state force to break the strike as has been used countless times in the past".

Your arguments against it amount to an entry level description of how it works. It's like you're arguing against military intervention by saying "but what if someone gets hurt, did you think of that?"

On April 09 2020 02:04 GreenHorizons wrote:


Yeah, bunch of disabled people occupied government buildings for weeks in part to get landlords to make their properties ADA compliant so it's really about the "which side are you on?" question. We know which side the police is on.

@zero, besides you just making the same argument bosses do against unionization I don't think you're appreciating that my efforts are primarily aimed at people who can't pay rent anyway and are just stressed the fuck out about feeling powerless to stop themselves and their family from being put on the street by landlords who have already been protected from the same through legislation. Also organizing against generic slumlords otherwise.

I don't expect most of the people you describe to show class solidarity and risk their own housing to fight for other's. My point is that since millions of people simply can't pay rent through no fault of their own organizing with them is a more receptive process.

On April 09 2020 02:41 KwarK wrote:

This is a thing where one party owns a thing another party needs but does not use it themselves and instead sells the use of it to another party to extract unearned wealth. It's conceptually on the same lines as a factory owner vs factory workers. The value of the homes isn't intrinsic, they're not printing dollars, it is the occupant that gives the homes value. If the occupants all collectively fucked off then the homes would be as valuable as an empty factory. Presumably the plan is that rather than evict everyone from all their homes and make no money for months while they struggle to replace everyone the property managers would rather just declare a rent holiday and reset. Through collective bargaining they're trying to make punitive action more expensive than cooperation. This is exactly the same logic that is used everywhere else, sure a factory could fire all the strikers for not working but then they would be stuck with all the costs of owning an idle factory while they replaced the workforce and so it may be cheaper to negotiate.

Don't get me wrong, I think GH is an idealist who is going to fail because the American population has essentially no class consciousness and will happily watch members of their own class fail while believing that they have nothing in common with that person. And yeah, people trying collective bargaining are going to get fucked because the state always fucks them because the state gets paid by the owner class.

My objection is purely to the weird way y'all are treating his strike movement. You should be going "strikes are dumb and you are too", not "what's a strike, I've never heard of such a thing, how does it work, what stops punitive action, what are you trying to get out of it".