New York tenants have been fighting over a political move set forth by the landlords'  of  public housing projects, the Democrats, and Republicans, and the State Government, to end rent control, and instead start a policy known as vacancy decontrol. This policy will end rent-protection for working-class tenants, and the oppressed, in favor unrestrained profits. Under vacancy decontrol when a tenant moves, dies, or is evicted, the landlord has the right to raise the rent another 20-25 percent. This policy is just a financial incentive for landlords to further there harassment of long-time tenants, to force them to move out of rent-controlled apartments.

    The reason behind the attacks on rent-control start at the Senate where they approved two housing authorization bills (H.R. 2406 and S. 1260) which rewrite large portions of the public housing and Sections 8 programs. Section 8 provides and individual who qualify pay only 30-percent of gross income for rent, with the rest subsidized by the government. If this bill goes through it could dismantle the Brooke Amendment. Since the enactment of the Brooke Amendment decades ago, public housing has provided housing for a large portion of the poor-minorities, large families, families on AFDC, the homeless, and people with disabilities. They have been able to find shelter when other landlords receiving federal housing subsidies consider these groups "desirable." If  H.R. 2406 and S. 1260 are enacted if will dismantle the Brooke Amendment.

    Under the proposed H.R. 2406 and S. 1260, contracts have to be signed, and tenants have to participate in educational, service support, or job training it provides, each adult must contribute eight hours each month to volunteer work in their communities. This is forced labor, something people must do, not left to their voluntary choice. This contract/lease also sets a date when people must move out of public housing.. In simple terms, it puts "time limits" on their occupancy. This may limit a family to say, four years in public housing, when the family must "graduate" to private housing. These bills are geared to force the working-class and working poor out of their homes.

    Every tenant knows its greed that is driving the land lords' to push for vacancy decontrol. This is all comes at the same time as the attack on Welfare, and Affirmative action. The real-estate tycoons are looking to gain control of the prime real estate that most of these developments are on. By using rents and making it impossible for the average worker to pay, they hope to drive us out. Once this is accomplished, ownership can be turned over to private landlords' who can demolish, rebuild, renovate and convert these into profit-making apartments. This move if it goes through will put an extra $1.2 billion dollars profit into the pockets of the real-estate firms that run 70 percent of the rental units, and the landlords'.

    Rent-control has been a vital part of the housing structure in New York for over 50 years. During the 1930s there were many movements against high-rent, landlord harassment, and attacks on rent control, as well as the fight for affordable housing took place in the elite sections of Harlem (Sugarhill and Manhattan Avenue) as well as 134th street, 135th street, 140th street, 141st street, and Upper Lenox Avenue. We must rebuild the struggles of the 1930s, we must continue the fight for affordable housing and rent-control!

    This attack on the working-class, working poor, and the oppressed comes at the same time the attacks on welfare, and Affirmative action. The working class must link their struggles with those of the working poor, and oppressed. These policies that the landlords, and the state government are pushing for have the overtones of racism, economic oppression, and all the components of capitalism written in them. In the capitalist quest for power, once again the masses of the people will suffer, Unless we take a stand! If vacancy decontrol is put into effect, families would be forced to double up and homelessness will be inevitable, the standard of living will decrease.

    "As the state arose from the need to hold class antagonisms in check, but as it arose at the same time, in the midst of the conflict of those classes, it is a rule, the state of the most powerful, economically dominant classes, which through the medium of the state, also the politically dominant class, and thus acquires new means of holding down and exploiting the oppresses class." (Taken from "Excerpt From the Origin of the Family, Private Property, and State". Karl Marx & Frederick Engels)

    Empty buildings lie in rot, while people whose labor could be used to renovate them live on the streets. As simple as the problem is, it will require far-reaching social change.This is why a movement must be built on the struggles of the working-class, and oppressed, we can solve this so-called "housing crisis". The vast problem of decreasing affordable housing is going to worsen dramatically in the immediate future.
 
    The wide variety of individual causes of homeless all occur within the overall determining factors of the high cost of housing and the the unavailability of decent paying jobs. The quickening decline in the standard of living of the working-class has place quality of housing more and more out reach for the large sectors of the working-class. More and more people will live in cramped housing. More and more youth are forced to stay with their parents into their late twenty and even thirties. Racist and demagogic attacks on housing and Social Security for immigrants are certain to force many people into homelessness. This social assault on the working class and the oppressed must meet with resistance.
 
    Struggle is the only road to progress. A social movement is needed, due to the fact that the Democrats and Republicans are attempting to abolish rent control. In the 1930s tenant unions campaigned and organized rent strikes to protest rent increases and inadequate building services. Which played a critical role in breaking the conservative inertia of the bureaucratic mis-leadership and transforming their struggle. We can accomplish the same thing!

     A program of action that addresses all the fundamental issues of the tenants as well as fight for affordable housing and lower rent. A movement based on both the movements in Harlem in the 1930s and the power of the working class and oppressed tenants. This movement must challenge the landlords', as well as lay the groundwork for the struggles that can end the conditions which give rise to homelessness.

    A tenants union must be formed. Tenants must fight militantly to obtain a victory. Civil-disobedience is not the answer! Experience of the last several years confirms it-- the militant strategy works. Tenants union must fight for more affordable housing, abolish  H.R. 2406 and S. 1260 bills, and fight for lower-rent, as well as set up defense guards to defend against police repression. This movement must fight to reuse existing abandoned structures so they can be renovated and reused as housing. The capitalist won't do it because it isn't profitable to them. There is no denial that the state is the organ of class domination.
 
    Public subsidies and tax breaks for the billion dollar corporations, while cynical bureaucrats blame the working-class and oppressed for draining the public funds of America. These loathsome landlords' are tools in the hands of the big banks and corporations. The homes of over 3 million people most of them working-class whose wages have been falling are at risk. Housing subsidies for the impoverished are constantly under political attack, the government gives back to homeowners FIVE TIMES what it spends on low-income housing.

    More than ever tenants need more control, more protection and lower rents, more affordable housing. Tenants need to start a struggle that will lead the way for future movements "To throw over the old power is one thing; to take the power in one's own hands in another." Militant mass action is away to victory, we must remain below the "savages" of our society. We must fight for our means, militantly. This profit based society is both the initial cause that throws people into homelessness and the reason it is perpetuated, like their property, capitalists only employ your labor when it is profitable for them.

    There is no reason why we need to go through this. We can wage a winning struggle, the politicians lie to use, and at the same time cheat us. It's time to build up our resistance. These landlords' are banking  on favorable ruling in this struggle to get vacancy decontrol. Civil disobedience is out of the question! We need to be geared up for the struggle. We need to organize the masses in unity, we need to face this attack on a basic human right. The right to a home, a right to affordable housing, by any means necessary.