Homelessness Part and Parcel of Capitalism

Like racism, poverty, and mass unemployment, homelessness is an integral element of capitalism.  By driving rents ever higher, capitalists increase their profits and then blame the homeless victims.  Many workers who can’t afford their rent or to save toward a place of their own end up joining the bosses’ military—sent off to kill other workers turned into homeless refugees by capitalist inequality and imperialist war.  
Communism would focus solely on meeting the needs of the working class throughout the world.  Providing shelter for all workers would be primary. With all wages, currency, and profit abolished, the labor and resources now used to construct rent-generating office buildings would be diverted to build safe and sanitary living quarters for the working class.  
Homelessness is sexist and racist.  It is sexist because it imprisons millions of women in unsafe conditions and abusive relationships because they can’t afford to move out and find a home for themselves and their children.  Among U.S. adults in homeless shelters in one recent study, 78 percent were women (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, July 2011).
Homelessness is racist because Black, Latin, and immigrant workers are super-exploited or subject to racist unemployment, to the point where millions cannot afford rent, let alone buying a home. In 2010, according to a report by The Institute for Children, Poverty, and Homelessness, Black family members in the U.S. were seven times as likely to have stayed in a homeless shelter as white family members (huffingtonpost.com, 3/14/12).
In India, where 96 percent of a vast housing shortage affects low-income workers, you can find “miles and miles of built homes with nobody living in them” in suburbs of Delhi, the capital (BBC.com, 5/21/15). According to the property consulting firm CRBE South Asia, there are 12 million vacant homes across urban India—many built to shelter investments by wealthy individuals seeking to dodge taxes.
In New York City, one can walk by countless new luxury condos that the working class cannot possibly afford.  Outside, on the sidewalks of the capital of world capital, homeless people are forced to ask for money to eat.  
Banks Win, Workers Lose
A vast amount of homelessness in the U.S. was created by the crisis of overproduction of homes that began in 2007—what the bosses call “the subprime mortgage crisis.” From the beginning of capitalism, the system has created periodic crises when more of a product is produced than can be sold. When the working class became unable to keep up payments on homes where the real estate value had plummeted, millions lost everything. Under Barack Obama as the banks got bailed out, the working class got sold out.
Imperialism is the stage of capitalism where capital must go beyond national borders to achieve a maximum return on investment. As China has turned to market capitalism, newly minted billionaires—running scared from the Chinese bosses’ cynical “anti-corruption” campaign—are investing in real estate in places like New York and Los Angeles.
As a result, housing prices have been driven even higher; in both of these cities, homeless is again on the rise. And how did these rich Chinese get their money in the first place – by brutally exploiting their own workers!  This illustrates the maxim: What affects workers anywhere affects our class everywhere.
Homelessness will end with the destruction of the profit system. With the leadership of Progressive
Labor Party, we will organize society to provide for the working class.  We will build a society based on communist economics: “From each according to commitment, to each according to need.” Instead of having countless miles of empty homes while
workers are desperate and homeless, we will build the housing that the working class needs and deserves.