Housing is not just another commodity by Friedhelm Hengsbach, 2014
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2018/03/06/18807182.php
Like food, clothing, health, and education, housing is an elementary need. One’s apartment is a place of retreat of the private person, a protective- and creative space of inviolable identity, the third skin of the person after clothing.
Land and property in congested areas are very limited. Therefore, there are good reasons to declare it a public asset and thus evade private control. Long-term low-interest housing tax credits, SROs, and nonprofit or cooperative housing are alternatives to indifference, market fundamentalism, and plutocracy
Long-term low-interest housing tax credits have built between 3 and 4 million units and are a vital federal program. Surely, cutting this program was a terrible mistake like cutting HUD $6-8 billion. Can you help restore these programs and cancel the cuts. In addition, SROs are vital and bring community, unlike warehouses or prisons. Nonprofit or cooperative housing could be a new beginning and a new necessity since private developers cannot build inexpensive housing.
We are bound to one another like the waves of the sea, said historian Norbert Elias.
more at www.openculture.com, www.grin.com, www.freembtranslations.net, and www.citizen.org
